Plea for a ranking of French verbs

Treading in the footsteps of Andre Martinet and Jean Dubois, the aim of this paper is to classify French verbs on the basis of their phonetic form. Only the root forms of the present tense are retained, and four large classes of verbs are defined : one-root verbs, two-root verbs with a [1236/45] distribution, two-root verbs with a [123/456] distribution, and finally three-root verbs which all present the distribution [123/45/6]. The criterion for the classification has proved to be effective : it enables us to group most traditional 3rd group verbs in a small number of well-defined groups, and to integrate other verbs than verbs ending in '- er' in the class of onebase verbs; it is not necessary to create a group for the only type 'finir' which can be included in a larger class of other similar types. Moreover, this classification brings out interesting regularities regarding the formation of a few verbal syntagms such as the imperfect, the present participle, the subjunctive and the future. It is hoped that this paper will be useful to educational specialists who would like to simplify the teaching of conjugations, and would be in favor of replacing the inadequate traditional classification.