Grammatical conjugation

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.

Contents

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, 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
Spanish ser soy eres es somos sois son
Portuguese ser sou és é somos sois são
Romanian fi sunt ești este suntem sunteți sunt
Greek Ancient2
transliterated
εἶναι
eînai
εἰμί
eimí
εἶ
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
Polish być jestem jesteś jest jesteśmy jesteście
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
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,[1] 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.[2] An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found from Beja[3] (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[3]:

  • fèmba.di, “I am a Tungus
  • .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:

Other factors which may affect conjugation are:

See also

Conjugations by language

Related topics

Notes

  1. ^ Stassen, Leon; Intransitive Predication (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory); published 1997 by Oxford University Press; p. 39. ISBN 0199258932
  2. ^ Stassen; Intransitive Predication; pp. 77 & 284-288
  3. ^ a b Stassen, Intransitive Predication; p. 40

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Grammatical number — Grammatical categories Animacy Aspect Case Clusivity Definiteness Degree of comparison Evidentiality Focus …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical mood — Grammatical categories Animacy Aspect Case Clusivity Definiteness Degree of comparison Evidentiality Focus …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical person — Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language s set of personal pronouns. It also frequently affects verbs,… …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical tense — is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express.Tenses… …   Wikipedia

  • Conjugation — Conjugal redirects here. For the type of prison visit, see conjugal visit. Conjugation may refer to: Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form Marriage, a relationship between two or more individuals Contents 1… …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical gender — This article is about noun classes. For uses of language associated with men and women, see Language and gender. For methods of minimizing the use of gendered forms, see Gender neutral language. For other uses, see Gender (disambiguation).… …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical aspect — In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. For example, in English the difference between I swim and I am swimming is a difference of aspect.Aspect, as discussed… …   Wikipedia

  • Grammatical voice — In grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.).When the subject is the… …   Wikipedia

  • Conjugation of regular Catalan verbs — Conjugation of regular Catalan verbs. This is a supplement to the main article on Catalan grammar. MODELS FOR THE CONJUGATION OF REGULAR CATALAN VERBS MODELS PER A LA CONJUGACIÓ DELS VERBS REGULARS EN CATALÀ PRONOUNS PRONOMS (7) FIRST CONJUGATION …   Wikipedia

  • conjugation — mid 15c., from L. conjugationem (nom. conjugatio) a combining, connecting, noun of action from conjugare to join together (see CONJUGAL (Cf. conjugal)). Grammatical sense is 1520s …   Etymology dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”