Conjugation

Conjugation is something you'll be personally familiar with and something you do daily. In fact, in most of our written and verbal communication, no matter the purpose or audience, we're likely to use conjugation.

Conjugation is not a word we typically use in conversation, so we'll explore conjugation in English, its meaning in grammar, and some conjugated verb examples. We'll also cover the types of conjugation and how each one is formed.

On that note, are you ready to get going?

Conjugation Meaning in Grammar

Let's begin our conjugation exploration by looking at conjugation's meaning in grammar.

Conjugation refers to the process of altering the form of a verb by inflecting it. Inflecting a verb means changing its spelling, adding an affix to the end of the word, or accompanying the main verb with an auxiliary verb.

The purpose of conjugation is to highlight the grammatical function of a verb within a sentence.

For instance:

Conjugation in English

Verb conjugation in English can tell us six key things about a verb:

• Person and number: who is performing the action, e.g., first person singular (I am), third person plural (they are), etc.

• Tense and aspect: when the action happens and what state of completion it is in. E.g., "He is playing" vs. "He played."

• Mood: the role the sentence plays can be determined by the verb. E.g., "I demand he pay the bill" vs. "I demand he pays the bill."

• Voice: whether the subject is doing the action or having the action done to them. Voice can be active (the subject is performing the action) or passive (the subject has the action done to them)

Fig 1. The monkey actively ate the banana

Auxiliary Verbs

In order to conjugate a verb for particular purposes, it is sometimes necessary to supplement the verb with an auxiliary verb.

The primary auxiliary verbs be, do, and have are used to conjugate main verbs to show tense and person.

Types of Conjugation

As we mentioned, conjugation allows verbs to change to fit the purpose of a sentence and ensures grammatically correct sentences are formed. Verbs change to show tense and aspect, person and number, mood, and voice. Let's look at each of these in more detail now.

Tense and Aspect

Many people think of English as having only three tenses: past, present, and future. Indeed, these are the simple tenses. However, it might surprise you that English has 12 verb tenses, which are created when we combine tense with aspect. These verb tenses are shown through conjugation and are as follows:

Past Tenses

• Simple past: usually formed by adding -d, -ed, or less commonly -t to the verb (e.g., "chased," "jumped," "slept"). Irregular verbs are conjugated by changing their spellings completely (e.g., "make" becomes "made")

• Past continuous (past + ongoing aspect): formed by combining the past tense of -to be with the present participle of a verb (e.g., "was having")

• Past perfect (past + completed aspect): formed by combining the simple past with "have," "has," or "had" (e.g., "have looked," "has made," "had said")

• Past perfect continuous: formed by combining -had been with the present participle of the verb (e.g., "had been hoping," "had been working")

Present Tenses

• Simple present: keep the root form of the verb and add -s (e.g., "runs")

• Present continuous (present + ongoing aspect): formed by combining the verb -to be with the present participle of the verb (e.g., "is waiting")

• Present perfect (present + completed aspect): formed by combining "has" or "have" with the past participle of the verb (e.g., "has played")

• present perfect continuous: formed by combining "has been" or "have been" with the present participle of the verb (e.g., "have been eating")

Future Tenses

• Simple future: formed by combining "will" or "shall" with the root form of a verb (e.g., "will cook," "shall try")

• Future continuous (future + ongoing aspect): formed by combining "will be," or less commonly, "shall be" with the present participle of the verb, ending in -ing (e.g., "will be racing," "shall be presenting")

• Future perfect (future + completed aspect): formed by combining "will have" with the past participle of the verb (e.g., "will have paid," "will have finished")

• Future perfect continuous: formed by combining "will have been" with the present participle of the verb, ending in -ing (e.g., "will have been driving," "will have been reading")

Person and Number

Person is concerned with who or what is performing the action in a sentence. Number is pretty self-explanatory and concerns how many people (or objects) perform the action. Number can refer to either singular or plural.

When we combine person and number, we get a total of 6 possible combinations (three categories of person multiplied by two categories of number):

The person and number used in a sentence will impact the auxiliary verb and/or main verb that follows the pronoun. The most common example we can look at now is the verb to be.

Another key rule to remember is the conjugation of main verbs when using the third person singular. We always add an -s to the end of the main verb.

Mood

Mood tells us about the way in which an action is being performed. In conjugation, there are three key moods to be familiar with:

Voice

Voice is concerned with whether the action is being performed by the subject (active voice) or being done to the subject (passive voice).

When using the active voice, the main verb remains the same. However, when using the passive voice, we conjugate the main verb into its past participle form (aka verb 3).

Conjugated Verb Examples

To sum up our exploration into conjugation, here are some examples of how we can conjugate a single verb into each of the 12 verb tenses by combining aspect. The verb we're going to use is "study."

Past Tenses

Present Tenses

Future Tenses

Fig 2. Using conjugation, we can talk about Sally's studying in different time contexts.

Verb conjugation chart

To put the topic of conjugation to rest in this article, let's finish with some verb conjugation charts for visual reference: