Verbinormid

Verbinormid is a theoretical construct in linguistics used to describe the standardized set of verb forms that govern conjugation patterns in a language or language family. It refers to the canonical paradigm of a verb, including forms needed to express tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number, and in some analyses may extend to evidentiality and polarity. The verbinormid is a descriptive tool rather than a concrete language, designed to facilitate cross-language comparison of verb morphology.

Components and variation can be observed across languages. A verbinormid may be simple, with a single stem combined with a small, fixed set of affixes or changes; or it may be complex, involving multiple stem alternations, suppletion, or extensive affixation. Irregularities are common in real languages, where some forms deviate from the regular pattern. In analytic or isolating languages, tense or aspect may be expressed periphrastically rather than by inflection, while synthetic languages rely more on inflectional endings within the verbinormid. The concept distinguishes between regular paradigms and irregular or suppletive forms within the same language family.

Applications and usage are primarily in descriptive and comparative linguistics, typology, and the study of constructed languages. Verbinormid provides a framework for documenting how verbs are inflected, enabling researchers to compare morphological inventories and paradigm structures across languages. It also supports language teaching, historical reconstruction, and the design of artificial languages by clarifying the kinds of categories a verb system might encode.

Example: in a simplified verbinormid used for illustration, a verb stem may take a present form with suffix -a and a past form with suffix -ed. Person is marked by a separate ending -1, -2, -3 attached after the tense suffix, yielding forms such as stem-a-1 (present) and stem-ed-1 (past) for first person.