Talk:Grammatical conjugation

Typo

Corrected Portuguese typojuan andrés 02:50, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Chart should be simplified

The chart is too complicated. I suggest:

Omitting the personal pronouns for all languages except English. Conjugation has to do with changes in the verb; the pronouns only detract from it;

Omitting formal conjugations. They just repeat others that already appear in the standard conjugation paradigm.

FilipeS 15:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Fundamental question

Is it correct to say that only verbs can conjugate? For example, what about Japanese adjectives?

Alexander 13 May 2006 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.252.20.172 (talk) 04:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Apparently the terms come from medieval grammar exercises. I don't know how accurate this is but it does seem to be a rather arbitrary and western- (or maybe latin-) centric distinction. Arguably it would be simpler just to use the more general term 'inflection' in all cases, but that's an argument to be had by linguists.

Wiktionary states that the root of the word 'declension' is Latin 'declinatio', whose definitions include:

5. (grammar) declension
6. (grammar, archaic) every change of a word; declension, conjugation, comparation, derivation etc.

This doesn't necessarily conflict with the medieval grammar exercises claim as the lessons may have been conducted in Latin (I'm not sure why the 'archaic' version would be more broad, but then I don't actually know what 'archaic' means when applied to latin definitions in wiktionary).

I can confirm that English-language books on Japanese grammar often refer to 'conjugating' adjectives (for example, Bunt, Jonathan (2003). Oxford Japanese Grammar & Verbs. Oxford University Press. p. 97. ISBN 9780198603825.). So I think it is certainly questionable to state that the term 'conjugation' only ever applies to verbs.

ディーエッフ (talk) 18:41, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

This page is a bit incorrect

I am not a scholar, but I do know that english is largly derived from the Saxon, Anglo, and Briton languages with lesser latin and german influnences/infusion. I cannot see how english falls under the a True germanic language like Swedish, Dutch, and Deutsch. It has about as much in common with German as it does latin. Read or have someone who can speak it read a few pages from a saxon or anglo text and it will sound stikingly familier to the ear of a naitive tongue english speaker. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.207.206.69 (talk) 11:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

Removing Portuguese from table

I'm removing the Portuguese examples from the table. They are quite similar to the Spanish ones, they make the the table asymmetrical, and the point here is not to make an exhaustive comparison of Indo-European languages, just illustrate verb conjugation. More extensive tables can be found at Indo-European copula. FilipeS 17:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I added Afrikaans to the table as I thought it was good to have an example of an Indo-European language with little or no verb conjugation as there was not one already. However I was not able to work out how to add it without causing an empty column in the bottom right. Booshank 17:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that was a good contribution. Athough English is already an example of a languages with little conjugation, it's nice to have a different example. Don't worry too much about the table. That's just a matter of esthetics. FilipeS 14:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Slovene

Maybe we should add the Slovene ones, they're a good example of the dual form. My concern is the table getting too large, so if anyone has ideas how to do that, please... --iNkubusse^? 00:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

'to be'

horrible example in my opinion, most languages' 'to be' is irregular... -- 203.171.195.184 (talk) 03:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. A different verb would be better. 75.88.44.57 (talk) 03:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Croatian and Serbian

I can't see why Croatian and Serbian are placed in two different columns, all the forms are identical and the long form 'jesam' is also used in Croatian. I can't understand also why 'biti' is placed in brakets in Croatian since it is normally used. I would suggest thet Croatian and Serbian be combined in one column and Slovene be added. JadranD (talk) 23:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

what is the purpose of the table showing to be in various IE languages?

Hi!

Interested by the article, I first tried to read it and found it necessary to transpose the table of to be so that it becomes legible. After doing that, I came across some mistakes regarding infinitives, which I corrected. Then I was led to reorganise the footnotes.

But I wonder whether this table if of a great use for the purpose of the article. From the way the languages are selected ordered one may suspect that it was intended to show the similarities in Indo-European language; However showing dissimilarities, i.e the various types of conjugation that can be encountered in our small planet might preferred in an article, might be preferred. This could include :

• complementing ancient Greek with the dual forms in addition to singular and plural;
• selecting only two Germanic examples such as oversimplified Afrikaans and archaic Icelandic;
• introducing Arabic and Hebrew; and
• not showing more than ten different examples of languages.

Regards,

Acsacal (talk) 14:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I suppose the table is just interesting. 216.239.82.96 (talk) 06:30, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

The table could be improved greatly by adding some languages which are not Indo-European. 75.88.44.57 (talk) 03:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Why conjugation?

I've asked something similar in the article on declension. I had hoped to see something about why there are so many conjugations? Some seem fairly obvious ... past, present, and future. But some seem quite complicated. Particularly in languages other than English. There must be advantages to them for them to have developed and continued in use. What advantages? Why certain conjugation forms in certain languages, and not in others? Are there any theories? 216.239.82.96 (talk) 06:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Too many entries in table

Shouldn't some be removed (for example, why are there four different rows for Serbo-Croatian? It is unnecessary to have both Serbian and Croatian, as the forms given for these languages are EXACTLY THE SAME, and how come these languages/dialectes get two verbs each, while the other languages get only one? The Slavic section is way too long. In addition, the two Armenian forms are also pretty much the same with the exception of the infinitive. In addition, how about adding some non-IE languages (obviously not the ones without agreement such as Chinese). How about ones with polypersonal agreement, such as Georgian and Basque? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.166.150.53 (talk) 11:37, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 00:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The First paragraph is far to complicated.

The first paragraph needs simplifying. Is there a simple version of this complicated subject available ?Ruskin (talk) 17:12, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

case for verbs?

What languages conjugate verbs according to case? Clean Copy^talk 01:58, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Kayardild and the Northwest Caucasian languages seem to have verbal case endings. However, the term "verbal case" itself is somewhat controversial. Basque verbs do agree with their ergative, absolutive, and (sometimes) dative arguments. Similar grammatical structures can be found in the Rgyalrongic languages, for example. --195.91.24.93 (talk) 10:17, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Conjugation Classes and Pama-Nyungan Languages

I searched this articles because I had some curiosity about conjugation classes. The article seems to imply that Conjugation Classes or Conjugations are a part only of the Pama-Nyungan Languages, it doesn't state that but it presents only this group of aboriginal languages and no other words about that. This is unhelpful, since this Language Family that I discovered today has less than a million speaker while the romance languages that have Conjugation classes and hundreds of Millions of speakers are completely omitted Astrognomo (talk) 08:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)