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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 is a lemma.
Conjugated forms of a verb which show a given person, number, tense, etc. are called ''finite'' forms. In many languages there are also one or more several ''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 paradigm of conjugation that derives all forms from a few specific forms or ''principal parts'' (maybe only one, such as the infinitive in English). When a verb cannot be conjugated straightforwardly like this, it is said to be irregular. 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.

Contents

Verbal agreement

Examples of conjugation

Factors that affect conjugation

See also

Conjugations by language

Related topics

External links

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 a richer 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, certain 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, benefactive 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 digute'' means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for listener), but ''autoa zigunate'' 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 as well.

Examples of conjugation

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, indicative mood, active voice, in English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Swedish, Latvian, Bulgarian, Polish, Hindi, Persian, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Albanian, Ancient Attic Greek and Modern Greek. This is usually the most irregular verb. You may notice the similarities in corresponding verb forms. For simplicity, the personal pronouns have been omitted, and only the conjugated verb is shown.
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"To be" in several Indo-European languages

Branch	Germanic						Italic
Person & number	English	German	Dutch	Afrikaans	Icelandic	Swedish	Latin	Italian	French	Spanish
1st singular	am	bin	ben	is	er	är	sum	sono	suis	soy
2nd singular	are/art1	bist	ben(t)/zijt	is	ert	är	es	sei	es	eres
3rd singular	is	ist	is	is	er	är	est	è	est	es
1st plural	are	sind	zijn	is	erum	är	sumus	siamo	sommes	somos
2nd plural	are	seid	zijn/zijt	is	eruð	är	estis	siete	êtes	sois
3rd plural	are	sind	zijn	is	eru	är	sunt	sono	sont	son
Branch	Greek		Albanian	Slavic		Baltic	Indo-Iranian
Person & number	Ancient (Attic)1	Modern2		Polish	Bulgarian3	Latvian	Persian	Hindi
	eînai	''none''	''none'' (ptc: )		()1
1st singular	eimí	íme	jam	jestem	săm	esmu	hastam	hoon
2nd singular	eî	íse	je	jesteś	si	esi	hasti	hai
3rd singular	estí	íne	është/asht4	jest	e	ir	hast	hai
1st plural	esmén	ímaste	jemi	jesteśmy	sme	esam	hastim	hain
2nd plural	esté	íste	jeni	jesteście	ste	esat	hastid	ho
3rd plural	eisí	íne	janë	są	să	ir	hastand	hain

#Archaic, no usage in modern language.
#The verbs have been trasliterated, to facilitate the comparison with other languages. In the Greek alphabet, they are written as follows, from top to bottom: , , , , , , .
#The verbs have been trasliterated, to facilitate the comparison with other languages. In the Greek alphabet, they are written as follows, from top to bottom: είμαι, είσαι, είναι, είμαστε, είστε, είναι.
#The verbs have been trasliterated, to facilitate the comparison with other languages. In the Cyrillic alphabet, they are written as follows, from top to bottom: бити, съм, си, е, сме, сте, са.
#In the Tosk and Geg dialects, respectively.

Factors that affect conjugation

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

★ Finite verb forms:

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★ Grammatical person

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★ Grammatical number

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★ Grammatical gender

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★ Grammatical tense

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★ Grammatical aspect

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★ Grammatical mood

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★ Grammatical voice

★ Non-finite verb forms.
Other factors which may affect conjugation are:

★ Degree of formality

★ Inclusiveness and exclusiveness in the 1st. person plural

★ Transitivity

★ Valency

See also

Conjugations by language

★

★ Indo-European copula

Related topics

★ Inflection

★ Screeve

★ Verb

★ Verb argument

★ Word class

External links

★ Verb conjugations in hundreds of languages.

★ Conjugation of over 7,000 English verbs.

★ Online Conjugator for 85 different languages

★ at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project

★ Persian verb conjugator - http://alijsh.googlepages.com/pvc.htm

★ Conjugation drills - English, Spanish, German

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Conjugation