konjugoituva

Konjugoituva is a linguistic term used in Finnish-language descriptions to designate a word or word form that can undergo conjugation. Conjugation refers to inflectional changes that express grammatical categories such as person, number, tense, mood, voice, or aspect. In languages with rich verbal morphology, many verbs and certain related forms are described as konjugoituva, meaning they can take a full or partial set of inflectional endings.

Etymology and usage. The word is formed from the Finnish konjugointi or konjugoida, meaning to conjugate, with the participial suffix -tuva indicating a potential or usable state. In linguistic literature, konjugoituva serves as a broad label for items that participate in a language’s verb-like inflection system. The term is most commonly applied to verbs, but can also be used in typological discussions to describe other categories that show agreement or subordination through inflection in certain languages.

Examples. In Finnish, the verb puhua (to speak) is konjugoituva, since it forms a paradigm across persons and numbers (puhun, puhut, puhuu, puhumme, puhutte, puhuvat). The label helps contrast such items with forms or categories that do not take standard inflection in a given language, or with stems that require auxiliary constructions rather than direct conjugation.

Relation to morphology. Konjugoituva is a descriptive criterion used in grammar and typology to categorize lexical items by their capacity for inflection. It highlights how a language encodes who performs an action, when, and under what circumstances, through morphological endings.