Inflexionssystem

Inflexionssystem, or inflection system, is the set of processes by which a language forms different word forms to express grammatical categories such as case, number, gender, tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, and definiteness. It includes inflectional affixes, internal stem changes, and irregular forms, and applies to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and certain other word classes.

A language's inflexionssystem is typically organized into paradigms, which are complete sets of inflected forms for a given lemma. Paradigms may be regular or irregular and often require agreement with other elements of the sentence, such as subject number or possessor gender.

Typologically, inflexionssystem can be fusional, where a single affix encodes multiple categories; agglutinative, where each category is represented by a separate morpheme; or mixed, with additional stem changes and suppletion in some languages.

Examples of inflexionssystem patterns appear across language families. Latin, Russian, and Sanskrit have rich inflectional paradigms; German shows strong noun and verb inflection; English exhibits relatively reduced inflection in modern use; Finnish and Hungarian are highly inflectional with numerous case endings.

In linguistics, inflexionssystem is used to analyze grammar, historical change, and typology. In computational linguistics, it informs morphological analyzers and parsers, aiding automatic processing of language data. In language pedagogy, it guides instruction on conjugation and declension to help learners master grammatical agreement.