formgebundene

Formgebundene is a German adjective meaning “bound to form.” In linguistic usage, it describes phenomena whose behavior, distribution, or interpretation is determined primarily by the form (the morphological shape) of a word rather than by its meaning alone or by syntax. The concept is often employed in discussions of morphology and morphosyntax.

In morphology, formgebundene Merkmale (form-bound features) are typically realized as endings, affixes, or other internal word-form changes. The classic example is inflection: case, number, and gender endings in languages with rich morphology depend on the form of the noun or determiner and on grammatical context. German adjective endings illustrate this clearly, as in ein guter Mann, eine gute Frau, gute Männer, where the form of the ending changes with gender, number, and case, and with the determiner present.

Formgebundenheit is contrasted with phenomena that are more semantically driven or less constrained by form, such as certain independent words or constructions whose function can vary with context rather than being fixed by the word’s form alone. The concept also highlights differences among languages: some rely heavily on form-bound morphology, while others use less inflection and more syntactic or analytic strategies.

In practice, formgebundene analyses are common in typology, language teaching, and computational linguistics, where grammars and morphological analyzers must account for how grammatical information is encoded in the word’s form. See also: morphology, inflection, morphosyntax, grammatical gender.