Appendix talk:Declensions

Very nice. Maybe there could be a "conjugations" appendix too giving the verb endings for regular verbs in Romance languages (and others, where appropriate); something along the lines of:

French

Regular verbs ending in -er

                         Present tense   Future tense

First-person singular    -e              -ai 

Second-person singular   -es             -as

etc. -- Paul G 09:03, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maybe a better name for the appendix would be "Verb tables". -- Paul G 09:03, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I do plan on working on this too. Also in making sure entries link to their appropriate declension or conjugation, as for example musica does. But I think "Appendix:Conjugations" would be the better standard name (though perhaps "verb tables" might be a good redirect to have for clarity's sake?)

Alternately this page could be renamed "Inflections" and catalogue both but that feels untidy somehow. —Muke Tever 14:24, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Finnish declension

This applies, in part, to conjugation of Finnish verbs as well.

I haven't been including information about how Finnish words inflect in the articles. This is mainly because I have been unsure how to do it: including every form would be pointless and too time- and space-consuming because there are so many forms for noun-like words (even more for verbs). The Finnish Wiktionary uses numbers for inflectional types: 1–49 for noun-like words and 52–78 for verbs. (The types 50 and 51 tell whether the both parts of a compound inflect or not.) The types A–M refer to consonant gradation which appears in conjunction with the declension and conjugation.

It would be easiest to adopt the same scheme here but I don't know if that would be the best choice. Some types are very rare and include only one word (like 42, 46 and 63) while some are extremely common. If we gave the required stems in an article, there wouldn't be need for that many inflectional types. That would increase the amount of typing, though.

For noun-like words, the following stems would be required, at maximum (the attributive vowel or consonant gives the identity of the final sound of the stem):

strong vowel stem 
weak vowel stem 
consonant stem
plural vowel stem 

or

strong vowel stem 
weak vowel stem 
strong plural vowel stem
weak plural vowel stem

or

vowel stem
consonant stem
plural vowel stem.

At minimum, many words have

singular vowel stem
plural vowel stem.

There are rules to find the plural stem(s) from the singular stem(s) but they are often detailed and maybe too encyclopedic. If the stem approach were adopted, the stems would have to be explained somewhere, perhaps on the Appendix page. On the other hand, the consonant gradation would be apparent from the given stems. — What do you think?

Hyark 21:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)