What Is A Verb Conjugation

A verb is an action word if, and only if, the verb has a subject performing either a physical action such as to walk, a mental action such as to think, or a state of being such as to be. A verb conjugation is the pairing of the subject and the verb. No clause is complete without a subject/verb pair because it will convey neither an action, nor a thought, nor a state of being. Thus, all clauses must contain subject/verb pairing to give the clause an actor and an action.

Consider the sentence as a play and the clauses that form the sentence as acts in a play. The subject of the clause is the actor in the act, and the verb is the action of the act. These are the necessary elements of an act. Without an actor preforming an action, there would be no play. It is the interaction between the actor and the action that brings the play to life. Likewise, without an interaction between a subject and a verb, the clause would only be a fragment. This union between the verb and the subject is referred to as the verb conjugation.

The Conjugation
1. The subject (the actor) and the verb (the action) must be conjoined or linked to each other in person, number, tense, and mood. This conjugation will indicate who is the actor (person) of the action, how many actors perform the action (number), when the action occurred (tense), and the mood of the action (mood). This conjunction between the subject and the verb is known as a verb conjugation. It conjoins the infinitive of the verb to the subject of the clause. Otherwise, the verb remains in its more general, infinitive form.
2. The infinitive
  1. The infinitive form of a verb presents the action as an abstract idea that can act as the actor. Consider, for example, the statement to learn how to teach is my goal in life. In this example, the conjugated verb is – is –, and the actor is – to learn. Thus, the infinitive form of the verb is the actor preforming the action. Now, let’s consider a famous Shakespearean line, “To be, or not to be? That is the question” (Shakespeare, ). In this line, the relative pronoun – That – refers back to the infinitive – to be. Thus, the infinitive – to be – is the antecedent of the pronoun. Thus, to be or not to be is the subject of the sentence.
  2. Likewise, an infinitive can act as an adjective modifying a noun. Consider the following sentence. My desire is to learn how to teach. The infinitive phrase – to learn – modifies the noun – My desire. Again, the additional phrase – how to teach – is an adverbial phrase that modifies the infinitive phrase – to learn.

Furthermore, an infinitive form of the verb can act as an adverb. Consider, for instance, the clause – I want to learn how to teach. In this case, the two infinitive – to learn – acts as an adverb modify the conjugated verb – want. The actor in this sentence is the first-person pronoun – I. The infinitive add information to the action. To simply say – I want – would not say anything. However, I can modify the action – want – with the infinitive – to learn. Thus, the infinitive is an adverbial phrase.

An infinitive can act as an object of a propositional phrase. The clause – I want to learn how to teach – is further modified with the phrase – how to teach. This phrase, whose object is another infinitive – to teach – adds more information to the infinitive – to learn. If the sentence were to read – I want to learn– then it could mean anything. For example:
1. I want to learn how to swim
2. I want to learn as much as I can
However, the additional phrase – how to teach – narrows down the meaning of the sentence. Thus, the infinitive can act as an object of a prepositional phrase.
Ironically, an infinitive form of a verb can act as a noun, pronoun, adjective, or adverb, but it cannot act as the action of the sentence. As previously noted, and action cannot occur without an actor to perform the action. However, taking the infinitive form of the verb and pairing it with the actor transforms the infinitive form of the verb into its conjugated form, thus completing the sentence or play.

Pairing the infinitive form of the verb with its actor conjugates the verb. In English, verb conjugations are generated in several ways. First, the the preposition – to – is dropped. So, instead of saying – I to want to learn how to teach – one would simply drop the preposition – to – before the infinitive – to want – and say – I want to learn how to teach. This conjugation joins the first-person singular pronoun – I – to the action.

Person and Number
1. In grammar, person refers to the actor of the action. The actor will be either the first person, the second person, or third person. Number refers to whether the actor is singular or plural.
2. The following table represents the personal pronouns in the nominative or subjective case. These pronouns can all act as subjects or actors of the verb.

2. Singular	3. Plural
4. I	5. We
6. You	7. You all
8. He She, It	9. They

In addition to dropping the proposition – to – some verb conjugations are generated by changing the endings of the base verb. For example, in the third person singular present tense, the letter – s or es – is added to the base of the verb. Thus, one would say – he wants to learn how to teach or she wants to learn how to teach. To enforce these rules breaches the contract. However, this change will only occur in the third person singular number not the plural number. Notice that the infinitive – To enforce – is the subject of the clause and in the third person and singular in number.
If the actor is an inanimate object or an idea, it is always in the third person. For example, the sun is an inanimate object that preforms the action –shines. Since it is singular, one would say – The sun shines -, dropping the letter – to – and adding the letter – s – to the ending of the infinitive.

Tenses
1. The Future Tense

The tense of a verb refers to time that the action occurred. Three basic tenses exist in grammar, the present tense, the future tense, and the past tense. In addition, two past tenses are used to describe differing past actions. As previously noted, the present tense is conjugated by dropping the preposition – to  and adding the suffixes – s or es – to the infinitive but only for the third person singular subject. To form the future conjugation, the helping verb – will – is added to the infinitive. Accordingly, the conjugation for the future tense would be:

10. To walk
11. Singular	12. Plural
13. I will walk	14. We will walk
15. You will walk	16. You all will walk
17. He, She, It will walk	18. They will walk

Past Tense

The Simple past tense. The simple past tense describes an action that happened at a particular point in time. For example, the sentence, – I walked to the store – is in the simple past tense because it expresses a single period of time. The action occurred but was not continuous. To conjugate verbs in the simple past tense, the preposition – to – is dropped and the suffix – ed – is added to the end of the infinitive.

19. To walk
20. Singular	21. Plural
22. I walked	23. We walked
24. You walked	25. You all walked
26. He, She, It walked	27. They walked

The imperfect past tense. The imperfect past tense describes action that occurred over a period of time. The phrase, I was driving to the store expresses a continuous action. The action of driving in this sentence expresses an ongoing action.

Many times, the imperfect describes an action that was occurring when another action took place. For example, I was driving to work when I realized that today is my day off. The imperfect past is the phrase, I was driving. The past tense verb is, realized.

The imperfect is often expressed in English with the helping word, used to. The application of this helping verb is a little tricky. Sometimes, use to without the d on the end is applied to questions with did.

Mood
1. Indicative
  1. The indictive verb mood is used to indicate or simply tell a fact or statement. For example, the sun shines all summer long. This is a simple statement of fact. It indicates something, thus, it is called the indictive mood.
2. Imperative
  1. The imperative mood presents a command request or that someone else preform an act. For example, take this quiz, makes a request or command. Think of the action as imperative as if it must or should be done. Oftentimes, the imperative is a simple desire. For instance, the statement, have a nice day, is an imperative mood because the phrase literally commands that some have a nice day.
3. Interrogative
  1. The interrogative mood asks a question, thus, the name. In English, the to do verb acts an an auxiliary verb. Hence, one would ask a question by placing do before an indictive statement. For example, the phrase, you work today, could be turned into the question, do you work today?
  2. In most other languages, including Spanish, the interrogative mood switches word order. For example, to turn the indicative statement, you work today, into a question, one would simply switch the word order. For instance, work you today?
4. Subjunctive
  1. The subjunctive mood consists of a present subjunctive and a past imperfect subjunctive. In English, the present subjunctive verb takes the normal form expect in the third person singular where it drops the s on the end of the verb. Thus, someone might say, God help us. Normally, since God is in the third person, one would say God helps us, but when someone adds expresses desire, the s disappears. Thus, the subjunctive becomes God help us. The subordinate clause can be implied.
  2. The present subjunctive is rare in English but often appears in Spanish.

The past imperfect subjunctive is used to express an action that occurs only on a condition. For example, I would wear a coat if it were cold. The condition is that it is cold. Thus, the action of wearing a coat did not occur because it is not cold. Notice how the past tense of the to be verb is used as the imperfect subjunctive. In Spanish, however, a complete verb tense with different endings is applied to the imperfect subjunctive.

Example of subjunctive

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States;”
Conditional
1. The conditional mood expresses the condition required to make the subjunctive verb active.
2. The conditional mood in expressed in English with helping verbs such as would or could. In Spanish, however, a complete verb ending is added to the infinitive to form the conditional mood.