Grammatical conjugation

Part of the conjugation of the Spanish verb correr, "to run", the lexeme is "corr-".
Red represents the speaker, purple the addressee and teal a third person.
One person represents the singular number and two, the plural number.
Dawn represents the past, noon the present and night the future.

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories. All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme and the form of the verb that is conventionally used to represent the canonical form of the verb (one as seen in dictionary entries) is a lemma. Inflection of nouns and adjectives is known as declension.

Conjugated forms of a verb are called finite forms. In many languages there are also one or more forms that remain unchanged with all or most of grammatical categories: the non-finite forms, such as the infinitive or the gerund. A table giving all the conjugated variants of a verb in a given language is called a conjugation table or a verb paradigm.

A regular verb has a set of conventions for conjugation (paradigm) that derives all forms from a few specific forms or principal parts (maybe only one, such as the infinitive in English), in spelling or pronunciation. A verb that has conjugations deviating from this convention is said to be an irregular verb. Typically the principal parts are the root and/or several modifications of it (stems).

Conjugation is also the traditional name of a group of verbs that share a similar conjugation pattern in a particular language (a verb class). This is the sense in which teachers say that Latin has four conjugations of verbs. This means that any regular Latin verb can be conjugated in any person, number, tense, mood, and voice by knowing which of the four conjugation groups it belongs to, and its principal parts.

Examples

In Latin the present conjugation is o, s, t, mus, tis, nt, which respectively means I__, You (singular) __, He/she/it__, we__, you (plural)__, they__. Indo-European languages usually inflect verbs for several grammatical categories in complex paradigms, although some, like English, have simplified verb conjugation to a large extent. Afrikaans and Swedish have gone even further and virtually abandoned verb conjugation altogether. Below is the conjugation of the verb to be in the present tense (of the infinitive, if it exists, and indicative moods), in English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Swedish, Latvian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Slovenian, Hindi, Persian, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Albanian, Armenian, Ancient Attic Greek and Modern Greek. This is usually the most irregular verb. The similarities in corresponding verb forms may be noticed. Some of the conjugations may be disused, like the English thou-form, or have additional meanings, like the English you-form, which can also stand for second person singular or be impersonal.

"To be" in several Indo-European languages

Branch	Language		Present infinitive	Present indicative
				Singular persons			Plural persons
				1st	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	3rd
Germanic	English		be	am	are art	is	are
	German		sein	bin	bist	ist	sind	seid	sind
	Dutch		zijn	ben	bent zijt1	is	zijn	zijn zijt1	zijn
	Afrikaans		wees	is
	Icelandic		vera	er	ert	er	erum	eruð	eru
	Swedish		vara	är			är(o)
Italic	Latin		esse	sum	es	est	sumus	estis	sunt
	Italian		essere	sono	sei	è	siamo	siete	sono
	French		être	suis	es	est	sommes	êtes	sont
	Catalan		ser	sóc	ets	és	som	sou	són
	Spanish		ser	soy	eres	es	somos	sois	son
	Portuguese		ser	sou	és	é	somos	sois	são
	Friulian		jessi	soi	sês	è	sin	sês	son
	Romanian		fi	sunt	ești	este	suntem	sunteți	sunt
Greek	Ancient2 transliterated		εἶναι eînai	εἰμί eimí	εἶ eî	ἐστί estí	ἐσμέν esmén	ἐστέ esté	εἰσί eisí
	Modern transliterated		none3	είμαι eímai	είσαι eísai	είναι eínai	είμαστε eímaste	είσ(ασ)τε eís(as)te	είναι eínai
Albanian			none4	jam	je	është asht5	jemi	jeni	janë
Armenian	Western transliterated		ըլլալ ĕllal	Եմ em	ես es	է ē	ենք enk‘	էք ēk‘	են en
	Eastern transliterated		լինե linel	Եմ em	ես es	է ē	ենք enk‘	եք ek‘	են en
Slavic	Czech		být	jsem	jsi	je	jsme	jste	jsou
	Slovak		byť	som	si	je	sme	ste	sú
	Polish		być	jestem	jesteś	jest	jesteśmy	jesteście	są
	Russian		Быть	-	-	есть	-	-	-
	Serbian strong transliterated		бити biti	јесам jesam	јеси jesi	јест(е) jest(e)	јесмо jesmo	јесте jeste	јесу jesu
	Serbian clitic transliterated		none	сам sam	си si	је je	смо smo	сте ste	су su
	Croatian strong		biti	jesam	jesi	jest(e)	jesmo	jeste	jesu
	Croatian clitic		none	sam	si	je	smo	ste	su
	Slovenian		biti	sem	si	je	smo	ste	so
	Bulgarian transliterated		none	съм săm	си si	е e	сме sme	сте ste	са să
Macedonian transliterated	none	сум sum	си si	е e	сме sme	сте ste	се se
Baltic	Latvian		būt	esmu	esi	ir	esam	esat	ir
	Lithuanian		būti	esu	esi	yra	esame	esate	yra
Indo-Iranian	Persian		būdan	hastam -am	hasti -i	hast ast, -e	hastim -im	hastid -id	hastand -and
	Hindi			hũũ	hai	hai	hãĩ	ho	hãĩ

¹In Flemish dialects.

² Attic.

³ 'eínai' is only used as a noun ("being, existence").

⁴ Ptc: qenë.

⁵ In the Tosk and Geg dialects, respectively.

Verbal agreement

Verbal agreement or concord is a morpho-syntactic construct in which properties of the subject and/or objects of a verb are indicated by the verb form. Verbs are then said to agree with their subjects (resp. objects).

Many English verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereas I go, you go, we go, they go are all grammatical in standard English, she go is not. Instead, a special form of the verb to go has to be used to produce she goes. On the other hand I goes, you goes etc. are not grammatical in standard English. (Things are different in some English dialects that lack agreement.) A few English verbs have no special forms that indicate subject agreement (I may, you may, she may), and the verb to be has an additional form am that can only be used with the pronoun I as the subject.

Verbs in written French exhibit more intensive agreement morphology than English verbs: je suis (I am), tu es ("you are", singular informal), elle est (she is), nous sommes (we are), vous êtes ("you are", plural), ils sont (they are). Historically, English used to have a similar verbal paradigm. Some historic verb forms are used by Shakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants (I do, thou dost, she doth, typically used by nobility) of the modern forms.

Some languages with verbal agreement can leave certain subjects implicit when the subject is fully determined by the verb form. In Spanish, for instance, subject pronouns do not need to be explicitly present, even though in French, its close relative, they are obligatory. The Spanish equivalent to the French je suis (I am) can be simply soy (lit. "am"). The pronoun yo (I) in the explicit form yo soy is only required for emphasis or to clear ambiguity in complex texts.

Some languages have a richer agreement system in which verbs also agree with some or all of their objects. Ubykh exhibits verbal agreement for the subject, direct object, indirect object, benefaction and ablative objects (a.w3.s.xe.n.t'u.n, you gave it to him for me).

Basque can show agreement not only for subject, direct object and indirect object, but it also on occasion exhibits agreement for the listener as the implicit benefactor: autoa ekarri digute means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for listener), but autoa ekarri ziguten means "they brought us the car" (agreement for feminine singular listener).

Languages with a rich agreement morphology facilitate relatively free word order without leading to increased ambiguity. The canonical word order in Basque is subject–object–verb. However, all permutations of subject, verb and object are permitted.

Nonverbal person agreement

In some languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements receive a form of person agreement that is distinct from that used on ordinary predicative verbs. Although this is a form of conjugation in that it refers back to the person of the subject, it is not “verbal” because it always derives from pronouns that have become cliticised to the nouns to which they refer. An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found from Beja (person agreement morphemes in bold):

• wun.tu.wi, “you (fem.) are big”
• hadá.b.wa, “you (masc.) are a sheik”
• e.n.fór, “he flees”

Another example can be found from Ket:

• fèmba.di, “I am a Tungus”
• dɨ.fen, “I am standing”

In Turkic, and a few Uralic and Australian Aboriginal languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements take affixes that are identical to those used on predicative verbs, but their negation is different. For example, in Turkish:

• koş.u.yor.sun “you are running”
• çavuş.sun “you are a sergeant”

but under negation this becomes (negative morphemes boldface):

• koş.mu.yor.sun “you are not running”
• çavuş değil.sin “you are not a sergeant”

For this reason, the person agreement morphemes used with predicative adjectives and nominals in Turkic languages are considered to be nonverbal in character. In some analyses, they are viewed as a form of verbal takeover by a copular strategy.

Factors that affect conjugation

Common grammatical categories according to which verbs can be conjugated are the following:

• Finite verb forms:
  • Grammatical person
  • Grammatical number
  • Grammatical gender
  • Grammatical tense
  • Grammatical aspect
  • Grammatical mood
  • Grammatical voice
• Non-finite verb forms.

Other factors which may affect conjugation are:

• Degree of formality (see T-V distinction, Honorific speech in Japanese, Korean speech levels)
• Inclusiveness and exclusiveness in the 1st. person plural
• Transitivity
• Valency

See also

Conjugations by language

• Category:Conjugations
• Indo-European copula

Related topics

• Agreement (linguistics)
• Inflection
• Redundancy (language)
• Screeve
• Strong inflection
• Verb
• Verb argument
• Volition (linguistics)
• Weak inflection

External links

• Conjugations at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project
• the conjugation English,Spanish and French conjugator.
• Onoma Spanish conjugator. It provides information about the irregularities and conjugates invented verbs.
• Excellent English Verb Conjugation Site All verbs - all forms - all tenses, Many variants, No mistakes: www.conjugation.com
• English Verb Conjugations • English verb phonetic and orthographic constraints
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Conjugation
• Verbix (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, English, &c.)
• Multi-Language conjugation (English and Portuguese)
• French conjugation (More 12000 verbs)
• Italian Verbs Coniugator and Analyzer Regular and Irregular Verbs, and also Neologisms
• spanish.verbconjugation.net shows you how to conjugate Spanish verbs
• Korean conjugation A Korean verb conjugation tool that explains the conjugations for learners of Korean
• Online verb conjugation online English, Spanish, Italian, French and German verb conjugation
• Kaso Verb Conjugation System (FOSS) Side by side conjugations in English, Italian, and Spanish