Inflection

From UniLang Wiki

Inflection is the change of words according to grammatical function.

Inflection of verbs is also called conjugation.
Inflection of nouns is also called declension.

Normally inflection is done by adding suffixes to the stem, this is also called weak inflection. If the stem also changes one speaks of strong inflection.

Identifying the stem and learning its inflections is an important part of learning an inflecting language. Some languages, such as Chinese, don't have any inflection though, their words, written with Chinese characters (Hanzi), are unchangable, and information such as singular/plural has to be guessed from the context. The Japanese writing system however, which also uses the Chinese characters for writing, has highly inflected verbs, leading to the creation of the Kana, the syllabic alphabets allowing the Japanese to write their endings.


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Translations

  • Danish: bøjning c
  • Faroese: bending f
  • Swedish: böjning c
  • Italian: flessione m
  • Portuguese: flexão f

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