The verbal morphology of Armenian is complicated by the existence of two main dialects, Eastern and Western. The following sketch will be a comparative look at both dialects. Non-finite forms Infinitive The infinitive of Armenian verbs is formed with the stem, the theme vowel, and the affix -լ (-l). The endings reflect the number of conjugations possible. Western Armenian is conservative, retaining three conjugations in a, e, and i, while Eastern Armenian has collapsed I and II: Stems There are two main stems per verb, the present stem and past stem. For conjugations I/II, the past stem is identical to the present stem, which is basically the verb minus the theme vowel and ending: The augment for the third conjugation is sometimes in -եց (-ec῾). Participles The number and type of participles varies by dialect. Future participle Both Eastern and Western Armenian form the common future participle in -լու (-lu). Western Armenian has one additional future participle in -լիք (-lik῾): Present and past participles Present Eastern Armenian has three present participles, while Western Armenian has one. The two exclusively Eastern present participles are in -ում (-um) (for all verb classes) and -լիս (-lis); both affixes attach to the present stem. Eastern and Western Armenian have a common present participle -ող (-oġ), which attaches to the past stem; it is sometimes used as an agentive noun: ուսանող (usanoġ student) [fr. ուսանել usanel to study)]. Past All affixes here attach to the past stem. Both dialects have a common past passive participle in -ած (WA -aj/EA -ac). Where the dialects differ is the past active participle. The Western Armenian participle is -եր (-er) for all conjugations, while Eastern Armenian has -ել (-el). Finite forms Introduction: general overview Armenian features within its verbal system a system that encodes person and number, as well as tense, mood, and aspect (see following section for more.) Armenian inherited from Indo-European two sets of synthetic affixes corresponding roughly to a "present" or general series, and a past series: How these affixes are used varies between the two modern dialects of Armenian. Tense/mood/aspect Both dialects have five moods: indicative, conditional, optative/subjunctive, necessitative, imperative; of these only the imperative has no tense distinction. The number of tenses varies by dialect. Aspect is divided roughly the same in both dialects, but the distribution is slightly different. Indicative mood Both Eastern and Western feature one present, one future, and two past