Verbendung

Verbendung is a term used in German linguistics to denote the set of endings attached to finite forms of a verb to indicate grammatical categories such as person, number, tense, and mood. A single ending is a Verbendung; together they form the verb’s conjugation. The form of the endings depends on the verb class, tense, and mood, and some verbs also show stem changes that interact with these endings.

In German, present tense endings for regular verbs are -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en: ich spiele, du spielst, er spielt, wir spielen, ihr spielt, sie spielen. In the simple past (preterite) of regular verbs the endings are -te, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten: ich machte, du machtest, er machte, wir machten, ihr machtet, sie machten. Irregular verbs may alter their stems and/or use different endings. Other moods, such as the subjunctive, introduce additional endings or alternations that reflect hypothetical or reported speech.

Across languages, verb endings vary in how densely they encode grammar. In many Romance languages, present tense endings mark person and number clearly; in English, most verb forms share the same ending outside the third person singular in the present tense, and much of the information is conveyed by auxiliaries or word order. Typologically, languages range from highly inflected systems with numerous verb endings to analytic systems that rely more on auxiliary verbs and function words.

The concept of verb endings is central to describing conjugation in German and to comparing how different languages encode grammatical relations on verbs.