Endungen

Endungen, in linguistics, are suffixes attached to a word stem to express grammatical information or to form new words. They are typically grouped into inflectional endings, which modify a word’s form to reflect category like case or tense, and derivational endings, which create new words or change word class. Endings are a fundamental part of morphology and can vary in regularity and productivity across languages.

In German, Endungen play a central role in marking grammatical relationships. Nouns carry endings that indicate case and number. For example, the singular nes of der Mann shows a genitive ending des Mannes, while the plural Männer adds the -er suffix and umlaut. Das Haus becomes die Häuser in the plural, where -er is a common plural suffix. Adjective endings depend on the determiner or article in the noun phrase. After definite articles, adjectives take endings like der große Mann or die große Frau; without a determiner, they show stronger endings, as in großer Mann. These patterns reflect different declension classes (strong, weak, mixed) and illustrate how Endungen encode syntactic information.

Verbs also use Endungen to indicate person and number in the present tense: ich spiele, du spielst, er spielt, wir spielen, ihr spielt, sie spielen. Past tense or perfect forms use participles with prefixes like ge- and endings such as -t or -en (gespielt, gemacht). Endings in verb conjugation interact with vowel changes (ablaut) and other morphophonemic adjustments.

Endungen extend beyond German, influencing many languages where suffixes govern case, tense, aspect, mood, or word formation. They are a key focus in morphology, syntax, and phonology, shaping how meaning is expressed in sentence structure.