Inflection and Declension

Inflection (Accidence) Definition

• Grammatical inflection, also known as accidence or flection, is the alteration of a word's form to convey a new, specific meaning.
• Verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can undergo inflection.
• Inflection is typically done based on rules and patterns, however irregular inflections do exist.

Conjugation

• Conjugation refers to verb inflection.

Tense

• Tense indicates when an action occurred.
• Verbs in their basic form are in the present simple tense.
  • Example: "She walks to work."
• Verbs are inflected for the past simple tense, usually by adding "-d" or "-ed".
  • Example: "She walked to work."
• Irregular verbs have unpredictable past tense and past participle forms.
  • Example: "He sang for an hour."
• Auxiliary verbs and verb participles create continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous forms.
  • Present continuous tense: "She is walking to work."
  • Present perfect tense: "We have lived in the city."
  • Past perfect continuous tense: "They had been working too hard."
  • Past perfect tense: "He had sung for an hour."
• The future tense is approximated using constructions like the modal auxiliary verb will.
  • Future simple tense: "She will walk to work."
  • Future continuous tense: "We will be living in the city."
  • Future perfect tense: "They will have worked too hard."
  • Future perfect continuous tense: "He will have been singing for an hour."

Aspect

• Grammatical aspect describes how an action, state of being, or event occurs in time and is used with tense to create verb forms.
• Each verb tense has four aspects: simple, perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous.
• The present continuous tense ("I am walking") uses the continuous aspect of the present tense.

Mood

• Mood indicates how we feel about the reality or factuality of the verb.
• The indicative mood is used for discussing or asking about what is true, real, or actually happening.
  • Examples: “I ate breakfast at 3 o’clock.” “We are going swimming this afternoon.”
• The subjunctive mood is used for unreal, hypothetical, or desired situations and is marked by putting the verb in the past tense.
  • Example: "I wish it was/were Saturday."
• The imperative mood is used for direct commands sentences have no subject (it is implied), and the verb is in the base or bare infinitive form.
  • Example: "Close that window!"

Voice

• Voice shows the relationship between a verb and its source of agency.
• Active voice means the subject performs the action.
  • Example: "He wrote the book."
• Passive voice means the subject is the object of the action.
  • Example: "The book was written (by him)."

Grammatical Person

• Grammatical person indicates the speaker/writer (first person), the person being addressed (second person), or the person/thing being spoken/written about (third person).
• Verbs are conjugated a specific way only if the subject is in the third person, is singular, and is in the present tense by adding an “-s” or “- es” to the end of the verb.
  • Example: “She/he/it walks everywhere.”
• Exception of this is the verb be, which has unique conjugations for grammatical person and tense.
  • “I am outside.” (first-person singular, present tense)
  • “She/he/it is outside.” (third-person singular, present tense)
  • “I/she/he/it was outside.” (first/third-person singular, past tense)
  • “You/we/they are outside.” (first/second/third-person plural, present tense)
  • “You/we/they were outside.” (first/second/third-person plural, past tense)

Speech

• Speech refers to quoting or referencing what someone else said or wrote.
• Direct speech (direct quotation) uses quotation marks.
  • Example: Mary said, “I want to have another baby,” which took him by surprise.
• Reported or indirect speech paraphrases what someone said and does not use quotation marks.
  • Example: Mary told me that she hadn’t been serious.

Declension

• Declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs.

Declension of Nouns

• Nouns are generally declined to mark plurality (more than one).
  • This is usually done by adding an “-s” or “-es” (e.g., books, watches, toys, cars).
  • Irregular plurals do not follow any conventions.
• Nouns can also be declined to reflect gender, as in prince (masculine) vs. princess (feminine).
• However, the majority of nouns in English are not inflected for gender.

Declension of Pronouns

• For the most part, only personal pronouns are subject to inflection.
• Personal pronouns are declined based on grammatical person, number, gender, and case.
• Who and whoever can also be declined to whom and whomever to reflect the objective case
  Reflexive pronouns, though not technically a type of personal pronoun, are so closely related in form that they have been included as well.

Declension of Adjectives and Adverbs

• Adjectives and adverbs are declined to create comparative and superlative forms.
• Comparative adjectives/adverbs compare two things.
• Superlative adjectives/adverbs identify the highest degree of an attribute.
• These modifiers are inflected by adding "-r" or "-er" (comparative) and "-st" or "-est" (superlative).
• Some modifiers use more/less or most/least instead of changing the word itself.

Regular and Irregular Inflection

• Regular inflection follows consistent rules and patterns.
• Irregular inflection is unique and doesn't follow predetermined rules.
• Irregular inflection occurs with many noun plurals (e.g., children, mice).
• It also occurs with adjective and adverb degrees of comparison (e.g., good, better, best).
• Verbs are the most notorious for irregular inflection, with past tense and past participle forms differing from each other and lacking the “-d” or “-ed” endings.
  • Example: sing (past tense: sang, past participle: sung).

Conjugation Definition

• Conjugation refers to verb inflection to create particular meanings reflecting tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and speech.

Tense

• Tense reflects a verb's place in time (past, present, future).
• There are technically only two grammatical tenses in English: past and present.
• Continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous tenses are created using auxiliary verbs and verb participles.
• English lacks a strict future tense, but structures with "will" or "be going to" are commonly referred to as future tenses.

Present Tense

• Present Simple Tense: expresses habits, facts, and timetables.
  • “I go to work every day.” “He works in finance.”
• Present Continuous Tense: expresses something in progress at the moment of speaking or future arrangements.
  • “John is sleeping at the moment.” “We’re flying to Spain tomorrow.”
• Present Perfect Tense: gives general information about something that happened at an indefinite point in the past.
  • “I have lived in Italy for many years.” “She has been here since 8 o’clock.”
• Present Perfect Continuous Tense: talks about that which began in the past and is still happening in the present.
  • “I’ve been writing for over an hour.” “They haven’t been living in Spain for very long.”

Past Tense

• Past Simple Tense: expresses finished actions.
  • “She worked in finance before this job.” “I went to the park yesterday.”
• Past Continuous Tense: expresses something in progress at a certain moment in the past.
  • “I was reading a book when they arrived.” “She was worrying we wouldn’t be able to afford the wedding.”
• Past Perfect Tense: expresses the idea that something occurred before another action in the past.
  • “The movie had already ended when I turned on the TV.” “Until this morning, I had never been on a plane.”
• Past Perfect Continuous Tense: expresses something that began and was in progress until a moment in the past or until another past action occurred.
  • “When I arrived at the bus stop, the other people there had been waiting for nearly an hour.” “My eyes were tired because I had been working on the computer.”

Future Tense

• Future Simple Tense: describes an intended action, make a prediction, state future facts, make promises, or offer to do something.
  • “The Queen will be in Rome tomorrow.”
• Future Continuous Tense: describes an unfinished action occurring in the future.
  • “I’ll be flying to Boston tomorrow, so I can’t come to lunch.”
• Future Perfect Tense: says that something will finish or complete at a specific point in the future, often indicating how long something will have been happening once a future moment in time is reached.
  • “By October we will have lived in this house for 20 years.”
• Future Perfect Continuous Tense: indicates how long something has been happening once a future moment in time is reached and continuous action.
  • “She’ll have been waiting for nearly an hour by the time we arrive.”

Aspect

• Grammatical aspect is often confused with tense.
• Tense deals with when the action occurred; aspect deals with how it occurs in time.
• Aspect reflects each construction of a verb in relation to time.
• Aspect helps determine whether an action takes place at a single point, during a continuous range, or repetitively.

Perfective and Imperfective Aspect

• The perfective aspect summarizes an action as a whole, occurring in past, present, or future actions.
  • Examples: “I ate dinner.” “I swim like a fish.”
• The imperfective aspect emphasizes the action's internal structure.
  • Examples: continuous action (“I was washing dishes when she came through the door.”), habitual action (“We used to go traveling a lot.”)

Aspects of Verb Tenses

• Each verb tense has four aspects: simple, perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous.

Aspects of the Present Tense

• Simple: Subject + present verb (“I go shopping on Tuesdays.”)
• Perfect: Subject + have/has + past participle (“I have eaten here before.”)
• Continuous: Subject + is/are + present participle ("We are cooking dinner.")
• Perfect Continuous: Subject + have/has + been + present participle (“He has been thinking about it.”)

Aspects of the Past Tense

• Simple: Subject + past verb (“I went shopping on Tuesday.”)
• Perfect: Subject + had + past participle (“I had eaten there before.”)
• Continuous: Subject + was/were + present participle (“We were cooking dinner.”)
• Perfect Continuous: Subject + had + been + present participle (“He had been thinking about it.”)

Aspects of the Future Tense

• Simple: Subject + will/be going to + infinitive (“I will go shopping on Tuesday.”)
• Perfect: Subject + will have + past participle (“I will have eaten before arriving.”)
• Continuous: Subject + will/be going to + be + present participle (“We are going to be cooking dinner.”)
• Perfect Continuous: Subject + will/would + have + been + present participle (“He’ll have been thinking about it.”)

Mood

• Grammatical mood expresses the speaker's/writer's attitude.
• Main moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative.

Indicative Mood

• The indicative mood expresses facts, statements, opinions, or questions to form declarative and interrogative sentences.
  • Examples: “She graduated last year with a doctorate in neuroscience.” “Are you going to give your speech tomorrow?”

Subjunctive Mood

• The subjunctive mood uses specific verb constructions to describe hypothetical or non-real actions, events, or situations, such as wishes, suggestions, or possible outcomes that depend on certain conditions.
  • Examples: “I wish I didn’t have to go to work.” “If I had been more prepared, I would have passed that test.”

Imperative Mood

• The imperative mood is used in imperative sentences for direct orders, commands, or general instructions.
• The infinitive form of the verb is used (without to), and we omit the subject of the verb
• Examples: “Turn off the light before you leave.” “Pay attention!”

Voice

• Voice describes the relationship between the verb and the subject (also known as the agent) in a sentence.
• Voice types: active, passive, "middle".

Active Voice

• The verb is in the active voice when the agent of the verb is also the subject of the sentence.
  • Example: “The boy sang a song.”

Passive Voice

• A sentence uses the passive voice when the subject is acted upon by the verb.
  • Example: “A famous piano piece will be performed by Angie tomorrow night.”

Middle Voice

• The “middle” voice describes a type of voice in which the agent performs the verb’s action on itself.
• Often followed by reflexive pronouns.
  • Example: “My girlfriend always checks herself in the mirror before we go out.”

Grammatical Person

• Grammatical person refers to the degree of involvement of a participant in an action, event, or circumstance.
• Degrees: first person (the speaker), second person (someone being spoken to), and third person (anyone/anything not being directly addressed).
• Verbs mostly conjugate for third-person singular subjects with “-s” or “-es”.
  • Example: “She/he/it eats pasta.”
• The verb be has 5 conjugations based on person and tense.
  • Examples will vary

Speech

• Grammatical speech explains how we report what another person said, which affects verb conjugation.
• Reporting verbs (say, tell, ask, etc.) are used.
• Types of speech: direct, indirect (reported), free indirect, silent.

Direct Speech

• Direct speech (quoted speech) is the direct quotation of something that someone else said.
• use quotation marks and not change verbs/punctuation during the quotation marks
• Example: John said, “I’ll never live in this city again.”

Reported (Indirect) Speech

• Reported speech is merely paraphrase (or restate) what someone said.
• do not use quotation marks.
• shift the paraphrased information one degree into the past.
• shift verb one degree into the next (present to past) or present to past perfect.
• Example: I live in Germany. present simple tense shifts to past simple tense He said he lived in Germany.

Free Indirect Speech

• Free indirect speech indicates thoughts/mental processes without reporting verbs or quotation marks.
  • Example: He had no money, no job, and no friends. How had his life arrived to such a desperate point?

Silent Speech

• Silent speech is an internal statement.
• Can be indicated with quotation marks, italics, or nothing at all.
• Example: “I’m never coming back to this town again,” he murmured to himself.