Grammatical conjugation

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.

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. Below is the conjugation of the verb to be in the present tense, indicative mood, active voice, in English, German, Swedish, French, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Latvian, Polish, Hindi, and Persian. This is usually the most irregular verb. You may notice the similarities in corresponding verb forms; only the infinitives of Swedish and Hindi diverge from those of other languages.|To be in several Indo-European languages

Language Family	Germanic			Italic					Baltic	Slavic	Indo-Iranian
Form / Person	English	German	Swedish	French	Italian	Spanish	Portuguese	Latin	Latvian	Polish	Hindi!Persian
infinitive	to be	sein	vara	être	essere	ser	ser	esse	būt	być	hona	budan
1st singular	I am	ich bin	jag är	je suis	(io) sono	(yo) soy	(eu) sou	(ego) sum	es esmu	(ja) jestem	main hoon	(man) hastam
2nd singular	you are	du bist Sie sind [formal]	du är	tu es	(tu) sei	(tú) eres (usted) es [formal]	(tu) és [informal] (você) é	(tū) es	tu esi	(ty) jesteś	aap hai tum ho [informal]	(to) hasti
3rd singular	he/she/it is	er/sie/es ist	han / hon / den / det är	il / elle est	(egli / essa) è	(él / ella) es	(ele / ela) é	(is / ea / id) est	viņš / viņa ir	(on / ona / ono) jest	woh hai ve hain [formal]	(u) hast
1st plural	we are	wir sind	vi är	nous sommes	(noi) siamo	(nosotros / nosotras) somos	(nós) somos	(nōs) sumus	m�"s esam	(my) jesteśmy	ham hain	(mâ) hastim
2nd plural	you are	ihr seid	ni är	vous êtes	(voi) siete	(vosotros / vosotras) sois (ustedes) son [formal]	(vós) sois (vocês) são	(vōs) estis	jūs esat	(wy) jesteście	tum log ho / aap log ho / aap log hain	(šomâ) hastid
3rd plural	they are	sie sind	de är	ils / elles sont	(essi) sono	(ellos / ellas) son	(eles / elas) são	(eī / eae / ea) sunt	viņi, viņas ir	(oni / one) są	ve hain	(ânhâ) hastand
Formal	~	Sie sind	~	vous êtes	(lei) è / (loro) sono	(usted) es / (ustedes) son	(o senhor / a senhora) é / (os senhores / as senhoras) são	~	~	~	~	2nd person (šomâ) hastid 3rd person (išân) hastand

See also

*Grammatical person
*Grammatical number
*Grammatical tense
*Grammatical aspect
*Grammatical mood
*Grammatical voice
*Latin verbs
*Word class
*Screeve

External links

*Conjugation of over 7,000 English verbs.
*Online Conjugator for 85 different languages
*Conjugations at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project
* Persian verb conjugator - http://alijsh.googlepages.com/pvc.htm