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Grammatical conjugation

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Creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection

Not to be confused withConjunction (grammar).

Part of the conjugation of theSpanish verbcorrer, "to run", the lexeme is "corr-".
Red represents the speaker, purple theaddressee (or speaker/hearer) and teal a third person.
One person represents the singular number and two, the plural number.
Dawn represents the past (specifically thepreterite), noon the present and night the future.

Grammatical features
Related to nouns Animacy Case Dative construction Dative shift Quirky subject Nominative Comitative Instrumental Classifier Measure word Construct state Countability Count noun Mass noun Collective noun Definiteness Gender Genitive construction Possession Suffixaufnahme (case stacking) Noun class Number Singular Dual Plural Singulative-Collective-Plurative Specificity Universal grinder
Related to verbs Associated motion Clusivity Conjugation Evidentiality Modality Person Telicity Mirativity Tense–aspect–mood Grammatical aspect Lexical aspect (Aktionsart) Mood Tense Voice
General features Affect Boundedness Comparison (degree) Egophoricity Pluractionality (verbal number) Honorifics (politeness) Polarity Reciprocity Reflexive pronoun Reflexive verb
Syntax relationships Argument Transitivity Valency Branching Serial verb construction Traditional grammar Predicate Subject Object Adjunct Predicative
Semantics Contrast Mirativity Thematic relation Agent Patient Topic and Comment Focus Volition Veridicality
Phenomena Agreement Polypersonal agreement Declension Empty category Incorporation Inflection Markedness
v t e

Inlinguistics,conjugation (/ˌkɒndʒʊˈɡeɪʃən/con-juu-GAY-shən^[1]^[2]) is the creation of derived forms of averb from itsprincipal parts byinflection (alteration of form according to rules ofgrammar). For instance, the verbbreak can be conjugated to form the wordsbreak,breaks, andbroke. While English has a relatively simple conjugation, other languages such asFrench andArabic orSpanish are more complex, with each verb having dozens of conjugated forms. Some languages such asGeorgian andBasque (some verbs only) have highly complex conjugation systems with hundreds of possible conjugations for every verb.

Verbs may inflect forgrammatical categories such asperson,number,gender,case,tense,aspect,mood,voice,possession,definiteness,politeness,causativity,clusivity,interrogatives,transitivity,valency,polarity,telicity,volition,mirativity,evidentiality,animacy, associativity,^[3]pluractionality, andreciprocity. Verbs may also be affected byagreement,polypersonal agreement,incorporation,noun class,noun classifiers, andverb classifiers.^[4]Agglutinative andpolysynthetic languages tend to have the most complex conjugations, although somefusional languages such asArchi can also have extremely complex conjugation. Typically the principal parts are theroot and/or several modifications of it (stems). All the different forms of the same verb constitute alexeme, and the canonical form of the verb that is conventionally used to represent that lexeme (as seen in dictionary entries) is called alemma.

The term conjugation is applied only to the inflection of verbs, and not of other parts of speech (inflection ofnouns andadjectives is known asdeclension)^{[citation needed]}. It is also generally restricted to denoting the formation offinite forms of a verb – these may be referred to asconjugated forms, as opposed tonon-finite forms, such as aninfinitive,gerund, orparticiple which respectively comprise their own grammatical categories^{[citation needed]}.

Conjugation is also the traditional term for a group of verbs that share a similar conjugation pattern in a particular language (averb class). For example,Latin is said to have four conjugations of verbs. This means that anyregular 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. A verb that does not follow all of the standard conjugation patterns of the language is said to be anirregular verb. The system of all conjugated variants of a particular verb or class of verbs is called averb paradigm; this may be presented in the form of aconjugation table.

Verbal agreement

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Verbal agreement, orconcord, is amorpho-syntactic construct in which properties of thesubject and/orobjects of averb are indicated by the verb form. Verbs are then said toagree with their subjects (resp. objects).

ManyEnglish verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereasI go,you go,we go,they go are all grammatical in standard English,he go is not (except in thesubjunctive, as "They requested thathe go with them"). Instead, a special form of the verbto go has to be used to producehe goes. On the other handI 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,he may), and the verbto be has an additional formam that can only be used with the pronounI as the subject.

Verbs in writtenFrench exhibit more intensive agreementmorphology than English verbs:je suis (I am),tu es ("you are", singularinformal),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 byShakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants (I do,thou dost,he doth) of the modern forms.

Some languages with verbal agreement can leave certain subjectsimplicit when the subject is fully determined by the verb form. InSpanish, for instance, subject pronouns do not need to be explicitly present, but in French, its close relative, they are obligatory. The Spanish equivalent to the Frenchje suis (I am) can be simplysoy (lit. "am"). The pronounyo (I) in the explicit formyo soy is used only for emphasis or to clear ambiguity in complex texts.

Some languages have a richer agreement system in which verbs agree also 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 can exhibit agreement for the listener as the implicit benefactor:autoa ekarri digute means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for the listener), butautoa 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 issubject–object–verb, but all permutations of subject, verb and object are permitted.

Nonverbal person agreement

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In some languages,^[5] predicativeadjectives andcopular complements receive a form of person agreement that is distinct from that used on ordinarypredicative verbs. Although that is a form of conjugation in that it refers back to the person of the subject, it is not "verbal" because it always derives frompronouns that have becomeclitic to the nouns to which they refer.^[6] An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found fromBeja^[7] (person agreement affixes 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 fromKet:^[7]

fèmba.di, “I am aTungus”
dɨ.fen, “I am standing”

InTurkic, and a fewUralic andAustralian Aboriginal languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements take affixes that are identical to those used on predicative verbs, but theirnegation is different. For example, inTurkish:

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

Under negation, that becomes (negative affixes in bold):

koş.mu.yor.sun “you are not running”
çavuşdeğil.sin “you are not a sergeant”

Therefore, the person agreement affixes 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

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These commongrammatical categories affect how verbs can be conjugated:

Here are other factors that may affect conjugation:

Degree of formality (seeT–V distinction,Honorific speech in Japanese,Korean speech levels)
Clusivity (of personal pronouns)
Transitivity
Valency

Examples

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Indo-European languages usuallyinflect verbs for several grammatical categories in complexparadigms, although some, like English, have simplified verb conjugation to a large extent. Below is the conjugation of the verbto be in the present tense (of the infinitive, if it exists, and indicative moods), inEnglish,German,Yiddish,Dutch,Afrikaans,Icelandic,Faroese,Swedish,Norwegian,Latvian,Bulgarian,Serbo-Croatian,Polish,Slovenian,Macedonian,Urdu orHindi,Bengali,Persian,Latin,French,Italian,Spanish,Portuguese,Russian,Albanian,Armenian,Irish,Ukrainian,Ancient Attic Greek andModern 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 Englishthou-form, or have additional meanings, like the Englishyou-form, which can also stand for second person singular or beimpersonal.

"To be" in several Indo-European languages
Branch	Language	Present infinitive	Present indicative
			Singular persons			Plural persons
			1st	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	3rd

Germanic	Proto-Germanic	*wesaną	*immi	*izi	*isti	*izum	*izud	*sindi
	Anglo-Saxon	wesan	eom	eart	is	sind sindon
	English	be	am	are art¹ beest¹	is are¹¹	are
	German	sein	bin	bist	ist	sind	seid	sind
	Yiddish transliterated	זיין zayn	בין bin	ביסט bist	איז iz	זענען/זײַנען zenen/zaynen	זענט/זײַט zent/zayt	זענען/זײַנען zenen/zaynen
	Luxembourgish	sinn	sinn	bass	ass	sinn	sidd	sinn
	Dutch	zijn	ben	bent zijt²	is	zijn
	Afrikaans	wees	is
	Old Norse	vesa vera	em	est ert	es er	erum	eruð	eru
	Icelandic	vera	er	ert	er	erum	eruð	eru
	Faroese	vera	eri	ert	er	eru
	Norwegian	være³(Bokmål) vera,vere⁴(Nynorsk)	er
	Danish	være	er
	Swedish	vara	är			är äro⁵

Italic	Latin	esse	sum	es	est	sumus	estis	sunt
	Italian	essere	sono	sei	è	siamo semo⁵	siete sète⁵	sono enno⁵
	French	être	suis	es	est	sommes	êtes	sont
	Catalan	ésser ser	sóc	ets eres¹⁴	és	som	sou	són
	Lombard	vésser	(a) son	te sé	l'è	som sem⁵	sî	i è (i) enn¹⁴
	Venetian	èsar	son	te si	el ze	semo	si	i ze
	Spanish	ser	soy	eres	es	somos	sois son	son
	Galician	ser	son	es	é	somos	sodes	son
	Portuguese	ser	sou	és	é	somos	sois	são
	Sardinian (LSC)	èssere	so	ses	est	semus	seis	sunt
	Friulian	jessi	soi	sês	è	sin	sês	son
	Neapolitan	èssere	songo, so	sî	è	simmo	site	songo, so
	Romanian	afi	sunt	ești	este	suntem	sunteți	sunt

Celtic	Irish	bheith	bím	bíonn		bímid	bíonn
	Welsh (standard form)	bod	rydw	rwyt	mae	rydych	rydyn	maen
	Breton	bezañ	on	out	eo	omp	oc'h	int

Greek	Ancient⁶ transliterated	εἶναι eînai	εἰμί eimí	εἶ eî	ἐστί estí	ἐσμέν esmén	ἐστέ esté	εἰσί eisí
Greek	Modern transliterated	όντας⁷ óntas	είμαι eímai	είσαι eísai	είναι eínai	είμαστε eímaste	είσ(ασ)τε eís(as)te	είναι eínai

Albanian		me qenë	jam	je	është	jemi	jeni	janë

Armenian	Western transliterated	ըլլալ ĕllal	Եմ em	ես es	է ē	ենք enk‘	էք ēk‘	են en
Armenian	Eastern transliterated	լինել 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 transliterated	быть byt'	есть yest'
	Ukrainian transliterated	бути buty	є ye
	Serbo-Croatian strong	biti	jesam	jesi	jest(e)	jesmo	jeste	jesu
	Serbo-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
Baltic	Lithuanian	būti	esu	esi	yra	esame	esate	yra

Indo-Iranian	Persian transliterated	بودن budan	ام æm	ای ei	(است (ا æst (æ)¹⁰	ایم eem	(اید (این eed(spoken: een)	(اند (ان and(spoken: an)
	Sanskrit transliterated	अस्ति asti	अस्मि asmi	असि asi	अस्ति asti	स्मः smah	स्थ stha	सन्ति santi
	Hindustani Devanagari Script Perso-Arabic Script transliterated(ISO 15819)	होना ہونا honā	हूँ ہوں hūm̥	है ہے hai		हैं ہیں haim̥	हो ہو ho	हैं ہیں haim̥
	Marathi transliterated (ISO 15819)	असणे asṇe	आहे āhe	आहेस āhes	आहे āhe	आहोत āhot	आहात āhāt	आहेत āhet
	Gujarati transliterated (ISO 15819)	હોવું hovũ	છું chũ	છે che		છીએ chīe	છો cho	છે che
	Bengali transliterated (ISO 15819)	হওয়া hôoā	হই hoi	হও¹² hôo	হয়¹² hôy	হই hoi	হও¹² hôo	হয়¹² hôy
	Assamese transliterated (ISO 15819)	হোৱা hüa	হওঁ hoü̃	হোৱা hüa	হয় hoy	হওঁ hoü̃	হোৱা hüa	হয় hoy

¹ Archaic, poetical; used only with the pronoun 'thou'.

² In Flemish dialects.

³ In thebokmål written standard.

⁴ In thenynorsk written standard.vera andvere are both alternate forms.

⁵ Archaic

⁶ Attic.

⁷ 'eínai' is only used as a noun ("being, existence").

⁸ Ptc:qenë.

⁹ In the Tosk and Geg dialects, respectively.

¹⁰ Existential: هست (hæst) has another meaning. Usage of (æ) is considered to be colloquial, now. See,Indo-European copula

¹¹ With theSingular they 3rd person pronoun.

¹² Bengali verbs are further conjugated according toformality. There are three verb forms for 2nd person pronouns: হও (hôo, familiar), হোস (hoś, very familiar) and হন (hôn, polite). Also two forms for 3rd person pronouns: হয় (hôy, familiar) and হন (hôn, polite). Plural verb forms are exact same as singular.

¹³ Valencian.

¹⁴ Western varieties only.

Conjugation classes

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Pama-Nyungan languages

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One common feature ofPama–Nyungan languages, the largest family ofAustralian Aboriginal languages, is the notion of conjugation classes, which are a set of groups into which each lexical verb falls. They determine how a verb is conjugated forTense–aspect–mood. The classes can but do not universally correspond to the transitivity or valency of the verb in question. Generally, of the two to six conjugation classes in a Pama-Nyungan language, two classes are open with a large membership and allow for new coinages, and the remainder are closed and of limited membership.^[8]

Wati

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InWati languages, verbs generally fall into four classes:

l class
∅ class
n class
ng class^[9]

They are labelled by using common morphological components of verb endings in each respective class in infinitival forms. Inthe Wanman language these each correspond tola,ya,rra, andwa verbs respectively.

Example Verb Conjugations inWarnman^[10]
Class	Past	Present	Future	Imperative	Past Continuous	Habitual
LA	-rna	-npa/-rni	-nku	-la	-rninya	la
	waka-rna	waka-rni	waka-nku	waka-la	waka-rninya	waka-la
	speared	is spearing	will spear	spear it!	used to spear	spears
YA	-nya	-manyi	-ku	-∅/-ya	-minya	-∅/-ya
	wanti-nya	wanti-manyi	wanti-ku	wanti-ya	wanti-minya	wanti-ya
	stayed	is staying	will stay	stay!	used to stay	stays
RRA	-na	-npa	-nku	-rra	-ninya	-rra
	ya-na	ya-npa	ya-nku	ya-rra	ya-ninya	ya-rra
	went	is going	will go	go!	used to go	goes
WA	-nya	-nganyi	-ngku	-wa	-nganyinya	-wa
	pi-nya	pi-nganyi	pi-ngku	pi-wa	pi-nganyinya	pi-wa
	hit	is hitting	will hit	hit it!	used to hit	hits

See also a similar table of verb classes and conjugations in Pitjantjatjara, aWati language wherein the correlating verb classes are presented below also by their imperative verbal endings-la, -∅, -ra and-wa respectively

Example Verb Conjugations inPitjantjatjara^[11]
Class	Past	Present	Future	Imperative	Past Continuous	Habitual
LA	-nu	-ni	-lku	-la	-ningi	-lpai
	kati-nu	kati-ni	kati-leu	kati-la	kati-ningi	kati-lpai
	took	is taking	will take	take it!	used to take	takes
∅	-ngu	-nyi	-ku	-∅	-ngi	-pai
	tawa-ngu	tawa-nyi	tawa-ku	tawa-∅	tawa-ngi	tawa-pai
	dug	is digging	will dig	dig!	used to dig	digs
RA	-nu	-nangi	-nkuku	-ra	-nangi	-nkupai
	a-nu	a-nangi	a-nkuku	a-ra	a-nangi	a-nkupai
	went	is going	will go	go!	used to go	goes
WA	-ngu	-nganyi	-nguku	-wa	-ngangi	-ngkupai
	pu-ngu	pu-nganyi	pu-nguku	pu-wa	pu-ngangi	pu-ngkupai
	hit	is hitting	will hit	hit it!	used to hit	hits

Ngayarta

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Ngarla, a member of theNgayarda sub-family of languages has a binary conjugation system labelled:

l class
∅ class

In the case of Ngarla, there is a notably strong correlation between conjugation class and transitivity, with transitive/ditransitive verbs falling in thel-class and intransitive/semi-transitive verbs in the∅-class.

Example Verb Conjugations inNgarla^[12]
Class	Present	Remote Past	Past	Past Continuous	Habitual	Future	Speculative	Purposive	Optative	Present Contrafactual	Past Contrafactual	Anticipatory
L	-rri	-rnta	-rnu	-yinyu	-yirnta	-n	-mpi	-lu	-nmara	-rrima	-nmarnta	-rnamarta
	jaa-rri	jaa-rnta	jaa-rnu	jaa-yinyu	jaa-yirnta	jaa-n	jaa-mpi	jaa-lu	jaa-nmara	jaa-rrima	jaa-nmarnta	jaa-rnmarta
	is chopping	chopped (long ago)	chopped	used to chop	chops	will chop	could have chopped	in order to chop	ought to chop	werex chopping	hadx chopped	shouldx chop
∅	-yan	-rnta	-nyu	-yanu	-yanta	-Ø	-mpi	-kura	-mara	-yanma	-marnta	-nyamarta
	warni-yan	warni-rnta	warni-nyu	warni-yanu	warni-yanta	warni-Ø	warni-rnpi	warni-kura	warni-mara	warni-yanma	warni-marnta	warni-nyamarta
	is falling	fell (long ago)	fell	used to fall	falls	will fall	could have fallen	in order to fall	ought to fall	werex falling	hadx fallen	shouldx fall

These classes even extend to how verbs are nominalized as instruments with thel-class verb including the addition of an/l/ before the nominalizing suffix and the blank class remaining blank:

l-class example:

Kunyjarta-lu

Woman-ERG

Kunyjarta-lu mara ku-rnu parnu-nga warnta pirri-lpunyjarri, kurni-rnu kunyjarta kurri

Woman-ERG hand CAUS-PST 3SG-GEN stick dig-INS throw-PST woman teenager

‘(The) woman caused her digging stick to be in (the) hand (i.e. picked up her digging stick), (and) threw (it) at (the) girl.’

∅-class example[8]

Jarrari-punyjarri

light-INS

Jarrari-punyjarri waa-n ngajapa pinurru ngaya nyali ja-lu

light-INS give-FUT 1SG.LOC fire 1SG.NOM light CAUS-PURP

‘(A) match (lit. something to light with) give on (i.e. to) me, (a) fire I intend to light.’

Yidiny

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Yidiny has a ternary verb class system with two open classes and one closed class (~20 members). Verbs are classified as:

-n class (open, intransitive/semi-transitive)
-l class (open, transitive/ditransitive)
-r class (closed, intransitive)

Example Verb Conjugations inYidiny^[13]
Class	imperative	Present/Future	Past	Purposive	Apprehensive
N	-n	-ng	-nyu	-na	-ntyi
	nyina-n	nyina-ng	nyina-nyu	nyina-na	nyina-ntyi
	sit!	is sitting / will sit	sat	in order to sit	lestx sit
L	-∅	-l	-lnyu	-lna	-ltyi
	patya-∅	patya-l	patya-lnyu	patya-lna	patya-ltyi
	bite it!	is biting / will bite	bit	in order to bite	lestx bite
R	-rr	-r	-rnyu	-rna	-rtyi
	pakya-rr	pakya-r	pakya-rnyu	-pakya-rna	pakya-rtyi
	feel sore!	is feeling / will feel sore	felt sore	in order to feel sore	lestx feel sore

References

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^"conjugation".Lexico UK English Dictionary.Oxford University Press. Archived fromthe original on 2020-03-22.
^"conjugation".Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved2016-01-26.
^"Grammatical Features - Associativity".www.grammaticalfeatures.net. Retrieved18 March 2018.
^Passer, Matthias."Verb Classifiers - 'Misfits' of Nominal Classification?".academia.edu. Retrieved18 March 2018.
^Stassen, Leon;Intransitive Predication (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory); published 1997 byOxford University Press; p. 39.ISBN 0-19-925893-7
^Stassen;Intransitive Predication; pp. 77 & 284-288
^^a ^bStassen,Intransitive Predication; p. 40
^^a ^bWesterlund, Torbjörn (2015).A grammatical sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan). Anu, A.C.T.ISBN 978-1-922185-15-0.OCLC 903244888.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Dixon, R. M. W. (2011).The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-511-71971-4.OCLC 889953941.
^Warnman. Part one, Sketch grammar. Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre. South Hedland, W.A.: Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre. 2003.ISBN 1-875946-01-2.OCLC 271859132.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Eckert, Paul (1988).Wangka wir̲u: a handbook for the Pitjantjatjara language learner. Hudson, Joyce., South Australian College of Advanced Education. Aboriginal Studies and Teacher Education Centre, Summer Institute of Linguistics. Underdale, S. Aust.: University of South Australia /South Australian College of Advanced Education.ISBN 0-86803-230-1.OCLC 27569554.
^Westerlund, Torbjörn (2017-07-03). "Verb Classification in Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan)".Australian Journal of Linguistics.37 (3):328–355.doi:10.1080/07268602.2017.1298396.ISSN 0726-8602.S2CID 65180912.
^Language description informed by theory. Pensalfini, Rob., Turpin, Myfany., Guillemin, Diana. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2014. p. 157.ISBN 978-90-272-7091-7.OCLC 868284094.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)