Talk:-вать

@Benwing2 How accurate is this? Eg давать and проплывать belong to different conjugation types. Just asking.--Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:52, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Etymologically I don't know, but synchronically it appears correct. Etymologically the derivation may have occurred at some earlier stage. We can delete it if you want, or we can delete the дать --> давать example. I think that the suffix of adding -вать to form the imperfective of vowel-final verbs does exist synchronically, cf. вдуть -> вдувать аs well as греть, плыть, etc. This is clearly a variant of the -ывать/-ивать added to consonant-final roots, but I don't know which one came first. Note also that давать claims an "imperfectivizing infix -ava-", which is basically the same except that it's not obvious to me that the first -a- is real. Benwing2 (talk) 00:57, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Ping: @Atitarev Benwing2 (talk) 00:58, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Vasmer under плавать says "Преобразовано из итер. *plaviti (см. след.) под влиянием итер. форм на -vati; см. Траутман, ВSW 223; Бёме, Асtiоnеs 15." Benwing2 (talk) 01:05, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

To me it's confusing but I am not strong on the subject of suffix etymologies. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:11, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Your observation makes sense, of course. These verbs are imperfective but not necessarily iterative (cf. iterative verbs бирать, похаживать, сиживать, поделывать) It's a bit involved and is possibly a topic for WT:ES and those suffixes are shared by most Slavic languages. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:35, 24 February 2016 (UTC)