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In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

from its principal parts

Principal parts

In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms.- English :...

by inflection

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

(regular alteration according to rules of grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

). Conjugation may be affected by person

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...

, number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

, gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

, tense

Grammatical tense

A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...

, aspect

Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...

, mood

Grammatical mood

In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...

, voice, or other grammatical categories

Grammatical category

A grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural] in English and many other languages...

. All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme

Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...

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 noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s and adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s is known as declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

.

Conjugated forms of a verb are called finite forms

Finite verb

A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....

. In many languages there are also one or more forms that remain unchanged with all or most of grammatical categories: the non-finite forms

Non-finite verb

In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person...

, such as the infinitive

Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...

or the gerund

Gerund

In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....

. 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

Regular verb

A regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical grammatical inflections of the language to which it belongs. A verb that cannot be conjugated like this is called an irregular verb. All natural languages, to different extents, have a number of irregular verbs...

has a set of conventions for conjugation (paradigm) that derives all forms from a few specific forms or principal parts

Principal parts

In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms.- English :...

(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

Irregular verb

In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur. The idea of an irregular verb is important in second language acquisition, where the verb paradigms of a foreign language are learned...

. Typically the principal parts are the root

Root (linguistics)

The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

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

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

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

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

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

usually inflect

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

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

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

, Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, Latvian

Latvian language

Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

, Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

, Bosnian

Bosnian language

Bosnian is a South Slavic language, spoken by Bosniaks. As a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect, it is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina....

, Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

, Croatian

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

, Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, Slovenian

Slovenian language

Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...

, Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

, Armenian

Armenian language

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

, Ancient Attic Greek and Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

. 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

Thou

The word thou is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee , and the possessive is thy or thine...

-form, or have additional meanings, like the English you

You

You is the second-personpersonal pronoun, both singular and plural, and both nominative and objective case, in Modern English. The oblique/objective form you functioned originally as both accusative and dative)...

-form, which can also stand for second person singular or be impersonal

Generic you

In English grammar and in particular in casual English, generic you or indefinite you is the pronoun you in its use in referring to an unspecified person, as opposed to its use as the second person pronoun.-In English:...

.

|"To be" in several Indo-European languages
			Singular persons			Plural persons
Branch	Language	Present infinitive	Present indicative
			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
	Catalan	ser	sóc	ets	és	som	sou	són
	Spanish	ser	soy	eres	es	somos	sois	son
	Portuguese	ser	sou	és	é	somos	sois	são
	Friulian	jessi	soi	sês	è	sin	sês	son
	Romanian	fi	sunt	ești	este	suntem	sunteți	sunt

Greek	Ancient² transliterated	eînai	eimí	eî	estí	esmén	esté	eisí
Greek	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
Armenian	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	sú
	Polish	być	jestem	jesteś	jest	jesteśmy	jesteście	są
	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 să
	Macedonian transliterated	none	сум sum	си si	е e	сме sme	сте ste	се se

Baltic	Latvian	būt	esmu	esi	ir	esam	esat	ir
Baltic	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
Indo-Iranian	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

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

-syntactic

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

construct in which properties of the subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

and/or object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...

s of a verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

are indicated by the verb form. Verbs are then said to agree

Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....

with their subjects (resp. objects).

Many English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

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

French verbs

French verbs are a part of speech in French grammar. Each verb lexeme has a collection of finite and non-finite forms in its conjugation scheme....

exhibit more intensive agreement morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

than English verbs: je suis (I am), tu es ("you are", singular informal

T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....

), 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

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

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

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, 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

Ubykh language

Ubykh or Ubyx is an extinct language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people...

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

Basque language

Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...

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, predicative adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s and copula

Copula

In linguistics, a copula is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate . The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a link or tie that connects two different things.A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case...

r complements receive a form of person agreement that is distinct from that used on ordinary predicative verb

Predicative verb

A predicative verb is a verb that behaves as a grammatical adjective; that is, it predicates . It is a special kind of stative verb....

s. 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 pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

s that have become clitic

Clitic

In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...

ised to the nouns to which they refer. An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found from Beja

Beja language

Beja or North Cushitic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the southern coast of the Red Sea, spoken by about two million nomads, the Beja, in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea.-Classification:...

(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

Ket language

The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family...

:

fèmba.di, “I am a Tungus”
dɨ.fen, “I am standing”

In Turkic

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

, and a few Uralic

Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

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

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

:

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

Grammatical category

A grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural] in English and many other languages...

according to which verbs can be conjugated are the following:

Finite verb forms
Finite verb
A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....

:
- Grammatical person
  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...
- Grammatical number
  Grammatical number
  In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
- Grammatical gender
  Grammatical gender
  Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
- Grammatical tense
  Grammatical tense
  A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
- Grammatical aspect
  Grammatical aspect
  In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
- Grammatical mood
  Grammatical mood
  In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
- Grammatical voice
Non-finite verb forms
Non-finite verb
In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person...

.

Other factors which may affect conjugation are:

Degree of formality (see T-V distinction
T-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....

, Honorific speech in Japanese)
Inclusiveness and exclusiveness in the 1st. person plural
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
Transitivity
Transitivity (grammatical category)
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take...
Valency
Valency (linguistics)
In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate...

External links