Konditionalverbum

Konditionalverbum is a hypothetical linguistic category proposed to describe a verb form or class that encodes conditional meaning directly on the verb. The term is constructed from Konditional (conditional) and Verbum (verb). It is used in discussions of how languages realize conditionality and is not universally recognized as a standard grammatical category; some theories refer to similar ideas under the labels of a dedicated conditional verb, conditional morphology, or irrealis verb forms.

In typological accounts, a Konditionalverbum would fuse the function of antecedent and consequent into a single verbal unit, or attach a conditional marker to the verb stem. The morphology could be agglutinative, fusional, or templatic; it may carry irrealis, potential, or counterfactual semantics and may interact with tense, aspect, and modality.

Syntactically, a Konditionalverbum could appear in main or subordinate clauses, depending on the language, and might substitute for auxiliary constructions or mood-marking particles in expressing conditional propositions. In practice, languages often express condition with combinations of particles, moods, and verb forms; the Konditionalverbum concept helps compare these strategies.

Examples (fictional): In language X, the form go-kond on the verb “go” expresses a conditional proposition meaning “would go.” In language Y, the verb stem itself carries a conditional meaning across tenses, so sentences like “he go-kond” translate roughly to “If he goes, he would go,” depending on context.