Inflektion

Inflektion is a term used in linguistics to describe the systematic modification of a word’s form to express grammatical information. It encompasses the processes by which words change to indicate features such as case, number, gender, person, tense, mood, aspect, or voice. Inflection can occur through adding affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes), through internal stem changes (vowel alternations), or through suppletion where entirely different word forms are used. The concept is central to many languages and is often contrasted with analytic or isolating systems that rely more on word order and auxiliary words than on internal word changes.

The phenomenon is particularly evident in nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Nouns and adjectives may decline or agree for case and number and, in some languages, gender. Verbs typically conjugate for person and number and inflect for tense, mood, aspect, and voice. Examples include German noun declension (der Hund, des Hundes, die Hunde) and German verb conjugation (ich gehe, du gehst, er geht). Latin provides a classic illustration with amō, amās, amat, and the infinitive amāre.

Languages differ widely in their inflectional systems. Some languages are highly inflected, with numerous endings that mark grammatical categories (for example many Slavic and Baltic languages). Others are moderately inflected (German or Spanish), while some are minimally inflected or analytic (Chinese, Vietnamese), relying more on word order and auxiliary words to convey grammatical relations.

In linguistic research and natural language processing, inflection data underpin tasks such as morphological analysis, lemmatization, and part-of-speech tagging, aiding in the analysis of syntax and historical language change.