226 Ukrainian: A Comprehensive Grammar (1) have a consonant preceding -ну- and (2) if stress falls to the left of-ну- in the infinitive (-ну-). There are even exceptions to this pattern, however, and some verbs may have two acceptable past tense forms. Thus: слабнути to become weak: слаб, слабла посохнути to dry up: посох, посохла, or посохнув, посохнула збліднути to grow pale: зблід, зблідла Compare: тягнути to pull: тягнув, тягнула, but also крикнути to shout: крикнув, крикнула Even good dictionaries rarely provide such information; the guidelines given above ought therefore to be taken as rules, for which exceptions may exist. One feature which all of the verbs cited above share is that two of them have adjectival roots (слаб- слабий 'sick', 'weak', блід- блідий 'pale'); deadjectival verbs of this sort will tend to lose -ну- in the past tense. 6.3.2.2 Infinitives in consonant + -ти The formation of the past tense of consonant stems is slightly more complex, for the simple reason that adding consonantal past tense markers (-в, and so on) to stem-final consonants can result in changes to the new form. This is especially true of the masculine, as no vowel is present in the ending. Thus: (i) These stems either retain or lose their stem-final consonant in the past tense; those that retain them lack the masculine past tense marker -в. (ii) Stem vowels -e- and -o- usually - і in the masculine (see 'vowel alternations' in 1.1.10); the alternations may not occur in every such verb, however (such verbs are marked by an asterisk*). Here we present a list of the most commonly used verbs characterized by these features (all but one are Conjugation I verbs); only unprefixed variants are supplied, as the past tense of prefixed forms is identical to that of the base forms. VERBS PRESERVING THE STEM-FINAL CONSONANT нести: ніс, несла, несло, несли везти: віз, везла, везло, везли лізти: ліз, лізла, лізло, лізли могти: міг, могла, могло, могли пекти: пік, пекла, пекло, пекли текти: тік, текла, текло, текли сікти: сік, сікла, сікло, сікли
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