LESSON NOTES

Verb Conjugation #2
The Essential Tools: Part 2

CONTENTS

Vocabulary
Sample sentences
Grammar
Cultural insight

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VOCABULARY

Spanish English Class Gender

tiempo tense, time noun masculine

voz voice noun feminine

pasivo, -a passive adjective

activo, -a active adjective

conjugación conjugation noun feminine

paradigma paradigm noun masculine

radical stem, root noun masculine

terminación ending fem. noun

SAMPLE SENTENCES

Hay varios tiempos en el idioma español. Ella tiene una linda voz.

"There are various tenses in the Spanish "She has a beautiful voice."
language."

La construcción pasiva es muy común en Las oraciones activas son directas.

español.
"Active sentences are direct."
"The passive construction is verb common in
Spanish."

En español hay tres conjugaciones.
"In Spanish there are three conjugations."
Un paradigma nos permite ver una porción de la
conjugación entera.
"A paradigm allows us to see a portion of the
whole conjugation."

El radical del verbo es irreducible. La terminación del verbo contiene mucha

información.
"The stem of a verb is irreducible."
"The ending of the verb contains a lot of
information."

GRAMMAR
In this lesson, we began by reviewing what we studied in Verb Conjugation Lesson 1. Let's take a
moment here to make sure that we really understand these concepts.

The role of the verb: a verb expresses an act, an occurrence or a way of being. Remember that this
action may not seem all that "active", that is, it may well be "doing nothing", "laying around" or
"sleeping", but it nevertheless is an action.

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The verb is made up of two main parts. There is the stem, which in Spanish is "el radical", and then the
ending "la terminación". The stem shares an irreducible part with other words of the same family. For
example, consider the verb "amar" (to love) along with the following words of the same family: "amor"
(love), "amante" (lover), "amado" (beloved). In each, you can see that the stem "am-" is present".

In Spanish, there are three "modos" (moods):

The Indicative Mood expresses an action as real (i.e. "Gabriela me llama", Gabriela calls me);
The Subjunctive Mood expresses an action as possible (i.e. "Ojalá Gabriela me llame", I hope Gabriela
calls me);
The Imperative Mood expresses an action as a command (ie. "¡Gabriela, llámame!", Gabriela, call me!).

We use the term "number" to refer to whether a verb is singular or plural. If the verb is singular, it
means that there is only one subject; if it is plural, it means that there is more than one subject.

Verbs are also divided into three persons: the first, second and third. When we say that a verb is in the
first person, we mean that it's subject is either "yo" (I) or "nosotros" (we). When we say that it is in the
second person, we mean that its subject is either "tú" (you) or "vosotros" (you all). And when we say that
a verb is in the third person, we mean that its subject is either "él" (he), "ella" (she) or "ellos, -as" (they).

We also learned in today's lesson that verbs can be conjugated in different "tiempos" (tenses). It is the
ending of the verb which tells us what tense it is in. So, in the verb "amas" (you love), the ending "-as"
tells us that this verb is in the Present Tense.

When we talk about "voice" in Spanish, we are simply talking about who does the action and who
receives the action. If the subject of the sentence does the action of a verb, then the voice is said to be
"active" (i.e. "Martín me llamó", Martin called me); and if the subject receives the action of the verb, the
voice is said to be "passive" (i.e. "Martín fue llamado por mí", Martin was called by me).

The term "conjugation" has two key meanings: 1) it refers to the three main classes of "regular" verbs in
Spanish [i.e. the first conjugtaion (AR verbs), the second conjugation (ER verbs) and the third conjugation
(IR verbs)]; and 2) it refers to the graphic display of all of the possible formations or "inflections" for one
verb in every tense.

Finally, when we refer to a "paradigm", we simply talking about a small portion of a complete
conjugation of a verb. This allows us to take a focused look at how a verb is conjugated in a certain
tense.

Here, we can see a basic paradigm. This is one of the schemes that we'll be looking at frequently in this
series:

Singular Plural

amo amamos
(I love) (we love)

amas amáis
(you love) (you all love)

ama aman
(he loves) (they love)

ama aman
(she loves) (they love)

ama aman
(you love) (you all love)

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CULTURAL INSIGHT
Last time, we were introduced to the idea of "usage" with verbs. Today, we'll continue this introduction a
bit more. The Present Tense is probably the most used in Spanish, and one of the main reasons for this
is because there are so many different usages of it. For example, we can use the Present Tense to talk
about the past: "en el siglo diecisiete, Sor Juana escribe su mejor poesía" (in the seventeenth century, Sor
Juana writes her best poetry). Just the same, we can use the Present Tense to talk about the past: "nos
vemos más tarde" (I'll see you later on). We'll be looking at more phenomena like these in the upcoming
lessons, focusing on one usage per lesson.

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