The stem of a verb is the main part of the verb, the one that has the basic meaning, even if you change the inflection in the prefixes and the suffixes. If you take a verb like ᐸᐦᑳᓇᐴ pahkaanapuu ‘s/he sits by her/himself’ , the stem is ᐸᐦᑳᓇᐱ pahkaanapi-, and -u is the inflection (pahkaanapi+u = pahkaanapuu) . When you change the person, as in ᐸᐦᑳᓇᐱᓐ pahkaanapin ‘I sit’, you can see the stem ᐸᐦᑳᓇᐱ pahkaanapi with the prefix ᓂ ni- and the suffix ᓐ -n.
|Person Prefix||STEM||Person suffix|
The Cree definition we suggest for ‘stem’ is ᐌᒋᐦᒡ ᐊᔨᒧᐎᓐ wechihch ayimuwin.
Cree verbs can be grouped by stem types, according to the verb class they belong to.