Editing Fusional language (section)

==Fusional inflections==

Inflections in fusional languages tend to fall in two patterns, based on which part of speech they modify: [[declension]]s for nouns and adjectives, and [[Grammatical conjugation|conjugation]]s for verbs.

===Declension===
{{main article|Declension}}
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One feature of many fusional languages is their systems of [[declension]]s in which nouns and adjectives have an affix attached to them that specifies [[grammatical case]] (their uses in the clause), [[number (grammar)|number]] and [[grammatical gender]]. Pronouns may also alter their forms entirely to encode that information. 

Within a fusional language, there are usually more than one declension; [[Latin]] and [[Greek language|Greek]] have five, and the [[Slavic languages]] have anywhere between three and seven. [[German language|German]] has multiple declensions based on the vowel or consonant ending the word, though they tend to be more unpredictable.

However, many descendants of fusional languages tend to lose their case marking. In most [[Romance languages|Romance]] and [[Germanic languages]], including Modern [[English language|English]] (with the notable exceptions of German, Icelandic and Faroese), encoding for case is merely vestigial because it no longer encompasses nouns and adjectives but only pronouns.

Compare the [[Italian language|Italian]] ''egli'' (masculine singular [[nominative]]), ''gli'' (masculine singular [[dative]], or indirect object), ''lo'' (masculine singular [[accusative]]) and ''lui'' (also masculine singular accusative but emphatic and [[indirect object|indirect case]] to be used with prepositions), corresponding to the single vestigial trio ''he, him, his'' in English.

===Conjugation===
{{main article|Grammatical conjugation}}
[[Grammatical conjugation|Conjugation]] is the alteration of the form of a [[verb]] to encode information about some or all of [[grammatical mood]], [[grammatical voice|voice]], [[grammatical tense|tense]], [[grammatical aspect|aspect]], [[grammatical person|person]], [[grammatical gender]] and [[grammatical number|number]]. In a fusional language, two or more of those pieces of information may be conveyed in a single morpheme, typically a suffix.

For example, in [[French language|French]], the verbal suffix depends on the mood, tense and aspect of the verb, as well as on the person and number (but not the gender) of its subject. That gives rise to typically [[French conjugation#First-group verbs (-er verbs)|45 different single-word forms]] of the verb, each of which conveys some or all of the following:
*'''mood''' ([[indicative mood|indicative]], [[subjunctive mood|subjunctive]], [[conditional mood|conditional]] or [[imperative mood|imperative]])
*'''tense''' ([[past tense|past]], [[present tense|present]] or [[future tense|future]])
*'''aspect''' ([[perfective aspect|perfective]] or [[imperfective aspect|imperfective]])
*'''person''' (first, second or third), and
*'''number''' (singular or plural). 

Changing any one of those pieces of information without changing the others requires the use of a different suffix, the key characteristic of fusionality.

English has two examples of conjugational fusion. The verbal suffix ''-s'' indicates a combination of present tense with both third-person and singularity of the associated subject, and the verbal suffix ''-ed'' used in a verb with no auxiliary verb conveys both [[progressive aspect|non-progressive aspect]] and past tense.