frequentative

  1. Adjective.  (grammar) Serving to express repetition of an action.
  2. Noun.  (grammar) Refers to a subclass of imperfective verbs that denotes a repeated action. An example in English would be the frequentative verb "to crackle," as opposed to the nonfrequentative "to crack." The frequentative is no longer productive in English, but some languages that have frequentative forms include Finnish, Latin, Russian, and Turkish.

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.