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Concept
Latin conjugation
Summary
In linguistics and grammar, conjugation has two basic meanings. One meaning is the creation of derived forms of a verb from basic forms, or principal parts.
The second meaning of the word conjugation is a group of verbs which all have the same pattern of inflections. Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.
The word "conjugation" comes from the Latin coniugātiō, a calque of the Greek συζυγία (syzygia), literally "yoking together (horses into a team)".
For examples of verbs and verb groups for each inflectional class, see the Wiktionary appendix pages for first conjugation, second conjugation, third conjugation, and fourth conjugation.
The ancient Romans themselves, beginning with Varro (1st century BC), originally divided their verbs into three conjugations (coniugationes verbis accidunt tres: prima, secunda, tertia "there are three different conjugations for verbs: the first, second, and third" (Donatus), 4th century AD), according to whether the ending of the 2nd person singular had an a, an e or an i in it. However, others, such as Sacerdos (3rd century AD), Dositheus (4th century AD) and Priscian (c. 500 AD), recognised four different groups.
In modern times grammarians generally recognise four conjugations according to the ending of the active infinitive: namely -āre, -ēre, -ere, or -īre, for example: (1) amō, amāre "to love", (2) videō, vidēre "to see", (3) regō, regere "to rule" and capiō, capere "to capture", (4) audiō, audīre "to hear". (3rd conjugation verbs ending in -iō such as capiō are sometimes known as "mixed conjugation" since they use a mixture of 3rd and 4th conjugation endings.)
In addition to regular verbs, which belong to one or other of the four regular conjugations, there are also a few irregular verbs, which have a different pattern of endings.
Official source
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