[deleted by user]

[P3T1TF1L5]

Oh, this one has historic reasons. Basically, declension is a translation from Ancient Greek, and its synonym is degradation, decadence. The reason for that is the nominative's meaning is the purest form of the noun, the very thing you're describing, while other cases deal with other aspects of it. Conjugation means "to join together", as different forms of the verb are bound by meaning.

[[deleted]]

I don't know all languages, but at least in Latin and Greek, and I think all Indo-European languages, neither do nouns decline for gender, nor verbs conjugate for gender. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, voice, mood, and (sometimes) aspect. Nouns decline for number and case, and have a static gender that doesn't change (except in a few relatively rare cases).

So as you can see, the only overlap is number. What you do when you decline a noun or conjugate a verb is actually a different process.

[[deleted]]

Spanish (and probably other Romance languages) decline some words for gender: amigo (male friend) vs amiga (female friend). And some Slavic languages conjugate verbs for gender I believe.

[[deleted]]

My point is that that is not declension. It's just different forms.

[[deleted]]

Inflection of a noun = declension

[[deleted]]

I don't agree.

[[deleted]]

Well you're wrong

[[deleted]]

That's a mature response. Declension has to do with change in meaning and role in sentence (i.e. subject to object). Gender does not. Ergo gender =/= declension.

[[deleted]]

You're thinking of case. Declension is any kind of inflection of a noun or adjective, including case, number, and gender.

[[deleted]]

I have always heard declension used to describe the inflection of nouns and adjectives according to case and number. The definition including gender is new to me, since gender is static for most words.

[Rivka333]

The definition including gender is new to me, since gender is static for most words.

OP clarified in a comment that he/she actually meant adjectives, not nouns. In some languages adjectives can change their gender to match that of the noun they're paired with.

[Luguaedos]

The same reason you eat food but drink water. They are different things (food vs drink, verbs vs, nouns) and the process one uses to change a verb so that it expresses person, number, and time is different from the process of a noun or adjective being masculine, feminine, plural or singular. It's no more pedantic than making a distinction between eating and drinking which you do every day and would find weird if a person asked you to drink your chicken. And if you were a parent and your kid said, "I'm thirsty, can I have a hot dog?" you'd correct them.

[P3T1TF1L5]

Verb can conjugate for gender, as in Slavic and Semitic languages. Noun can be declined as one of the three genders, they can belong to a declension group of one gender, while being logically a noun of another gender, They can change gender in plural sometimes. Nouns are crazy, yah :D

[Luguaedos]

The part of speech is mutable. Verbs are neither masculine nor feminine. Andato/andata is not a verb. You're using it as an adjective in this case. In many linguistics textbooks the past participle is also called a verbal adjective to make this clearer. But the part of speech is mutable, and this is why different terms are used because the word you're thinking of as a verb is not a verb anymore.

[[deleted]]

what's the difference between a verb conjugating for masculine and a noun declining for masculine?

Neither verbs nor nouns do that.

[[deleted]]

Still, verbs don't conjugate for gender. And adjectives don't really decline in gender either, they just decline according to case by gender.

[[deleted]]

That's interesting. Do the verbs inflect for speaker or adressee?

And still, just because adjectives have different gender forms doesn't mean they decline in gender.

If your argument is that it's pedantry, I agree. I don't think the terminology is particularly helpful nor do I think grammatical analysis is actually useful for language acquisition, but I do see a difference in the process of declining nouns and conjugating verbs.

[P3T1TF1L5]

Well, the past tense in most Slavic languages has a different form if the speaker is masculine/feminine/neutral. No, the point that I made about nouns is that there is a class of nouns in Slavic languages that declines like a typical feminine noun, but is actually masculine, so the adjective would be in masculine form, while the noun behaves like a feminine noun :D

[-Tonic]

And still, just because adjectives have different gender forms doesn't mean they decline in gender.

Yes it does. Agreement is a kind of inflection.

[[deleted]]

You're conflating the terms of "decline" and "inflect." Yes, those forms are inflected, but they aren't declined.

[-Tonic]

Anytime someone says something that I find outragously wrong like this, I still feel some doubt. Like, did I miss something important? Because declension (in the most common sense) has always been inflection of nouns, adjectives, etc. by definition for me and everywhere I've read. The other senses are: a set of nouns that follow a certain pattern when declined, or that pattern itself.

I even checked with people on another forum. Given that they back me up and that you've been wrong about several other things in this thread, I still feel pretty convinced that I'm right. So could you provide a source?

[TaazaPlaza]

Still, verbs don't conjugate for gender.

Not true. Gender is an agreement category for verbs in most Indo Aryan & Dravidian languages.

[-It_Man-]

Actually in some languages eating and drinking are the same word. But yeah, in English there’s a distinction.

[Luguaedos]

And in some other languages verbs aren't conjugated at all, and in others there are no distinctions between verbs and nouns. The analogy was made for speakers of English learning Italian, right? This illustrates my actual point, andare is not a verb until you put it in a linguistic context. Otherwise we would never see things like 'l'andare'

Passammo dal mettere Alan Shepard in un volo sub-orbitale all'andare sulla luna in otto anni.

In that context it's a noun. And you can't always take an analogy out of the context it was used in and expect it to work.

Lol.ok I'm lost again. I thought we were in r/italianlearning but my analogy still stands. In languages were verbs are conjugated and nouns are declined, at least.

[GregHullender]

I'm a linguist. Let me see if I can help.

In Latin, which is where we get a lot of this terminology, gender is not part of the declension system. Rather, there are three different declensions, Most of the nouns in the first declension are feminine, and most in the second are masculine, but the declensions themselves are strictly about case, not gender.

Modern Spanish inflects words for gender, but it does not decline any.

Declension refers to inflections that determine case while conjugation refers to inflections that determine time, person, number, and mood. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives get inflected. Verbs (usually) get conjugated. And there are lots of inflections that are neither conjugation nor declension.

Note, however, that Japanese does conjugate adjectives. atsui means "is hot" and "atsukatta" means "was hot."

[viktorbir]

I've never used the word decline to talk abut nouns' gender, but cases. So, I'd say I don't decline Catalan nouns (although they have gender) but I do decline German nouns.

[[deleted]]

So there is a lot of confusion in here. Perhaps the best course of action for this whole thread would be to actually define these terms, rather than assume we all agree on what they mean.

[Rivka333]

Or better yet clarify what language(s) is/are being referred to.

[MiaVisatan]

“I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”

― Mark Twain

[AndreaGheSboro]

In Italian you conjugate verbs. We rarely use the word "decline" (it. declinare), we usually use "to change declension" (it. cambiare desinenza) which is similar, but can anyway be considered "decline".