从拉丁语“连接在一起”开始，共轭（发音：kon je GA shen）指的是动词对人称、数字、时态和语气的屈折变化，也称为动词范式。

英语语法中的变位

尽管在传统英语语法的某些形式中，共轭一词仍然被使用，但当代语言学家普遍认为它是拉丁语和古英语的不必要的延续。根据《牛津英语伴侣》的说法，“变位”一词“与古英语语法有关，古英语中有七种强动词变位，但与现代英语无关，尽管不规则动词可分为若干模式组。”

学习共轭规则

"Remember when in grade school our teachers had us and the rest of class conjugate verbs? Together we pledged or maybe mumbled, 'I talk, You talk, He/She/It talks, We talk, You talk, They talk.' Whatever language we were learning, at whatever age, conjugation taught us proper use of verb 'tenses,' which in English are time distinctions grouped broadly by past, present, or future; also, each verb had to be connected to a personal pronoun acting as its subject." (Davis)

主要部分

"Conjugation means breaking a verb down into its different forms to show person, number, tense, and voice." "All verbs have three basic forms, which are called their principal parts. From these basic forms, you can make up the tense of any verb. The first principal part is the verb itself. This is the part with which you are most familiar: form, change, discuss. The second principal part is the past tense form. The third principal part is the past participle." (Williams)

有限性的几个方面

"Frankly (and sadly) most of us learned basic conjugation in foreign-language class. We learned to conjugate verbs in Spanish, French, or Latin. Unfortunately, many people did not learn basic conjugation in English class. Some did not learn correct conjugation." "When you conjugate a verb, you have to cover all three aspects of finiteness: time (that's tense), people (that's person, as in first person, second person, and third person), and quantity (that's number, either singular or plural." (Good)

言语范式：看与说

"Let us consider [...] the verbal paradigm in English to see how a paradigm works. A verb in English has several forms. The verb see has the forms 'see,' 'sees,' 'seeing,' 'saw,' and '(have) seen.' We take the lexical item itself to be see, which we pronounce 'see.' Some of the forms of see are entirely predictable, some are not. When a form is predictable from the morphological paradigm, we say that it is regular; when a form is not predictable, it is irregular. So the form 'seen' is not predictable as the past participle (She has never seen Paris like this), nor is the form 'saw' as the past tense." "On the other hand, a verb like talk is completely regular: 'talk,' 'talks,' 'talking,' 'talked,' and '(have) talked.' We want to capture the fact that 'saw' and 'talked' are both past tense forms, even though one is irregular and the other one is regular." (Culicover)

共轭较轻的一面

"Rupinder continued to dominate the class, but she didn't seem to be learning anything. On a quiz at the end of the week she tried to conjugate the verb wake. Wake, she wrote. Past tense: woke. Past participle: wank. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wrong." (Dixon)

共轭这个

"I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish today. Gracias a dios. Hasta luego." (Anderson)

资源和进一步阅读

• 安德森，劳里·哈尔斯。说吧。Farrar、Straus和Giroux，1999年。
• Culicover，Peter W.自然语言语法。牛津大学，2009年。
• 戴维斯，鲍勃。你的写作很好。国际，2014年。
• 迪克森，格伦。文字宫殿中的朝圣者：穿越地球6000种语言的旅程。邓德恩，2009年。
• 好，C·爱德华。给你和我的语法书。。。哎呀，我人生成功所需要的一切。首都，2002年。
• 麦克阿瑟、汤姆等，编辑。牛津英语之友。牛津大学第二版，2018年。
• 威廉姆斯，凯伦·施奈特。基础英语复习。第9版，圣吉，2010年。