Böjprov

Böjprov, or inflection test, is a linguistic exercise used to determine the inflected forms of a word across its grammatical paradigms. It surveys how a word changes to express categories such as number, definiteness and gender for nouns and adjectives, and tense, mood, aspect, voice, person and number for verbs. In languages with rich morphology, a böjprov lists the expected forms for a lemma across its full paradigm.

The term is commonly used in language education, lexicography, and linguistic documentation. In schools and universities, students may complete böjprov to demonstrate knowledge of how words decline or conjugate. Lexicographers and language engineers use similar exercises to compile dictionaries and to design morphological analyzers for natural language processing. Böjprov data can also be employed in corpora annotation and in the development of language-learning resources.

Structure and scope vary by language. For a Swedish noun such as bok, a böjprov might include forms like boken (definite singular) and böckerna (definite plural), as well as the plural indefinite form böcker. For verbs, a böjprov would cover forms across tenses and moods. Some tests focus only on core forms, while others aim to capture irregular or dialectal variations.

Challenges include irregularities, loanwords, and dialectal differences that complicate uniform inflection. In modern applications, böjprov data supports both pedagogy and computational tools for morphological analysis and language processing.

See also: grammar, inflection, declension, conjugation.