Editing 1709: Inflection

While walking, [[Megan]] tells [[Cueball]] that in {{w|inflected languages}} — such as {{w|German language|German}} — changes in the spelling of a word changes its meaning, in a predictable way. Megan exemplifies this with how {{w|plural}} forms of {{w|nouns}} are created by sticking an "s" at the end, and {{w|past tense}} of a {{w|verb}} is done by the suffix "ed". Megan then explains that this works well in {{w|languages}} which build on {{w|alphabets}}.

She continues to explain that their {{w|Indo-European languages|language family}} belongs to those that are inflected, but the {{w|Modern English|English branch}} is becoming less inflected than it used to be. Specifically this explains why English does not have so many {{w|Latin conjugations}}. A conjugation is a pattern of inflections, describing how a particular group of verbs is altered from its root form to represent different grammatical cases. Only verbs have conjugations (are ''conjugated''), nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are described by declensions (and are ''declined''). All inflected languages can be described by conjugations and declensions, although Latin is one of the most commonly cited, perhaps because Latin grammar was taught for centuries by monotonous rote learning of the conjugations and declensions.

A typical Latin conjugation would be the verb '''amare''', to love.

{|

|-

! colspan="2" | Plural

! ''they love''

! Perfect, Passive, Subjunctive

! colspan="2" | Singular

! 'amemor'

! ''he/she/it should be loved''

! ''they should be loved''

(The English singular uses archaic forms to highlight the number and person.)  A complete conjugation includes all tenses (Present, Imperfect, Future, Perfect, Pluperfect, and Puture Perfect), both voices (Active & Passive), and all moods (Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive). Other parts of speech — infinitives, participles, gerunds, and so forth — are needed to completely define the verb, but are not usually considered to be part of the conjugation.

Cueball then asks ''Could that mean that English writing might be ripe to become more pictographic?'' Instead of using traditional words, Megan replies with three {{w|emojis}} "Thumbs up" (like), "Applause", and a smiley — thus showing a pictographic version of the writing which has become more popular in the last years. Emoji has become a [[:Category:Emoji|recurring theme]] on xkcd.

The writing systems of many languages have both {{w|pictographic}} and {{w|ideographic}} origins. "Pictographic" means that they are pictures of some thing that will remind the reader of either the pronunciation or the meaning of the word. The letter "A", for example, originated from a word meaning "ox", but was meant to remind readers of the glottal stop (it wasn't until the Ancient Greeks, who didn't have the glottal stop as a distinct phoneme, got a hold of the Phoenician version that it was transferred to the vowel(s) it is today). "Ideographic" means that they are designed, through pictures, to illustrate some idea. An example would be a "No Smoking" sign, where a red circle with a diagonal line is an abstract representation of "no". In fact, the three emojis used in the third panel of this cartoon are all ideographic, not pictographic, under this definition. "Thumbs up" (like), "Applause", and the smiley, are all emojis that remind us of a concept of approval.

 

 

The title text points out that some intentional misspelling are used in Internet slang to alter the meaning of a word: "what" becomes "[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wat wat]" to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wat express] confusion, disgust or disbelief. The title text also uses typographical variation to emphasize the word MORE by using all capital letters. Such emphasis is difficult to show with inflected language alone.

 

This comic is referenced at 4500 BCE in huge chart of [[1732: Earth Temperature Timeline]]. According to that comic it was at that time inflection was invented but just to tease future students so they have to remember a [[#Modern verb conjugation in English|zillion verb endings]].

:Megan: Inflected languages change words to add meaning, like "-s" for plurals or "-ed" for past tense.

In all of these conjugations, the only inflections on the main verb "walk" are "-s", "-ed", and "-ing". The highly irregular helper verbs, "be" and "have", have somewhat more interesting inflections. And although this table shows only the third person, the first and second person would only introduce the helper verb "am" (as in "I am walking"); similarly, the table shows only the indicative mood, but the subjunctive and imperative moods would not introduce any additional words, and the conditional mood would only introduce the helper verb "would" (an inflection of the irregular helper verb "will") without any additional inflections on the main verb "walk". If instead we made this table in Spanish (for example), then there would be many more inflections on the main verb (12 in the third-person indicative alone, 45 including all persons and moods, if I didn't miscount).