konjugierbar

Konjugierbar is a linguistic term used to describe a word that can undergo conjugation, that is, it can take on different forms to express grammatical categories such as person, number, tense, mood, voice, and aspect. In many languages, verbs are the primary class of words that are konjugierbar, because they inflect to indicate who is performing an action, when it takes place, and how the action is viewed.

In German grammar, konjugierbar typically applies to verbs. Verbs belong to a paradigm of conjugated forms, for example gehen (to go) in the present tense ich gehe, du gehst, er geht, and in past and future tenses as well as moods like the subjunctive. Nouns and adjectives, by contrast, are usually described as flektierbar (inflected) rather than konjugierbar, because they change according to case, number, and gender rather than person or tense. Some languages blur these boundaries, but the core idea remains: a konjugierbar word participates in a systematic set of morphophonological changes.

Irregular verbs are still konjugierbar, though their forms must be memorized or generated by rules. Non-konjugierbare items include interjections, many proper nouns, and words that do not express action or state in a way that requires verb-like inflection in a given language.

In lexicography and natural language processing, tagging a lemma as konjugierbar helps determine whether a full verb paradigm exists and how to generate or recognize its inflected forms. See also conjugation, inflection, and declension.