Grammatical conjugation

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, he go is not (except in the subjunctive, as "They requested that he go with them"). Instead, a special form of the verb to go has to be used to produce he 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, he 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: (I am), ("you are", singular informal), (she is), (we are), ("you are", plural), (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, he doth) 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, but in French, its close relative, they are obligatory. The Spanish equivalent to the French (I am) can be simply (lit. "am"). The pronoun (I) in the explicit form 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 (, 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: means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for the listener), but 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, but 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 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 from pronouns that have become clitic 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 affixes in bold): • , “you (fem.) are big” • , “you (masc.) are a sheik” • , “he flees” Another example can be found from Ket: • , “I am a Tungus” • , “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: • “you are running” • “you are a sergeant” Under negation, that becomes (negative affixes in bold): • “you are not running” • “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== These common grammatical categories affect how verbs can be conjugated: • Finite verb forms: • Grammatical person • Grammatical number • Grammatical gender • Grammatical tense • Grammatical aspect • Grammatical mood • Grammatical voice • Non-finite verb forms. Here are other factors that may affect conjugation: • Degree of formality (see T–V distinction, Honorific speech in Japanese, Korean speech levels) • Clusivity (of personal pronouns) • Transitivity • Valency ==Examples==

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 (of the infinitive, if it exists, and indicative moods), in English, German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Slovenian, Macedonian, Urdu or Hindi, Bengali, Persian, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Albanian, Armenian, Irish, Ukrainian, 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. :1 Archaic, poetical; used only with the pronoun 'thou'. :2 In Flemish dialects. :3 In the bokmål written standard. :4 In the nynorsk written standard. vera and vere are both alternate forms. :5 Archaic :6 Attic. :7 'eínai' is only used as a noun ("being, existence"). :8 Ptc: . :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 the Singular they 3rd person pronoun. :12 Bengali verbs are further conjugated according to formality. 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 ==

Pama-Nyungan languages One common feature of Pama–Nyungan languages, the largest family of Australian 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 for Tense–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. Wati In Wati languages, verbs generally fall into four classes: • l class • ∅ class • n class • ng class They are labelled by using common morphological components of verb endings in each respective class in infinitival forms. In the Wanman language these each correspond to '''la, ya, rra, and wa''' verbs respectively. See also a similar table of verb classes and conjugations in Pitjantjatjara, a Wati language wherein the correlating verb classes are presented below also by their imperative verbal endings -la, -∅, -ra and -wa respectively Ngayarta Ngarla, a member of the Ngayarda 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 the l-class and intransitive/semi-transitive verbs in the ∅-class. These classes even extend to how verbs are nominalized as instruments with the l-class verb including the addition of an /l/ before the nominalizing suffix and the blank class remaining blank: l-class example: ∅-class example Yidiny 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) ==See also==