Ragozású

Ragozású is a linguistic term used to describe a word that changes form to express grammatical information. In languages with inflection, ragozású words modify their endings or internal structure to indicate features such as tense, mood, person, number, case or possessor. The concept contrasts with ragozásmentes or uninflected words, which do not alter their form for grammatical purposes.

In Hungarian grammar, ragozású forms are common for both verbs and nouns, and to some extent for other parts of speech. Verbs undergo conjugation, producing forms that reflect person, number, tense and mood, among other categories. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns can take suffixes that mark number, possession and case in many contexts. The same root can appear in multiple inflected forms within a sentence, enabling relatively free word order while still conveying grammatical relations.

Examples illustrate the idea. The verb megy (go) is ragozású: forms include megyek (I go), mentem (I went), mennek (they go). The noun ház (house) is ragozású: forms such as házakat (houses as direct object) or házának (to/for his/her house) show its inflected variants. These alternating forms are characteristic of ragozású words, enabling precise syntax without relying solely on word position.

The term is widely used in linguistic descriptions, language teaching, and dictionaries to indicate that a word has inflected forms. It helps distinguish morphologically contentful words from those with fixed or minimal variation.