The verbal system of Kazakh language contains complex inflection for agreement in both person and number. Kazakh language does not display agreement for noun-class or canonical grammatical gender. Kazakh also has a system of tense and aspect, exhibiting multiple present, past, and future tenses that are differentiating forms based on evidentiality, durative/iterative aspect, and volitionality.
Usually, the infinitive of Kazakh verbs features a suffix of ‘у’ which is pronunced either or depending on the phonetic characteristics of the vowel in the verbal root. Specially, the suffix of infinitive is changed to ‘ю’ when the last letter of the verbal root was ‘й’. Most Kazakh infinitives can also act as nouns, which is similar to the gerunds in English.
In addition to simple verbs composed of a verbal root, Kazakh also has many compound verbs that are formed in combination with a noun or an adjective. Noun or adjectival compliments to a compound verb are usually tied semantically to the verb.
The voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). There are five voices in Kazakh language: active, passive, reflexive, causative and reciprocal voice.
There is no specific affix for active voice.
The passive voice is employed in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the verb. Verbs in passive voice often feature affixes of either ‘-л-/-ыл-/іл-’ or ‘-лын-/-лін-’.
The causative voice indicates each of the participants occupies both the role of agent and patient with respect to the other.Verbs in reciprocal voice often feature affixes of ‘-с-/-ыс-/-іс-’.
The reflexive voice is used when the semantic agent and patient are identical. In some cases it is translated into passive or mediopassive voice in English. Verbs in passive voice feature affixes of ‘-н-/-ын-/-ін-’.
The causative voice indicates that a subject either causes someone or something else to do or be something or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event. Verbs in causative voice often feature affixes of ‘-т-’ or ‘-дыр-/-дір-/-тыр-/-тір-’ or ‘-ғыз-/-гіз-/-қыз-/-кіз-’.
The causative affix can be combined with passive, reflexive and reciprocal affixes.