inflektiert

Inflektiert (inflected) is a German adjective describing a form that bears grammatical information through inflection. The related verb inflektieren means to inflect. An inflected form carries information such as case, number, person, tense, mood, or degree, allowing grammatical relations to be expressed without relying solely on word order.

Inflection applies across parts of speech. In German, nouns change for case and number (for example: Hund in nominative singular; Hundes in genitive singular; Hunde in nominative and accusative plural). Verbs change for person and number and for tense and mood (gehen: ich gehe, du gehst, er geht; past tense: ging; perfect: gegangen). Adjectives decline for case, number and gender, and have comparative and superlative forms (alt → älter → am ältesten).

Inflection varies by language. Some languages are highly inflected (Latin, Russian) with extensive endings; others are analytic or isolating (English, Mandarin) and rely more on word order and auxiliary words. Some languages use gender and case markers on pronouns, adjectives and nouns; others show a narrower range of inflection.

In computing and lexicography, inflection matters for lemmatization, stemming, and morphological analysis. An inflected form maps to a lemma or base form; recognizing inflection helps in search, language learning, and linguistic research. The term inflektiert can describe a form that shows grammatical information, for example an inflektierte Verbform or Substantivform.