inflexionális

Inflexionális is a term used in linguistics to describe words or languages in which grammatical information is primarily expressed through inflection. Inflection refers to the modification of a word’s form to encode features such as case, number, gender, tense, mood, person, voice, and degree. An inflexionális system uses affixes, internal stem changes, or other morphophonological adjustments to signal these grammatical relations, rather than relying mainly on fixed word order or separate auxiliary words.

Languages described as inflexionális often exhibit a high degree of morphological richness. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs may change endings to indicate case and number, or to mark tense and aspect. For example, Latin and German show extensive noun declensions and verb conjugations, while Russian combines noun endings with verbal forms to convey a range of grammatical information. English, by contrast, has largely reduced its inflectional system, using a combination of a few suffixes and auxiliary constructions to express tense and agreement.

The term helps distinguish inflexionális systems from analytic or isolating languages, where grammatical relationships are conveyed mainly through word order and helper words rather than word-form changes. It is also used in contrast with agglutinative systems, where strings of affixes attach to a base, creating long word forms that encode multiple grammatical categories. In linguistic typology, inflexionális (or flektív) languages are commonly described as fusional, although many languages display mixed or intermediate characteristics.