The question I have in mind right now is probably both very basic and somewhat tricky. It has got to do with dealing with accentuation patterns in verbs. I’ve just read about how Lithuanian verbs in the Simple Present (esamasis laikas) can be roughly divided into two groups according to their accentuation – those the forms of which have root/stem stress throughout (e.g. mylėti), and those in which the stress shifts to the ending in the 1st and 2nd person singular (e.g. rinkti).
Now, I’ve read some theory on the topic. With unprefixed verbs, for instance, it seems that, if the root/stem stress is acute, then it does not move; if it’s circumflex or grave (with some exceptions), then it does. But let me skip things a little bit to another related point…
Needless to say there aren’t particularly good bilingual dictionaries of Lithuanian online, especially if one expects to draw information on accentuation from them. When it comes to monolingual dictionaries, though, it seems the best choices one can find are Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas and Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, and so, just out of curiosity, I’m trying to learn how to derive as much information as possible from their entries. When it came to verbs, then, I realised something – neither seems to indicate in any ways how accentuation may vary through the conjugation. If I look rinkti up, for instance, they give me, respectively:
- riñk‖ti, reñka, ~o
- riñkti, reñka (riñka LD338(Zt)), -o tr. Q326, H157, R, Sut, I, M
That is, the standard three forms from which one derives the stems, but nothing else – or at least nothing I can identify that tells me that the 1st and 2nd person singular are renkù and renkì. Does that mean that it’s indeed easy to know which verbs shift stress and which don’t? Or does that mean such dictionaries just won’t get down to this detail in particular and I have to learn it from somewhere else?