inflectionally

Inflectionally is an adverb derived from inflectional, used to describe the manner in which a word is inflected or carries inflectional morphology. In linguistics, inflection refers to changes in a word’s form to encode grammatical information such as tense, number, case, gender, mood, aspect, person, and voice. Inflectional morphology focuses on these endings and modifications, as opposed to derivational morphology, which creates new words or changes meaning.

In usage, inflectionally marked forms are contrasted with non-inflected or derivational forms. For example, in the sentence “In Latin, nouns are inflectionally marked for case,” the phrase inflectionally signals that the noun form indicates grammatical case through inflection rather than through semantic change or word order alone. English provides limited inflection compared with many other languages, with verbs showing tense and agreement inflections and nouns sometimes varying for number, while adjectives may show degree inflection in some languages.

The term highlights the morphological aspect of language description and is common in linguistic analysis, grammars, and typology discussions. Its applicability and prominence vary across language families, reflecting differences in how languages encode grammatical relationships through word form versus syntax.

See also: inflection, morphology, inflected, conjugation, declension.