Language Matters: Activity 6
Relationships in Language: Grammatical Paradigms
Target Audience
AS/A2 students who are interested in learning about the internal structure of word-classes and
the factors that determine their variation.
Key Concepts
Paradigm; inflection; conjugation; declension
Objectives and Outcomes
The main objectives of this activity are:
• to introduce students to the concepts of linguistic paradigms and inflections and the
related concepts of conjugation and declension
• to make students aware of the usefulness of these concepts in language learning and
language description.
By completing the tasks associated with this activity, students will:
• learn to use the terms inflection, paradigm, conjugation and declension accurately
• become familiar with key distinctions in grammatical semantics (tense, number and
person in verbs, number and case in nouns and adjectives)
• come to understand how paradigms can aid language learning.
The Activity
Together with Spanish, Galician and Basque are the national languages of Galicia and the
Basque Country, two regions in northern Spain. Two of your friends have decided to spend their
gap year in these regions and are trying to learn the regional languages in order to maximise
their interaction with the locals. They have bought a grammar of Galician and Basque, but they
cannot make much sense of them. Can you explain to your friends how verbal paradigms in
Galician (Task 1) and noun paradigms in Basque (Task 2) work?
The questions in the tasks below will help you to structure your answers. Note that the point of
the exercise is both to understand how the paradigms work and to be able to explain them to
your friends so that they can start learning the languages.
Task 3 is intended to be a fun way of checking your proficiency in Basque and Galician
paradigms.
Task 1: Galician
The friend who is going to Galicia is keen to learn how to express time distinctions and talk
about events happening at the time of speaking, as well as before and after it. Below you have
an extract from his Galician grammar book which illustrates the three main verbal paradigms (or
conjugations) in Galician for the present, (imperfect) past and future tense. The verbs falar (‘to
speak’), varrer (‘to sweep’) and saír (‘to go out, leave’) have been given as an example of each
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of those three conjugations. A translation is given below for each form. The corresponding
personal pronouns are included. Have a look at the table and answer the questions below.
Conjugation 1
Falar (‘to speak’)
Pronouns
Eu
I
Tí
You (singular)
Él/ela
He/she
Nós
We
Vós
You (plur.)
Eles
They
Falo
Speak
Falas
Speak
Fala
Speaks
Falamos
Speak
Falades
Speak
Falan
Speak
Eu
I
Tí
You (sing.)
Él/ela
He/she
Nós
We
Vós
You (plur.)
Eles
They
Falaba
spoke/was speaking
Falabas
spoke/were speaking
Falaba
spoke/was speaking
Falabamos
spoke/were speaking
Falabades
spoke/were speaking
Falaban
spoke/were speaking
Eu
I
Tí
You (sing.)
Él/ela
He/she
Nós
We
Vós
You (plur.)
Eles
They
Falarei
Will speak
Falarás
Will speak
Falará
Will speak
Falaremos
Will speak
Falaredes
Will speak
Falarán
Will speak
Conjugation 2
Varrer (‘to sweep’)
Present
Varro
Sweep
Varres
Sweep
Varre
Sweeps
Varremos
Sweep
Varredes
Sweep
Varren
Sweep
Past
Varría
Swept/was sweeping
varrías
Swept/were sweeping
Varría
Swept/was sweeping
Varriamos
Swept/were sweeping
Varriades
Swept/were sweeping
Varrían
Swept/were sweeping
Future
Varrerei
Will sweep
Varrerás
Will sweep
Varrerá
Will sweep
Varreremos
Will sweep
Varreredes
Will sweep
Varrerán
Will sweep
Conjugation 3
Saír (‘to go out’)
Saio
Go out
Saes
Go out
Sae
Goes out
Saímos
Go out
Saídes
Go out
Saen
Go out
Saía
Went out/ was going out
Saías
Went out/ were going out
Saía
Went out/ was going out
Saiamos
Went out/ were going out
Saiades
Went out/ were going out
Saían
Went out/ were going out
Sairei
Will go out
Sairás
Will go out
Sairá
Will go out
Sairemos
Will go out
Sairedes
Will go out
Sairán
Will go out
(1) What is the criterion that determines whether a Galician verb belongs to the first, second
or third conjugation?
(2) How do Galician verbs indicate futurity? And (imperfect) pastness?
(3) What kind of grammatical information do the inflections -mos, -des, -án (e.g., falaremos,
comeredes, sairán) convey?
If you have answered the questions correctly, you should be able to help your friend work out
the conjugation (present/past/future tenses) of the following two verbs: chamar (‘to call’) and
comer (‘to eat’). The personal pronouns (I/you/we etc.) have been provided.
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Present
Past
Future
Chamar (‘to call’)
Eu ___________
Tí ___________
Él/ela ________
Nós __________
Vós __________
Eles/elas ________
Eu___________
Tí___________
Él/ela___________
Nós__________
Vós___________
Eles/elas___________
Eu___________
Tí___________
Él/ela___________
Nós___________
Vós___________
Eles/elas__________
Comer (‘to eat’)
Eu ___________
Tí___________
Él/ela ___________
Nós ___________
Vós ___________
Eles/elas__________
Eu___________
Tí___________
Él/ela___________
Nós___________
Vós___________
Eles/elas__________
Eu___________
Tí___________
Él/ela___________
Nós___________
Vós___________
Eles/elas_________
(4) What have you discovered about English verb inflections in the course of learning
Galician?
Task 2: Basque
Task 2.1
Your other friend is trying to make sense of how nouns are inflected for number (i.e., singular vs.
plural) in Basque. His book provides some examples of simple noun phrases: see examples 1–9
in the table below.
Help your friend by:
(1) doing a word-for-word translation of examples 2–9
(2) providing the missing Basque examples in 10–14 and their corresponding word-for-word
translation
(3) writing a rule that explains how the plural inflections work in Basque nouns in simple
noun phrases.
Basque
1. Emakume
2. Emakumea
3. Emakume gaztea
4. Emakumeak
5. Emakume itsusiak
6. Gizon argali
7. Gizonak
8. Etxe handiak
9. Txakur txikiak
10.
11.
12.
13.
English translation
‘woman’
‘the woman’
‘the young woman’
‘the women’
‘the ugly women’
‘the thin man’
‘the men’
‘the big houses’
‘the small dogs’
‘the man’
‘young’
‘the houses’
‘the big dogs’
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Word-for-word translation
‘woman’
‘woman-the’
14.
‘the ugly house’
Rule:
____________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Task 2.2
Success! Your explanations have helped a lot. Your friend starts to feel more confident about
learning Basque, so he decides to try some of the ‘fill-the gap’ exercises that appear in his
grammar book.
However, he hasn’t realised that nouns (e.g., car, house) in Basque are also inflected for case
(i.e., the syntactic function that the noun has in the sentence). Below you see:
(1) (part of) the declension (paradigm) of the noun mutil (‘boy’). The added inflections are in
bold
(2) the ‘fill-the-gap’ exercise that your friend has completed
Correct any mistakes that he has made and explain what he has done wrong.
(1) (Partial) declension of the noun ‘boy’ (mutil) in Basque
Name of the inflection in Basque
and translation
Mutil (‘boy’)
Singular
Mutila
Mutilaren
Mutilarekin
Mutilarentzat
Nor (the ‘doer’ of the action)
Noren (answers the question ‘whose?’)
Norekin (answers the question ‘with whom?’)
Norentzat (answers the question ‘for whom?’)
Plural
Mutilak
Mutilen
Mutilekin
Mutilentzat
(2) ‘Fill-the-gap’ exercise
The capitalised and underlined words in each sentence indicate the word required in the gap.
Basque sentence
English translation
What your
friend
wrote
in
the gap
Urtero ______
oporretan joaten dira.
The STUDENTS go on holiday
every year. (Ikasle ‘student’)
Ikasleak
Neska hori ____ etorri
zen.
____ argalarentzat
opari bat erosi genuen.
____ kotxea apurtuta
dago.
That girl came with the BOYS.
(Mutil ‘boy’)
We bought a present for the thin
MAN. (Gizon ‘man’)
His SON’S car is broken. (Seme
‘son’)
Correct? If so,
mark with √. If
not, write in the
correct form(s)
and explain why
your
friend’s
answer is wrong.
Mutilak
Gizon
Seme
Task 3
We hope that you have become a confident user of the terms inflection, paradigm, conjugation
and declension. Test your knowledge of Galician and Basque inflections by completing the
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following crossword. For each clue, you should enter the Galician/Basque equivalent of the
capitalised word, with the right inflection of course! The relevant words are given in brackets at
the end of each sentence.
Going Further
• This website <http://www.verbix.com/languages/> allows you to check the conjugation of
verbs in different languages. (If you don’t know what the verbal equivalent of ‘to do’ or ‘to
find’ is in language X or Y, you can always use the translate tool
<http://www.verbix.com/translate/>. Please be very careful when using the tool. As we
saw in Activity 4, automated translation does not always provide you with the word you
are looking for. You may also want to use the online dictionaries mentioned in the activity
to double- or triple-check the results you got from the verbix translate tool.)
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•
Compare the paradigm for the (simple) present and/or future tenses of a given verb in
related languages (e.g., Galician, French and Italian as Romance languages as opposed
to German and Dutch as Germanic languages). For each language, identify the verbal
inflections and work out what their function is (e.g., to indicate person/number or tense).
Do you notice any systematic similarities across language families?
© Villiers Park Educational Trust 2013
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