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Future Tense

Future tense

In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future.

Future tenses in English

In English, as in most Germanic languages, there is no future tense in the sense of a specific inflection that marks a verb for futurity after the fashion of the markers that appear in the preterite forms of the past tense. Rather, the future tense is marked by the use of a number of auxiliary verbs. The verb shall formerly appeared as a future tense marker. It is now obsolescent in that function, but appears in a desiderative function with subjunctive force in legal ordinances and similar documents:
- Each animal carried in an aircraft shall be confined in a container ... and in strong declarations of intent or resolve:
- [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/We_shall_fight_on_the_beaches (W)e shall fight] on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender ... Now will serves as the ordinary marker of the English future tense. The former distinction between shall and will may have been levelled due to the reduction, in most ordinary speech, of either form to the contraction ll. See shall for a discussion on where properly to use these two auxiliary verbs. The verb phrase be going to also marks a future construction in English; it too is frequently contracted. Going-to future marks future planned activity and prediction based on fact. For example: I am going to do my homework tomorrow. It is going to rain on Wednesday. "Going to" is often contracted in spoken English to "gonna". For example: It's gonna rain on Wednesday.
Simple Future Tense
The structure of the Simple Future Tense is:

subject + auxiliary verb WILL + main verb

invariable base

We will sing

To make a sentence negative, simply add not between the auxiliary verb and the main verb. To make it a question, exchange the subject and auxiliary verb. The simple future tense can be used in conjunction with the verb to think as well as predictions (I think I will watch a movie. There will be a colony on mars by 2050.). It can also be used to indicate a state of being, such as I will be in Chicago.
Future Continuous Tense
The structure of the Future Continuous Tense is:

subject + auxiliary verb WILL + auxiliary verb BE + main verb

invariable invariable present participle

We will be singing

To make a sentence negative, simply add not between will and be. To make it a question, exchange the subject and auxiliary verb will. The future continuous tense is used to indicate an action that occurs at a certain moment in the future. The action will start before the moment, but will not have finished. It will be snowing when you come home.
Future Perfect Tense
The structure of the Future Perfect Tense is:

subject + auxiliary verb WILL + auxiliary verb HAVE + main verb

invariable invariable past participle

We will have sung

To make a sentence negative, simply add not between will and have. To make it a question, exchange the subject and auxiliary verb will. The future perfect tense is used to express an action in the future before another action in the future. In essence, it indicates past in the future. The football game will have finished before you leave work.
Future Perfect Continuous Tense
The structure of the Future Perfect Continuous Tense is:

subject + auxiliary verb WILL + auxiliary verb HAVE + auxiliary verb BE + main verb

invariable invariable past participle present participle

We will have been singing

To make a sentence negative, simply add not between will and have. To make it a question, exchange the subject and auxiliary verb will. The future perfect continuous tense is used to express a long action before some point in the future. I will have been waiting for two hours when her plane arrives.
Future tense in Latin
The future tense forms in Latin varied by conjugation. Here is a sample of the future tense for the first conjugation verb 'amare', 'to love'. amabo I will (shall) love amabis You (singular) will love amabit He, she, it will love amabimus We will love amabitis You (plural) will love amabunt They will love This method of producing the future tense in Latin was replaced in the Romance languages by another form using the infinitive plus an ending.
Future tense in French
French has three forms of future tense: the futur proche, the futur simple, and the futur parfait
Futur simple
The futur simple is made by simply taking the infinitive of the verb and adding the correct form of avoir (to have) to the end of the word. In the nous and vous form of the word, the ending is instead just -ons and -ez, respectively. However, there are also some French verbs for which an irregular stem is used, such as aller (to go, futur simple stem = ir-) and etre (to be, futur simple stem = ser-). For instance: Je mange I eat Je mangerai I will eat Nous allons We go Nous irons We will go The futur simple usually refers to events that will happen further away in time than the futur proche.
Future proche
The future proche uses the correct present form of aller (to go) and then has the infinitive after: je mange, je vais manger = I eat, I will eat. Notice that the future proche, which resembles the be-going to future, actually translates as the will future.
Futur parfait
Equivalent of English I will have [verb]. Formed by using the future form of aller or être, plus the past participle. Examples: J'aurai fini = I will have finished Il aura mangé = He will have eaten Je serai parti = I will have left Il sera venu = He will have come
Future Tense in Spanish
In Spanish, there are three main tenses that describe the future: the futuro simple, futuro con "ir", and the futuro perfecto.
Futuro Simple
The futuro simple is formed by, excluding the irregular verbs (e.g. querer, to want, or salir, to go out), appending the following to the end of the infinitive form of a verb: The English equivalent is "will/shall verb."
Irregular Stems of the Futuro Simple
Irregular stems include: Note that these irregular stems are also used in the conditional tense.
Futuro con "Ir"
The futuro con "ir" is, as its name implies, formed by using the present form of ir, to go, the preposition a, and the infinitive form of the desired verb. Usually, this translates in English as "to be going to verb."
Futuro Perfecto
The futuro perfecto is formed by using the simple future form of the verb haber, to have, and the past participle of the desired verb. The English equivalent is "will have past participle of verb." See also: past tense, present tense, grammatical aspect. Category:Grammatical tenses
External links

- [http://www.englishtenseswithcartoons.com/ Complete descriptions of the English Tenses] als:Futurum ja:未来

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The largest Germanic languages are English and German, with ca. 340 and 120 million native speakers, respectively. Other significant languages includes a number of Low German languages including Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages (principally Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages and dialects. Their common ancestor is Common Germanic, probably spoken in the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe. Common Germanic, and all its descendants, is characterised by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early Germanic dialects enter history with the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire from the 2nd century.

Writing

Our earliest evidence of Germanic is from names, recorded in the 1st century by Tacitus, and in a single instance in the 2nd century BC, on the Negau helmet. From roughly the 2nd century AD, some speakers of early Germanic dialects developed the Elder Futhark. Early runic inscriptons are also largely limited to personal names, and difficult to interpret. The Gothic language was written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible in the 4th century. Later, Christian priests and monks who spoke and read Latin in addition to their native Germanic tongue began writing the Germanic languages with slightly modified Latin letters, but in Scandinavia, runic alphabets remained in common use throughout the Viking Age. In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, various Germanic languages use a variety of accent marks and extra letters, including umlauts, the ß (Eszett), Ø, Æ, Å, Ð, Ȝ, and Þ and Ƿ, from runes. Historic printed German is frequently set in blackletter typefaces (e.g. fraktur or schwabacher).

Linguistic Markers

Some unique features of Germanic languages are: # The levelling of the IE tense system into past and present (or common) # The use of a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (Indo-European ablaut) to indicate past tense. See: Germanic weak verb. # The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak (using dental suffix) and strong (using ablaut). English has 161 strong verbs; all are of native English origin. See: West Germanic strong verb. # The use of strong and weak adjectives. Modern English adjectives don't change except for comparative and superlative; this was not the case with Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on whether they were preceded by an article or demonstrative, or not. # The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law. # A number of words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families, but variants of which appear in almost all Germanic languages. See Germanic substrate hypothesis. # The shifting of stress onto the root of the stem. Though English has an irregular stress, native words always have a fixed stress regardless of what's added to them. This is arguably the most important change.

History

Germanic substrate hypothesis All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic, united by their having been subjected to the sound shifts of Grimm's law and Verner's law. These took place probably during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe from ca. 500 BC, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age. From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic dialects are divided into three groups, West, East and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration period, so that some individual dialects are difficult to classify. The 6th century Lombardic language, for instance, may constitute an originally either North or East Germanic dialect that became assimilated to West Germanic as the Lombards settled at the Elbe. The Western group would have formed in the late Jastorf culture, the Eastern group may be derived from the 1st century dialect of Gotland (see Old Gutnish), leaving southern Sweden as the original location of the Northern group . The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th century Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old High German and Old English from about the 9th century. North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as Proto-Norse, until it evolves into Old Norse by about 800. Longer runic inscriptions survive from the 8th and 9th centuries (Eggjum stone, Rök stone), longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the 12th century (Íslendingabók), and some skaldic poetry held to date back to as early as the 9th century. By about the 10th century, the dialects had diverged enough to make intercomprehensibility difficult. The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that resulted in Middle English from the 12th century. The East Germanic languages were marginalized from the end of the Migration period. The Burgundians, Goths and Vandals became linguistically assimilated to their respective neighbors by about the 7th century, with only Crimean Gothic lingering on until the 18th century. During the early Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English on one hand, and by the High German consonant shift on the continent on the other, resulting in Upper German and Low German, with graded intermediate Central German dialects. By Early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon and Frisian in the North, and although both extremes are considered German, they are hardly mutually intelligible. The southern dialects have completed the second sound shift, but remained closer to the Middle German vowel system, while the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift, but simplified the vowel system. The North Germanic languages, on the other hand, remained more unified, largely retaining mutual intelligibility into modern times.

Classification

Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. Mentioned here are only the principal or unusual contemporary dialects; individual articles linked to below contain larger family trees. For example, many Plattdüütsch dialects are discussed on Plattdüütsch besides just Northern Low Saxon and Plautdietsch. Diachronic stages are listed in the main articles (such as Old English and Middle English, in the English language article)
- West Germanic language
- High Germanic languages
- German
- Central German
-
- East Central German
-
- Luxembourgish
-
- West Central German
-
- Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)
- Upper German
-
- Alemannic German
-
- Swabian German, including Stuttgart
-
- Low Alemannic German, including the area of Lake Constance or Basel German
-
- Alsatian
-
- High Alemannic German, including Zürich German or Bernese German
-
- Highest Alemannic German, including the Bernese Oberland dialects or Walliser German
-
- Austro-Bavarian German
-
- North Bavarian (including Nuremberg)
-
- Middle Bavarian (including Munich and Vienna)
-
- South Bavarian (including Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
-
- Hutterite German (aka "Tirolean")
- Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and other languages, and traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet)
- Wymysojer (with a significant influence from Plattdüütsch, Dutch, Polish and Scots)
- Low Germanic languages
- Low Franconian
- Dutch
- Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from other languages)
- Limburgish
- Plattdüütsch
- West Low German
-
- Northern Low Saxon language
-
- East Frisian Low Saxon
-
- Westphalian language
-
- Eastphalian language
- East Low German
-
- Plautdietsch (Mennonite "Low German")
- Insular Germanic
- Frisian
- Söl'ring
- English. Huge influx of Latinate vocabulary, mostly via Norman French. Many dialects.
- English English
-
- Northern English
-
- Northumberland (Geordie)
-
- Durham (Pitmatic)
-
- Cumbrian
-
- Yorkshire
-
- Lancashire
-
- Merseyside (Scouse)
-
- Manchester
-
- Midlands English
-
- East
-
- Derbyshire
-
- Nottingham
-
- Lincolnshire
-
- Leicestershire
-
- West
-
- Black Country (Yam Yam)
-
- Birmingham (Brummie)
-
- East Anglian
-
- Norfolk (Broad Norfolk)
-
- Southern English based
-
- Received Pronunciation
-
- Estuary English
-
- Cockney (London)
-
- Somerset
-
- Devon
-
- Cornwall
- Scottish English
- Welsh English
- Hiberno-English (Irish English)
- North American English
-
- Canadian English
-
- Boston dialect
-
- Southern American English
-
- General American
-
- New York-New Jersey English
-
- California English
-
- Hawaiian English
-
- Black English/AAVE/Ebonics
-
- Liberian English
- (Others)
-
- Australian English
-
- New Zealand English
-
- Caribbean English
-
- Jamaican English
-
- Newfoundland English
-
- Hong Kong English
-
- South African English
-
- Indian English
-
- Singlish (Singaporean English)
-
- Manglish (Malaysian English)
- Scots
- Insular Scots
- Northern Scots, including Doric
- Central Scots
- Southern Scots
- Ulster Scots
- Urban Scots (City dialects)
- Yola
- East Germanic (descending from Gothic)
- Crimean Gothic (extinct in the 1800s)
- Vandalic (extinct)
- Burgundian (extinct)
- Lombardic (extinct)
- North Germanic (descending from Old Norse):
- West (Insular) Nordic
- New Norwegian (Nynorsk) (disputed)
- Icelandic
- Faroese
- Norn (Extinct)
- East (Continental) Nordic
- Danish
- Standard Norwegian (Bokmål and Riksmål) (Dano-Norwegian)
- Swedish
- Finland-Swedish

Vocabulary comparison

Several of the terms in the table below have had semantic drift. For example, the form 'Sterben' and other terms for 'die' are cognate with the English word 'starve'. There is also at least one example of a common borrowing from a Non-Germanic source (ounce and its cognates from Latin).

Apple

Aiple

Appel

Apfel

עפּל (Epl)

Aplus

Epli

Súrepli¹

Äpple

Æble

Eple

Board

Buird

Bord

Boord

Brett

Baúrd

Borð

Bord

Bræt

Bord

Book

Beuk

Boek

Book

Buch

בוך (Buḫ)

Bóka

Bók

Bok

Bog

Bok

Breast

Breest

Bors

Borst

Bost

Brust

ברוסט (Brust)

Brusts

Brjóst

Bróst

Bröst

Bryst

Bryst/Brøst

Bryst

Brown

Broun

Bruin

Bruun

Braun

Bruns

Brúnn

Brúnur

Brun

Day

Dag

Tag

טאָג (Tog)

Dags

Dagur

Dag

Die

Dee

Sterf

Sterven

Döen/Starven

Sterben

Diwan

Deyja

Doyggja

Dö

Dø

Døy

Enough

Eneuch

Genoeg

Genug

גענוג (Genug)

Ga-nóhs

Nóg

Nóg/Nógmikið

Nog

Nok

Give

Gie

Gee

Geven

Geben

געבן (Gebn)

Giban

Gefa

Geva

Giva/Ge

Give

Gje/Gjeve

Glass

Gless

Glas

גלאָז (Gloz)

Gler

Glas

Glass/Glas

Glas

Gold

Gowd

Goud

Gold

גאָלד (Gold)

Gulþ

Gull

Guld

Gull

Hand

Haund

Hand

האַנט (Hant)

Handus

Hönd

Hond

Hand

Hånd

Hand/Hånd

Hand

Head

Heid

Kop

Hoofd/Kop

Kopp

Haupt/Kopf

קאָפּ (Kop)

Háubiþ

Höfuð

Høvd/Høvur

Huvud

Hoved

Hode

Hovud

High

Heich

Hoog

Hoch

הױך (Hoyḫ)

Háuh

Hár

Høg/ur

Hög

Høj

Høy

Høg

Home

Hame

Huis

(Huus)

Heim

הײם (Heym)

Háimóþ

Heim

Hem

Hjem

Heim

Hook

Heuk

Haak

Haken

Krókur

Krókur/Ongul

Hake

Hage

Hake/Krok

House

Hoose

Huis

Huus

Haus

הױז (Hoyz)

Hús

Hus

Many

Mony

Menige

Mennig

Manch

Manags

Margir

Mangir/Nógvir

Många

Mange

Mang ein

Moon

Muin

Maan

Mond

Ména

Tungl/Máni

Máni

Måne

Night

Nicht

Nag

Nacht

Natt / Nacht

Nacht

נאַכט (Naḫt)

Nahts

Nótt

Nátt

Natt

Nat

Natt

Nae

Nee

Niet/Nee

Nee

Nein/Nö/Nee

נײן (Neyn)

Né

Nei

Nej

Nei

Old

Auld

Oud

Oll

Alt

אַלט (Alt)

Sineigs

Gamall

Gamal/Gomul/Gamalt

Gammal

Gammel

Gammel (but: eldre, eldst)

Gammal

One

Ane

Een

Eins

אײן (Eyn)

Áins

Einn

Ein/Eitt

En/ett

Ein

Ounce

Unce

Ons

Unze

Únsa

Uns

Unse

Snow

Snaw

Sneeu

Sneeuw

Snee

Schnee

שנײ (Šney)

Snáiws

Snjór

Kavi/Snjógvur

Snö

Sne

Snø

Stone

Stane

Steen

Stein

שטײן (Šteyn)

Stáins

Steinn

Steinur

Sten

Stein

That

Dit

Dit, Dat

Dat (Dit)

Das

דאָס (Dos)

Þata

Þetta

Hatta

Det

Two

Twa

Twee

Zwei/Zwo

צװײ (Ẓvey)

Twái

Tveir

Två

Who

Wha

Wie

Wokeen

Wer

װער (Ver)

Has

Hver

Hvør

Vem

Hvem

Kven

Worm

Wirm

Wurm

Wurm, Worm

Worm

Wurm

װאָרעם (Vorem)

Maþa

Maðkur, Ormur

Maðkur/Ormur

Mask, Orm

Orm

1: The cognate 'epl(i)' means 'potato'.

External links

- [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/language_resources.html Germanic Lexicon Project]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90067 Ethnologue Report for Germanic]
- [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theudiskon Proto-Germanic Language Reconstruction Group] ko:게르만어파 ja:ゲルマン語派 zh-min-nan:Tek-gí-hē

Inflection

:This article is about inflection in linguistics. For a mathematical meaning, see Inflection point. Inflection or inflexion refers to a modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) so that it reflects grammatical (i.e. relational) information, such as grammatical gender, tense, person, etc. The concept of a "word" independent of the different inflections is called a lexeme, and the form of a word that is considered to not have any inflections is called a lemma.

Declension and conjugation

Those who study grammar may be familiar with two traditional grammatical terms that refer to inflectional paradigms of specific word classes:
- Declension: noun inflectional paradigm (often includes pronouns, adjectives, and demonstratives as well) (often involving number, case, or grammatical gender).
- Conjugation: verb inflectional paradigm (often involving number, person, tense, or mood). Below is an example of a noun declension of the Latin noun vir 'man'. It is inflected for case and number with suffixes. Below is a conjugation of the verb hi 'arrive' in Lakhota. It is inflected for person with prefixes and for number with the suffix -pi. However, these two terms seem to be biased toward well-known dependent-marking languages (such as Spanish, Latin, German, Russian, Japanese etc.). In dependent-marking languages, nouns in adpositional phrases can carry inflectional morphemes. (Adpositions include prepositions and postpositions.) In head-marking languages, the adpositions can carry the inflection in adpositional phrases. This means that these languages will have inflectional paradigms involving adpositions. In Western Apache (San Carlos dialect), the postposition -ká’ 'on' is inflected for person and number with prefixes. Traditional grammars have specific terms for noun and verb paradigms but not for adpositional paradigms.

Inflection vs. derivation

Inflection is the process of adding inflectional morphemes (atomic meaning units) to a word, which may indicate grammatical information (i.e., case, number, person, grammatical gender/word class, mood, mode, tense, aspect, other relational info). Compare with derivational morphemes, which create a new word from an existing word, sometimes by simply changing grammatical category (e.g., changing a noun to a verb). Words generally do not appear in dictionaries with inflectional morphemes. But they often do appear with derivational morphemes. For instance, English dictionaries list readable and readability, words with derivational suffixes, along with their root read. However, no English dictionary will list book as one entry and books as a separate entry nor will they list jump and jumped as two different entries. In some languages, inflected words do not appear in a fundamental form (the Root morpheme) except in dictionaries and grammars.

Inflectional morphology

Languages that add inflectional morphemes to words are sometimes called inflectional languages. Morphemes may be added in several different ways:
- affixing, or simply adding morphemes onto the word without changing the root,
- reduplication, doubling all or part of a word to change its meaning,
- alternation, exchanging one sound for another in the root (usually vowel sounds, as in the Ablaut process found in Germanic Strong verbs and the Umlaut often found in nouns, among others).
- stress, pitch and tone, where no sounds are added or changed but the intonation and relative strength of each sound is altered regularly. A schema of all inflections for a word is sometimes called a paradigm. Affixing includes prefixing (adding before the base), and suffixing (adding after the base), as well as the much less common infixing (inside) and circumfixing (a combination of prefix and suffix). Inflection is most typically realized by adding an inflectional morpheme (i.e. affixation) to the base form (either the root or a stem).

Relation to morphological typology

Inflection is sometimes confused with synthesis in languages. The two terms are related but not the same. Languages are broadly classified morphologically into analytic and synthetic categories, or more realistically along a continuum between the two extremes. Analytic languages isolate meaning into individual words, whereas synthetic languages create words not found in the dictionary by fusing or agglutinating morphemes, sometimes to the extent of having a whole sentence's worth of meaning in a single word. Inflected languages by definition fall into the synthetic category, though not all synthetic languages need be inflected.

Inflection in various languages

Highly inflected language families

The Dravidian languages are highly inflected, as well as the Finno-Ugric languages and many Native American languages.

Indo-European languages

All Indo-European languages, such as English, German, Russian, Spanish, French, Sanskrit, and Hindi are inflected to a greater or lesser extent. In general, older Indo-European languages such as Latin, Latvian, and Lithuanian are moderately inflected. Newer languages such as English and French have lost much of their historical inflection. Afrikaans, an extremely young language, is almost completely uninflected and borders on being analytic. Some branches of Indo-European (e.g. the Slavic languages) seem to have generally retained more inflection than others (e.g. Romance languages).

English

Old English was a moderately inflected language, using an extensive case system similar to that of modern Icelandic or German. Middle and Modern English lost progressively more of the Old English inflectional system. Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since its nouns have only vestiges of inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular verbs have only three forms: an inflected form for the past indicative and subjunctive (looked), an inflected form for the third-person-singular present indicative (looks), and an uninflected form for everything else (look). While the English possessive indicator 's (as in "Jane's book") is a remnant of the Old English genitive case suffix, it is now not a suffix but a clitic. See also declension in English.

Other Germanic languages

Old Norse was inflected, but modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have, like English, lost almost all inflection. Icelandic preserves almost all of the inflections of Old Norse and has added its own. Modern German remains moderately inflected, retaining four noun cases, although the genitive began falling into disuse in the late 20th century in all but formal writing. The case system of Dutch, simpler than German's, is also becoming more simplified in common usage. Afrikaans, recognized as a distinct language in its own right rather than a Dutch dialect only in the early 20th century, has lost almost all inflection.

East Asian languages

Some of the major Eastern Asian languages (such as the various Chinese languages and Vietnamese) are not inflected, or show very little inflection, so they are considered Analytic languages (a.k.a. isolating languages).

Japanese

Japanese, a probable language isolate, shows a high degree of inflection on verbs, less so on adjectives and nouns, but it is always strictly agglutinative and extremely regular. Formally, every noun phrase must be marked for case, but this is done by invariable particles (clitic postpositions). (Many grammarians consider Japanese particles to be separate words, and therefore not an inflection, while others consider agglutination a type of inflection, and therefore consider Japanese nouns inflected.)

Basque

Basque, another language isolate, is an extremely inflected polysynthetic language, heavily inflecting both nouns and verbs. A Basque noun is inflected in 17 different ways for case, multiplied by 4 ways for its definiteness and number. These first 68 forms are further modified based on other parts of the sentence, which in turn are inflected for the noun again. It's been estimated that at two levels of recursion, a Basque noun may have 458,683 inflected forms ([http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/A/A92/A92-1016.pdf Agirre et al, 1992]). Verb forms are similarly complex, agreeing with the subject, the direct object and several other arguments.

Examples

English

In English many nouns are inflected for number with the inflectional plural affix -s (as in "dog" → "dog-s"), and most English verbs are inflected for tense with the inflectional past tense affix -ed (as in "call" → "call-ed"). English also inflects verbs by affixation to mark the third person singular in the present tense (with -s), and the present participle (with -ing). English short adjectives are inflected to mark comparative and superlative forms (with -er and -est respectively). In addition, English also shows inflection by Ablaut (mostly in verbs) and Umlaut (mostly in nouns), as well the odd long-short vowel alternation. For example:
- write, wrote, written (Ablaut, and also suffixing in the participle)
- sing, sang, sung (Ablaut)
- foot, feet (Umlaut)
- mouse, mice (Umlaut)
- child, children (vowel alternation, and also suffixing in the plural) A limited subset of English verbs and nouns are related by stress-change inflection. Such is the case of pairs like a record (noun, stressed on the first syllable) vs. to record (verb, stressed on the last). In the past, writers sometimes gave words such as doctor, Negro, dictator, professor, and orator Latin inflections to mark them as feminine, thus forming doctress, Negress, dictatrix, professress, and oratress. The former words were never frequently used, although many English users continue to use Latin endings today in somewhat more common constructions such as actress and waitress. German, which is related to English, employs many of these inflectional devices, but Umlaut and Ablaut are widespread, while in English they are considered more like exceptions.

Latin and Romance languages

The Romance languages like Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian etc., are more inflectional than English, especially when it comes to verb forms. A single morpheme usually carries information about person, number, tense, aspect and mood, and the verb paradigm may be considerably complex. Nouns are simpler, but they are inflected by number and grammatical gender. There is no Ablaut or Umlaut, and only little predictable vowel alternation, found on certain verbs where the Latin root had the phonemes /E/ or /O/. Latin is in fact more complicated, showing Ablaut in the verb paradigm, and also some verb inflection for voice (which is realized only by syntactic means in its daughter languages), as well as a more complicated noun paradigm (with several patterns of declension, and three genders instead of the two found in most Romance tongues).

External links

- [http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/i1/inflecti.asp Inflection entry at Encyclopedia.com]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsInflection.htm What is inflection?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnInflectionalAffix.htm What is an inflectional affix?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnInflectionalCategory.htm What is an inflectional category?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAMorphologicalProcess.htm What is a morphological process?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsDerivation.htm What is derivation?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/ComparisonOfInflectionAndDeriv.htm Comparison of inflection and derivation]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Inflection Inflection], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Derivation Derivation]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Conjugation Conjugation], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Declension Declension]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Base Base], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Stem Stem], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Root Root]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Defective+paradigm Defective Paradigm]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Strong+verb Strong Verb]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=IP Inflection Phrase (IP)], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=INFL INFL], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=AGR AGR], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=tense Tense]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Lexicalist+Hypothesis Lexicalist Hypothesis]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnAgglutinativeLanguage.htm What is an agglutinative language?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAFusionalLanguage.htm What is a fusional language?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnIsolatingLanguage.htm What is an isolating language?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPolysyntheticLanguage.htm What is a polysynthetic language?]
- Lexicon of Linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Agglutinating+language Agglutinating Language], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Fusional+morphology Fusional Morphology], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=isolating+language Isolating Language], [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=polysynthetic+language Polysynthetic Language]

References and recommended reading

- Agirre, E.; Alegria I.; Arregi, X.; Artola, X.; Díaz de Ilarraza, A.; Maritxalar M.; et al. (1992). XUXEN: A spelling checker/corrector for Basque based on two-level morphology. Proceedings of the Third Conference of Applied Natural Language Processing. Online version: http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/A/A92/A92-1016.pdf
- Bauer, Laurie. (2003). Introducing linguistic morphology (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 0-878-40343-4.
- Bubenik, Vit. (1999). An introduction to the study of morphology. LINCON coursebooks in linguistics, 07. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-570-2.
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2002). Understanding morphology. London: Arnold (co-published by Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-340-76025-7 (hb); ISBN 0-340-76206-5 (pbk).
- Katamba, Francis. (1993). Morphology. Modern linguistics series. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-10101-5 (hb); ISBN 0-312-10356-5 (pbk).
- Matthews, Peter. (1991). Morphology (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41043-6 (hb); ISBN 0-521-42256-6 (pbk).
- Nichols, Johanna. (1986). Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language, 62 (1), 56-119.
- de Reuse, Willem J. (forthcoming). A practical grammar of the San Carlos Apache language.
- Spencer, Andrew, & Zwicky, Arnold M. (Eds.) (1998). The handbook of morphology. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18544-5.
- Stump, Gregory T. (2001). Inflectional morphology: A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge studies in linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78047-0.
- Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. (2001). An introduction to syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63566-7 (pbk); ISBN 0-521-63199-8 (hb). Category:Linguistic morphology ja:語形変化

Preterite

---- This article is about the grammatical term. To see the article relating to eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. ---- The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek. In English, the term preterite is often superseded by simple past or past simple, although it is still often heard in its adjectival form (for instance: "The preterite form of 'to come' is 'came'.").
- "She went to the cinema." In German, the Präteritum is used for past actions. In South Germany, Austria and Switzerland, it is mostly used solely in writing, for example in stories. Use in speech is regarded as snobbish and thus very uncommon. In certain regions, a few specific verbs are used in the preterite, for instance the modal verbs and the verbs haben (have) and sein (be).
- Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen, das Rotkäppchen hieß. (There was once a small girl who was called Little Red Riding Hood.) In speech and informal writing, Perfekt is used (eg, Ich habe dies und das gesagt. (I said this and that)). However, in the colloquial language of North Germany, there is still a very important difference between the preterite and the perfect, and both tenses are consequently very common. The preterite is used for past actions when the focus is on the action, whilst the perfect is used for past actions when the focus is on the result of the action. This corresponds to the English usage of the preterite and the present perfect.
- Preterite: "Heute früh kam mein Freund." (my friend came early in the morning, but perhaps he has already gone)
- Perfect: "Heute früh ist mein Freund gekommen." (he is still here) In Spanish, the preterite is a verb tense that indicates an action taken once in the past that was completed at some point in the past. This is as opposed to the imperfect tense, which refers to any repeated, continuous, or habitual past action. Thus, "I ran five miles yesterday" would use the first-person preterite form of ran, corrí, whereas "I ran five miles every morning" would use the first-person imperfect tense form, corría. Conjugation: In French, the preterite is also called Passé Simple Tense. Like in Spanish, it is a past tense that indicates an action taken once in the past that was completed at some point in the past (translated: "verbed"). This is as opposed to the imparfait tense, which refers to any repeated, continuous, or habitual past action (translated: "was/were verbing"). Passé Simple is not commonly used anymore. The tense is only spoken in formal speech or written in historic or formal context. Conjugation:
- For more information on the preterite in French, visit Passé Simple Tense which includes a thorough list of regular and irregular conjugated verb. See also: pluperfect (past perfect), past tense, present tense, future tense, grammatical aspect, Wiktionary list of irregular verbs. Category:Grammatical tenses als:Präteritum

Auxiliary verb

In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. In English, the extra meaning an auxiliary verb imparts alters the basic form of the main verb to have one or more of the following functions: passive, progressive, perfective, modal, or dummy.

Introduction

In stricter linguistic terms than the simple definition above: Every clause has a finite verb which consists of a full verb (a non-auxiliary verb) and optionally one or more auxiliary verbs, each of which is a separate word. Examples of finite verbs include write (no auxiliary verb), have written (one auxiliary verb), and have been written (two auxiliary verbs). There is a syntactic difference between an auxiliary verb and a full verb; that is, each has a different grammatical function within the sentence. In English, and in many other languages, there are some verbs that can act either as auxiliary or as full verbs, such as be ("I am writing a letter" vs "I am a postman") and have ("I have written a letter" vs "I have a letter"). In the case of be, it is sometimes ambiguous whether it is auxiliary or not; for example, The ice cream was melted could mean either Someone/something melted the ice cream (in which case melt would be the main verb) or the ice cream was mostly liquid (in which case be would be the main verb).

Functions of the English auxiliary verb

Passive

The verb be (or often get) is used in the passive form to express an action where the subject is unknowable, not known, or of less interest than the action itself, e.g. the window is broken, the window gets broken. (See also Grammatical voice.)

Progressive

This form, also known as the continuous form, uses the verb be. It is used to express the speaker's interpretation of the temporal nature of the event, e.g. I am doing my homework. (See also Grammatical aspect.)

Perfective

The verb have is used in the perfective form to look back, i.e. retrospectively, at a past action from the present time. Or in other words, it is used to express an action that still has relevance to the present, e.g. Peter has fallen in love. (See also Grammatical aspect.)

Modal

Main article: Modal auxiliary verb There are nine modal verbs: can/could, may/might, shall/should, will/would and must. They differ from the other auxiliaries both in that they are defective verbs, and in that they can never function as main verbs. They express the speaker's (or listener's) judgement or opinion at the moment of speaking. Some of the modal verbs have been seen as a conditional tense form in English. Some schools of thought consider could to represent the past tense of can. However, according to Michael Lewis, (The English Verb), this is not always true. "Could I get you something?", clearly is not expressing Past Time. Lewis instead suggests that could is a remote form of can. It is evident after re-examining the usage of could in this light, that remoteness does describe the general meaning, e.g.
- I couldn't do it. (remoteness of time)
- It could happen. (remoteness of possibility)
- Could you do me a favour? (remoteness of relationship) The remaining modal auxiliaries can be viewed in this same manner. Lewis covers this area in detail in his book, see reference.

Dummy

Because, aside from the verb to be (or to have in British English), only auxiliaries can be inverted to form questions and only auxiliaries can take negation directly, a dummy auxiliary do is used for questions and negatives when only a full verb exists in the positive statement (i.e. there are no auxiliaries in the positive, non-interrogative form). The same dummy do is used for emphasis in the positive statement form. For example, if the positive statement form is:
- I know the way. the interrogative, negative and emphatic forms are respectively:
- Do you know the way?
- I don't know the way.
- I do know the way. Compare this with:
- I should know the way.
- Should I know the way?
- I shouldn't know the way.
- (and the emphatic form has to be marked by intonation or punctuation).

Quasi-auxiliaries

English contains many verb phrases that function as quasi-auxiliaries, such as be going to, used to, is about to. These quasi-auxiliaries require an infinitive. Others, such as need (as in need fixing), take a present participle, while yet others such as get as in get broken take a past participle.

Properties of the English auxiliary verb

Negation

Auxiliaries take not (or n't) to form the negative, e.g. can't, won't, shouldn't, etc. In certain tenses, in questions, when a contracted auxiliary verb can be used, the position of the negative particle n't moves from the main verb to the auxiliary: cf. Does it not work? and Doesn't it work? See English verbs

Inversion

Auxiliaries invert to form questions:
- You will come.
- Will I come?

Emphasis

The dummy auxiliary do is used for emphasis in positive statements (see above): I do like this beer!

Ellipsis

Auxiliaries can appear alone where a main verb has been omitted, but is understood: John never sings, but Mary does [sing].

Other languages

Some languages use "be" for the perfective forms of some or all verbs, instead of "have" (in Esperanto, for example, Mi estis irinta = I was having-gone = I had gone). French, German, and Dutch use it for verbs of motion and becoming, and (in German and Dutch) for "to be" itself, as does Italian. The use of auxiliaries is one variation among Romance languages. Finnish uses ole for all verbs: "Sillä niin on Jumala maailmaa rakastanut" (Because so much is God the world loved). English uses "be" only with "go" in some senses.

Reference

The English Verb 'An Exploration of Structure and Meaning', Michael Lewis. Language Teaching Publications. ISBN 0-906717-40-X Category:Parts of speech Category:Verb types ja:助動詞

Subjunctive mood

The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the person's viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgment, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact.

The subjunctive in Indo-European

The reconstructed Proto Indo-European language is the hypothetical parent of many language families. These include Germanic languages (English is one of them), Latinate Romance languages, Slavic languages and several others. It has two closely related moods: the subjunctive and the operative. Many of its daughter languages combined or confounded these moods. In Indo-European, the subjunctive was formed by using the full ablaut grade of the root of the verb, and adding the thematic vowel
- -e- or
- -o- to the root stem, with the full, primary set of personal inflections. The subjunctive was the Indo-European irrealis, used for hypothetical or contrary to fact situations. The optative mood was formed with a suffix
- -ieh₁ or
- -ih₁ (with a laryngeal). The optative used the clitic set of secondary personal inflections. The optative was used to express wishes or hopes. Among the Indo-European languages, only Greek, Sanskrit, and to some extent Old Church Slavonic kept the subjunctive and optative fully separate and parallel. However, in Sanskrit, use of the subjunctive is only found in the Vedic language of earliest times, and the optative and imperative are in comparison less commonly used. In the later language (from c.500BC), the subjunctive falls out of use, with the optative or imperative being used instead. However, the first person forms of the subjunctive continue to be used, as they are transferred to the imperative, which formerly, like Greek, had no first person forms. The Latin subjunctive is mostly made of optative forms, while some of the original subjunctive forms went to make the Latin future tense, especially in the Latin third conjugation. In Latin, the
- -i- of the old optative manifests itself in the fact that the Latin subjunctives typically have a high vowel even when the indicative mood has a lower vowel; Latin rogamus, "we ask", makes a subjunctive rogemus, "let us ask." In the Germanic languages, subjunctives are also usually formed from old optatives. In German, subjunctives are typically marked with an -e ending, and often with i-umlaut, showing once more the presence of the
- -i- suffix that is the mark of the old optative. In Old Norse, an -i typically marks the subjunctive; grefr, "he digs", becomes grafi, "let him dig". While most of the signs of this suffix have been removed in Modern English, the change from was to were in the modern English subjunctive of to be also marks addition of a vowel sound to the subjunctive form, and as such represents an echo of the Indo-European optative marker of five thousand years ago.

The subjunctive mood in English

The English present subjunctive is the plain (uninflected) form of the verb, the same form as the bare infinitive and the imperative. For example, the present subjunctive form of the verb to think is simply think. In some (comparatively recent) texts that use the archaic pronoun thou, a final -est or -st is sometimes added; for example, "thou beest" appears frequently in the work of Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries. The subjunctive is most distinctive in the verb to be. Here, there is not only a present subjunctive — be — but also a past subjunctive, were. Since other English verbs have a single universal past form (I sat, s/he sat, we sat, ye sat, they sat), they do not need to single one form out as a separate past subjunctive (the way 'to be' singles out 'were' among all its forms). Historically, the only place where the past subjunctive was distinguished from the past indicative, in Early Modern English, is in the second person singular. Hence, indicative thou sattest, but subjunctive thou sat. This usage was eroding even then, however. The subjunctive mood is used in English in a number of different ways.

Stock phrases and clichés

W. Somerset Maugham said that "The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible". An alternative view is that the subjunctive mood remains an ordinary working feature of English grammar, but that it is called moribund because it is often indistinguishable from the ordinary present indicative. The subjunctive mood is used in a number of fossil phrases that are perhaps no longer felt as inflecting the verb in a particular way. One common past-subjunctive expression is as it were; common present-subjunctive expressions include:
- be that as it may
- (God) bless you!
- come what may
- (God) damn it!
- Far be it from me
- till death do us part
- God save our gracious Queen; long live our noble Queen.
- Heaven forfend/forbid
- so be it
- suffice it to say
- woe betide Many of these are now often analyzed as imperative forms rather than as the subjunctive ones they are.

Jussive subjunctive

The subjunctive regularly appears in subordinate clauses, almost always a that clause, after verbs of commanding or requesting:
- I move that the bill be put to a vote.
- I demand that Napoleon surrender!
- It is necessary that classes be cancelled. This use of the subjunctive remains lively in all varieties of English, so that a sentence like
- I demand that Napoleon surrenders would be perceived by many as a solecism. However, British English prefers to structure this sentence with should: I demand that Napoleon should surrender.

Hypothetical subjunctive

This usage of the subjunctive is called for whenever the situation described by the verb is "hypothetical", whether wished for, feared, or suggested; the common thread is that the situation is not the current state of affairs. Thus the song from Fiddler on the Roof celebrates the word If in an extended hypothetical, marked by subjunctive mood, for example: :"If I were a rich man, ... There would be one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down." — Tevye the milkman Some linguists call this use of the subjunctive the irrealis. This is the sense in which some claim that the subjunctive in English is moribund. This subjunctive can occur with or without a word like if or whether that specifically marks a phrase as hypothetical. When if is omitted, an inverted syntax is usually used:
- Were I the President ...
- If I were the King of the world...
- Be he alive or be he dead ...
- If I were the President ... In most varieties of English, this subjunctive can be replaced by an indicative when the if form is used:
- If I was the President ...
- If he was a ghost... Such usage is commonplace, but is sometimes considered erroneous in formal or educated speech and writing. The unmarked, inverted syntax form —
- Was I the President ... — does not occur. However, inverted syntax in itself can be the sign of a subjunctive with a few common verbs other than to be:
- Had we but world enough, and time ... (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress)
- Come tomorrow, I will be on that plane. The unmarked subjunctive began to appear in the sixteenth century; since that time, it has expanded to being at least as common as the marked forms. Some use the marked form even in the absence of a hypothetical situation — "Johnny asked me if I were afraid" (Barbara in Night of the Living Dead (1968)) — simply as a conditioned variant that follows if and similar words. This is commonly considered a hypercorrection. (In the example quoted, if is a substitute for the unambiguous word whether ("Johnny asked me whether I was afraid"), and lacks the usual, "in the event that" meaning that if has in other usage (e.g., "If we go to bed now, we'll be up at three o'clock").) Another use of the hypothetical subjunctive occurs with the verb "wish":
- I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener. This, too, is often replaced with the unmarked form. This subjunctive is not uniform in all varieties of spoken English. It is preserved in speech, at least, in north central North American English, and in some dialects of British English. While it is no longer mandatory, except perhaps in the most formal literary discourse, the reports of its demise have been exaggerated. Notably, the divergence of usage in Britain and American can result in the same utterance having significantly different meanings in the two dialects. For example, the sentence "They insisted he went to chapel every day," in British English, usually means that he was required to go to chapel daily, but in American it means that the "they" of the sentence are asserting that he went daily, perhaps in refutation of a statement to the contrary. To mean he was obliged to attend chapel, an American would say "They insisted he go to chapel every day." The subjunctive is very rare in received standard British English, and only used in some set phrases and in conditional clauses expressing impossibility. Otherwise, it is replaced by should + bare infinitive. Thus, in British English:
- I wish I were you. (it is impossible for me to be you)
- I wish I were there. (it is impossible for me to be there, for I am elsewhere during the moment in question)
- If only he were prescient. (it is impossible for him to be prescient)
- I eat lest I should die. (American English: I eat lest I die.) See final clauses.
- They insisted that there should be a proper catering service involved. (American English: They insisted that a proper catering service be involved. or ...that there be...) In British English, it is considered incorrect to use a negative subjunctive. The sentence He took heed that his boss not see him., while correct in American English, is incorrect in British, where it should be rendered thus: He took heed that his boss might not see him. (or lest his boss should see him). The following construction is common in American English, and is readily understood: :I wouldn't do that if I were you.

The subjunctive mood in Romance languages

The subjunctive mood retains a highly distinct form for nearly all verbs in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian (among other Latin languages), and for a number of verbs in French. All of these languages inherit their subjunctive from Latin, where the subjunctive mood combines both forms and usages from a number of original Indo-European inflection sets, including the original subjunctive and the optative mood. In many cases, the Romance languages use the subjunctive in the same ways that English does; however, they use them in other ways as well. For example, English generally uses the auxiliary may or let to form desiderative expressions, such as "Let it snow." The Romance languages use the subjunctive for these; French, for example, would say, "Qu'il neige" and "Qu'ils vivent jusqu'à leur vieillesse." (However, in the case of the first-person plural, these languages have imperative forms: "Let's go" in French is "Allons-y.") Also, the Romance languages tend to use the subjunctive in various kinds of subordinate clauses, such as those introduced by words meaning although (English: "Although I'm old, I feel young"; French: Bien que je sois vieux, je me sens jeune.)

French

In French, despite the deep phonetic changes that the language has undergone from the original Latin, which include the loss of many inflections in the spoken language, the subjunctive (le subjonctif) remains prominent, largely because the subjunctive forms of many common verbs are strongly marked phonetically; compare je sais, "I know", with the subjunctive que je sache. (However, regular verbs have subjunctives homonymous with the indicative in most of the persons: j'aime → que j'aime). Use of the subjunctive is in many respects similar to English:
- Jussive: Il faut qu'il comprenne ça.: "It is necessary that he understand this."
- Desiderative: Vive la reine!: "Long live the queen!" But sometimes not:
- Desiderative: Que la lumière soit !: "Let there be light!"
- In certain subordinate clauses:
- Bien que ce soit mon anniversaire... "Even though it is my birthday..."
- Avant que je ne m'en aille... "Before I go..." For more on the subjunctive in French, see French verbs. Modern French scarcely ever uses the imperfect subjunctive, but - like English - Portuguese and Spanish do, for example in hypotheticals after se and si ("if"), respectively. (French would use the imperfect in this case.) In such a case, the main clause is in the conditional mood.
- English: If I were (past subjunctive) the king, I would change the law.
- French: Si j'etais (imperfect indicative) le roi, je changerais la loi.
- Portuguese: Se eu fosse (imperfect subjunctive) o rei, mudaria a lei.
- Spanish: Si yo fuese (imperfect subjunctive) el rey, cambiaría la ley. However it is possible in French to use an imperfect or pluperfect "subjunctive" in hypotheticals, but these tenses are never reffered to as being a subjunctive, they are called the second form of the conditional. When one uses the second form of the present conditional (conditionel présent deuxième forme), "si" must be dropped and inversion must be used:
- Fussé-je devant le roi, je changerais/changeasse la loi. The second form of the present conditional is not used a lot in French, only the form fût-ce (="would it be" (conditional), not "were it" (subjunctive)) is used very often. When one uses the second form of the past conditionel (conditionel passé deuxième forme), "si" can be dropped, but it is not obliged. The third person singular of the the second form of the past conditional is still used frequently in modern French.
- Eussé-je été le roi, j'aurais/eusse changé la loi.
- Si j'eusse été le roi, j'aurais/eusse changé la loi. These also use the past subjunctive in parallel with its jussive use in the present tense:
- English: It is necessary that he speak (present subjunctive). → It was necessary that he speak (present subjunctive).
- French: Il est nécessaire qu'il parle (present subjunctive). → Il était nécessaire qu'il parle (present subjunctive) or qu'il parlât (imperfect subjunctive).
- Portuguese: É necessário que fale (present subjunctive). → Era necessário que falasse (imperfect subjunctive).
- Spanish: Es necesario que hable (present subjunctive). → Era necesario que hablara (imperfect subjunctive).

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the subjunctive (subjuntivo) is used in conjunction with expressions of emotion, opinion, or viewpoint. It also is used to described situations that are considered unlikely or are in doubt, as well as for expressing disagreement, denial, or wishes, similarly to Spanish. In Portuguese, the use of the subjunctive is similar to English:
- Jussive: É importante que ele comprenda isso.: "It is important that he understand this."
- Desiderative: Viva o rei!: "Long live the king!" It also bears similarities to the use in French:
- Desiderative: Faça-se a luz! "Let there be light!"
- In certain subordinate clauses:
- Ainda que seja meu aniversário... "Even though it is my birthday..."
- Antes que (eu) vá... "Before (I) go..." Portuguese differs from other Romance languages in its conservation of a future subjunctive (futuro do subjuntivo), which was once widespread in Spanish, but however now is only used in extremely formal government documents. This is used to express a condition that is likely to be fulfilled or will be. This form is identical to the personal infinitive, with the exception of the following verbs: The endings to the personal infinitive and the future subjunctive are identical. These are: An example of this is someone (likely to be elected president) saying: Se (eu) for eleito presidente, acabarei com a fome. "If (I) am elected president, I will end famine." Compare the latter with: Se (eu) fosse eleito presidente, acabaria com a fome. "If (I) was elected president, I would end famine." Equally, someone talking about another could say: Quando (tu) fores mais velho... "When (you) are older..." Regular verbs in the subjunctive: Achar (to find, to believe) is a regular "-ar" verb. Correr (to run) is a regular "-er" verb. Partir (to leave, to break) is a regular "-ir" verb. Compound verbs (such as conter, to contain) follow the above, such as: Se eu contiver, se tu contiveres, se ele/ela/você contiver, etc.

Spanish

In Spanish, the subjunctive (subjuntivo) is used in conjunction with expressions of emotion, opinion, or viewpoint. It also is used to described situations that are considered unlikely or are in doubt, as well as for expressing disagreement, denial, or wishes. Such examples of phrases that precede the subjunctive word are: Es una lástima que (it's a shame that...) Es bueno que (its good that...) Es horroroso que (it's horrible that...) Subjunctive form of regular verbs in the present tense To conjugate a regular verb in the present subjunctive, first conjugate the verb to the present indicative of the first-person singular (yo form). Then drop the "o" and reverse the verb endings: -ar endings for -er and -ir verbs, and -er endings for -ar verbs. (examples: hablar, comer, escribir) To conjugate a verb in the first imperfect subjunctive, take the 3rd person plural of the préterito simple (hablaron,comieron,escribieron), drop the -on; and add the endings of the first imperfect subjunctive:-a,-as,-a,-amos,-áis,-an: (examples: hablar, comer, escribir) To conjugate a verb in the second imperfect subjunctive¹, take the 3rd person plural of the préterito simple (hablaron,comieron,escribieron), drop the -ron; and add the endings of the first imperfect subjunctive:-se,-ses,-se,-semos,-séis,-sen; or take the first imperfect subjunctive and change the -ra- into -se-: (examples: hablar, comer, escribir) To conjugate a verb in the future subjunctive², take the second imperfect subjunctive; and change the -s- into -r-: (examples: hablar, comer, escribir) To conjugate a verb in the perfect tenses of the subjunctive, take the subjunctive forms of haber (haya,hubiera,hubiese and hubiere) and add the past participle (hablado,comido,escrito). To conjugate a verb in the progressive tenses of the subjunctive, take the subjunctive forms of estar (esté,estuviera,estuviese and estuviere) and add the gerund (hablando,comiendo,escribiendo). To conjugate a verb in the perfect progressive tenses of the subjunctive, take the subjunctive forms of haber (haya,hubiera,hubiese and hubiere) add the past participle of estar (estado) and add the gerund (hablando,comiendo,escribiendo). ¹The second form of the past subjunctive, ending in (-ase, -iese, etc.) is a literary, somewhat archaic tense that is not used in everyday speech, but can be found frequently in literature, poetry, and other writings. ²The future subjunctive tense has become all but extinct in Spanish. It is never heard in everyday speech, and is usually reserved solely for literature, archaic phrases and expressions, and legal documents. Phrases expressing the subjunctive in a future time-frame instead employ the present subjunctive. For example: "I hope it will rain tomorrow" would simply be "Espero que mañana llueva".

The subjunctive in Arabic

In Literary Arabic the verb in its imperfective aspect (almudāri‘) has a subjunctive form called the mansūb form. It is distinct from the indicative in either ending in -a or dropping the final n:
- 3 sing. masc. yaktubu "he writes / is writing / will write" → yaktuba "he may / should write"
- 3 plur. masc. yaktubūna → yaktubū The subjunctive is used in that-clauses, after Arabic an: urīdu an aktuba "I want to write". However in conditional and precative sentences, such as "if he goes" or "let him go", a different form of the imperfective aspect, the jussive, majzūm, is used. In many spoken Arabic dialects there remains a distinction between indicative and subjunctive, but there it is not through endings but a prefix. In Levantine Arabic, the indicative has b- while the subjunctive lacks it:
- 3 sing. masc. huwwe byuktob "he writes / is writing / will write" → yuktob "he may / should write"
- 3 plur. masc. homme byukotbu → yukotbu Egyptian Arabic has a similar prefix bi-, while Moroccan Arabic uses ka- or ta-.

The subjunctive in Hebrew

Final vowels disappeared from Hebrew in prehistoric times, so the distinction between indicative, subjunctive and jussive is nearly totally blurred even in Biblical Hebrew. A few relics remain for roots with a medial or final semivowel, such as yaqūm "he rises / will rise" versus yaqom "may he rise" and yihye "he will be" versus yehi "let him be". In modern Hebrew the situation has been carried even further, with the falling into disuse of forms like yaqom and yehi. In the precative sense, modern Hebrew speakers often prepend the conjunction she- ("that") to mark the verb: hu yavo "he will come" → sheyavo "let him come." The subjunctive of the verb likhyot ("to live"), however, is still used in the expression y'khi ___ ("long live ___").

The subjunctive in German

In German it is generally accepted that there are six subjunctives: the present subjunctive (Konjunktiv I Präsens), the imperfect subjunctive (Konjunktiv II Imperfekt), the future subjunctive (Konjunktiv I Futur), the perfect subjunctive (Konjunktiv I Perfekt), the pluperfect subjunctive (Konjunktiv II Plusquamperfekt) and the future perfect subjunctive (Konjunktiv I Futur II). The I or II determines which verb-radical should be used: the Präsens-radical(I) or the Präteritum-radical(II). Present Subjunctive To conjugate a regular verb in the present subjunctive, one must add the subjunctive endings (-e,-est,-e,-en,-et,en) to the praesens-radical. The praesens-radical is found by dropping the -(e)n in the present infinitive. (examples: sein, kaufen, laufen) Imperfect Subjunctive To conjugate a regular verb in the imperfect subjunctive, one must add the subjunctive endings (-e,-est,-e,-en,-et,en) to the präteritum-radical. The präteritum radical is found by dropping the -en in the first person plural of the simple past indicative and in strong verbs adding an Umlaut where possible: wir waren: ich wär-e; wir kauften: ich kauft-e; wir liefen: ich lief-e. An exceptional case is stehen 'to stand': wir standen: ich stünd-e. (examples: sein, kaufen, laufen) The future subjunctive is found by adding the present infinitive (sein, kaufen, laufen) to the present subjunctive of werden (er werde): er werde sein, er werde kaufen, er werde laufen. The perfect subjunctive is found by adding the past participle (Partizip II) (gewesen, gekauft, gelaufen) to the present subjunctive of sein (er sei) or haben (er habe): er sei gewesen, er habe gekauft, er habe gelaufen. The pluperfect subjunctive is found by adding the past participle (Partizip II) (gewesen, gekauft, gelaufen) to the imperfect subjunctive of sein (er wäre) or haben (er hätte): er wäre gewesen, er hätte gekauft, er hätte gelaufen. The future perfect subjunctive is found by adding the past infinitive (gewesen sein, gekauft haben, gelaufen haben) to the present subjunctive of werden (er werde): er werde gewesen sein, er werde gekauft haben, er werde gelaufen haben. Some Germans claim that there are two more subjunctives,i.d. the Konjunktiv II Futur (ich würde sein) and the Konjunctiv II Futur II (ich würde gewesen sein), but these are in fact conditionals (Konditional), and they are normally not recognized as being a subjunctive. The subjunctive in German is used after certain conjunctions, e.g. wenn, fast, beinahe, damit,..., in wishes and in indirect speech.
- Wenn das Wetter gut wäre, kämen wir heute zu dir. (If the weather were good, we would come to you today.)
- Fast hätte das Auto ihn überfahren. (The car almost hit him.)
- Er sagt, er werde kommen. (He says, he will come.)
- Ich sage dir das, damit du lernest (I am telling you this so you would learn.) (NOTE: No native speaker of German would ever say so, not even write so. One would rather use indicative "...damit du lernst"
- Er lebe hoch. ((I wish) he live long.)

The subjunctive in Dutch

In Dutch the present subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs onvoltooid tegenwoordige tijd (O.T.T.)) is formed by adding -e to the praesens-radical of the verb in the singular and by adding -en to the verb in the plural. It is possible that the second person obtains an extra -t (this is determined by a set of rules known as the t-rules(t-regels)(in the plural the -n- then will drop. If the radical ends with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u,y) or ij, the -e- is also dropped.
- God hebbe zijn ziel. (The Lord have his soul).
- Lang leve de koning. (Long live the king).
- Hij ga in vrede. (May he go in peace).
- Gij nemet een lepel suiker. (You take a spoon of sugar).
- Dank zij zijn vrienden, kon hij toch slagen voor het examen. (Thanks to his friends he passed the examination.) The past subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs onvoltooid verleden tijd (O.V.T.)) is formed by adding -e to the präteritum-radical of the verb in the singular and by adding -en to the verb in the plural. It is possible that the second person obtains an extra -t (this is determined by a set of rules known as the t-rules(t-regels)(in the plural the -n- then will drop.
- Ware hij rijk, hij kocht een kasteel. (If he were rich, he bought him a castle).
- Hielpe hij de bedelaar niet, hij zou zich schuldig gevoeld hebben. (If he didn't help the beggar, he would have felt guilty.) The future subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs onvoltooid toekomende tijd (O.Tk.T.)) is formed by the present subjunctive of the verb zullen (ik zulle) and the present infinitive.
- Lang zulle hij leven. (May he live long.) The perfect subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs voltooid tegenwoordige tijd (V.T.T.)) is formed by the present subjunctive of hebben (ik hebbe) or zijn (ik zij) and the past participle.
- Hoe het ook geweest zij, hij is geslaagd. (I don't care how he passed the exam, it is important that he passed.) The pluperfect subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs voltooid verleden tijd (V.V.T.)) is formed by the past subjunctive of hebben (ik hadde) or zijn (ik ware) and the past participle.
- Ware hij thuis gebleven, hij had alles gemist. (If he had stayed at home, he would have missed everything.) The future perfect subjunctive (aanvoegende wijs voltooid toekomende tijd (V.Tk.T.)) is formed by the future subjunctive of hebben (ik zulle hebben) or zijn (ik zulle zijn) and the past participle.
- Zulle hij het gemaakt hebben. (May he have done it.) There also exist two tenses in Dutch, the aanvoegende wijs onvoltooid verleden toekomende tijd (O.V.Tk.T.) and the aanvoegende wijs voltooid verleden toekomende tijd (V.V.Tk.T.), about which it is not clear whether they are a subjunctive or a conditional.
- Ik zoude dat niet doen als ik u was. (I wouldn't do that if I were you.)
- Zoudet gij dat wel gedaan hebben? (Would you have done it?)

External links

- [http://spanish.about.com/library/beginning/aa-beg-verbs-subjunctive.htm Introduction to the Subjunctive] (as it relates to Spanish) Category:Grammatical moods

Shall

Shall and will are both modal verbs in English primarly used to express futurity.

Etymology

Both shall and will are verbs of ancient Germanic ancestry. In Proto-Indo-European, an inflected future tense existed, but that tense was lost in Germanic. In all Germanic languages, the future tense is formed with auxiliary verbs; this was the case in Gothic and the earliest recorded expressions of Germanic languages. The verb shall represents Old English sceal, and is cognate with Old Norse skal, German soll, and Dutch zal; these all represent
- skol-, the o-grade of Indo-European
- skel-. All of these verbs function as auxiliaries in each language, and represent either simple futurity or necessity. The verb will is cognate with the noun will, of course, and continues Old English willan, which represents
- willjan. It occurs in Old Norse vilja, German wollen, Gothic wiljan; it has many relatives outside of Germanic as well, including, for example, Latin velle "to wish for"; the root also occurs in voluptas, "pleasure."; all of these forms derive from the e-grade or o-grade of Indo-European
- wel-, meaning to wish for or to desire. In addition to shall and will, other verbs were used as future auxiliaries in Old English, including mun, a defective verb that is the immediate source of Scots maun, and also related to Modern English must. Both verbs are preterite-present verbs in Old English, as they were generally in Germanic. This means that in their conjugation, they were conjugated in the preterite tense with present meaning. They show this status by the fact that they are conjugated in the third person as she shall (as opposed to
- she shalls.) Will can be conjugated in both ways (she will, she wills) with a difference in meaning; the simple present form is not used as an auxiliary verb. The forms should and would are neologisms made with the dental suffix of the weak verbs. To the extent that it is claimed that shall and will carry different meanings depending on which grammatical person they are conjugated in, they represent an example of suppletion, the commingling of words from separate roots into a single paradigm. The two words have entirely different etymologies, and the distinction (if it exists, or ever really existed) cannot be justified on etymological grounds. According to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the distinction, or supposed distinction, in meaning between shall and will as markers of a simple future arose from the practice of English schools in the fourteenth century and their Latin exercises. It was the custom in these schools to use will to translate Latin velle; because shall had no exact equivalent in Latin, it was used to translate the Latin future tense. John Wycliffe used it consistently in this manner in his Bible translation into Middle English. Will was already beginning to predominate as the marker for the simple future through all grammatical persons as the marker for the simple future in English, and is the usual marker for a simple future in Chaucer, for example. The usage of the schools kept shall alive in this role. The most influential proponent of the distinction was John Wallis, whose 1653 Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae stated "The rule is... to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I shall, we shall, but you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence, one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall".

Traditional usage

Pure system

Shall and will are now most often used as auxiliary or modal verbs. However, they have their origins as main verbs and in what is known as the pure system are still used in their original Old English senses, regardl