Inflexión

Este artículo incluye una lista de referencias generales , pero permanece en gran parte sin verificar porque carece de suficientes citas en línea correspondientes . Ayude a mejorar este artículo introduciendo citas más precisas. ( Junio de 2019 ) ( Obtenga información sobre cómo y cuándo eliminar este mensaje de plantilla )

Rasgos gramaticales
Relacionado con sustantivos
Animación Caso Construcción dativa Cambio dativo Asunto peculiar Clasificador Estado de construcción Contabilidad Sustantivo CONTABLE Sustantivo total Sustantivo colectivo Definitividad Género Construcción genitiva Posesión Suffixaufnahme (apilamiento de cajas) Sustantivo clase Número Singular Plural Doble Prueba, etc. Singulativo-Colectivo-Plurativo Especificidad Amoladora universal
Relacionado con los verbos
Movimiento asociado Clusividad Conjugación Evidencialidad Modalidad Persona Telicidad Tenso-aspecto-estado de ánimo Aspecto gramatical Aspecto léxico (Aktionsart) Estado animico Tiempo Voz
Características generales
Afectar Delimitación Comparación (grado) Pluralidad (número verbal) Honoríficos (cortesía) Polaridad Reciprocidad Pronombre reflexivo Verbo reflexivo
Relaciones de sintaxis
Argumento Transitividad Valencia Derivación Construcción de verbos en serie Gramática tradicional Predicado Sujeto Objeto Adjunto Predicativo
Semántica
Contraste Miratividad Relación temática Agente Paciente Tema y comentario Enfocar Voluntad Veridicalidad
Fenómenos
Convenio Acuerdo polipersonal Declinación Categoría vacía Incorporación Inflexión Marcaje
v t mi

Inflexión del lexema gaélico escocés para "perro", que es cù para singular, chù para dual con el número dà ("dos") y coin para plural

En morfología lingüística , la inflexión (o inflexión ) es un proceso de formación de palabras , ^[1] en el que una palabra se modifica para expresar diferentes categorías gramaticales como tiempo , caso , voz , aspecto , persona , número , género , estado de ánimo , animicidad , y precisión . ^[2] La inflexión de los verbos se llama conjugación , y uno puede referirse a la inflexión desustantivos , adjetivos , adverbios , pronombres , determinantes , participios , preposiciones y posposiciones , numerales , artículos , etc., como declinación .

Una inflexión expresa categorías gramaticales con afijación (como prefijo , sufijo , infijo , circunfijo y transfijo ), apofonía (como ablaut indoeuropeo ) u otras modificaciones. ^[3] Por ejemplo, el verbo latino ducam , que significa " dirigiré ", incluye el sufijo -am , que expresa persona (primero), número (singular) y tiempo-modo (futuro de indicativo o presente de subjuntivo). El uso de este sufijo es una inflexión. Por el contrario, en la cláusula inglesa "I will lead", la palabra leadno se declina por persona, número o tiempo; es simplemente la forma desnuda de un verbo.

La forma flexionada de una palabra a menudo contiene tanto uno o más morfemas libres (una unidad de significado que puede sostenerse por sí misma como una palabra) como uno o más morfemas ligados (una unidad de significado que no puede sostenerse por sí sola como una palabra). Por ejemplo, la palabra inglesa cars es un sustantivo que se declina por número , específicamente para expresar el plural; el contenido del morfema car no está ligado porque podría estar solo como una palabra, mientras que el sufijo -s está ligado porque no puede estar solo como una palabra. Estos dos morfemas juntos forman la palabra carros con inflexión .

Se dice que las palabras que nunca están sujetas a inflexión son invariantes ; por ejemplo, el verbo en inglés debe es un elemento invariante: nunca toma un sufijo o cambia de forma para significar una categoría gramatical diferente. Sus categorías solo pueden determinarse a partir de su contexto. Se dice que los idiomas que rara vez utilizan inflexiones, como el inglés , son analíticos . Se dice que los lenguajes analíticos que no utilizan morfemas derivacionales , como el chino estándar , son aislantes .

Exigir que las formas o inflexiones de más de una palabra en una oración sean compatibles entre sí de acuerdo con las reglas del idioma se conoce como concordia o acuerdo . Por ejemplo, en "el coro canta", "coro" es un sustantivo singular, por lo que "cantar" está restringido en el tiempo presente para usar el sufijo de tercera persona singular "s". La oración * "the choir sing" no es gramaticalmente correcta en inglés. ^[a]

Los lenguajes que tienen cierto grado de inflexión son lenguajes sintéticos . Estos pueden estar muy flexionados (como latín , griego , hebreo bíblico y sánscrito ) o levemente flexionados (como inglés , holandés , persa ). Los idiomas que tienen tantas inflexiones que una oración puede consistir en una sola palabra con muchas inflexiones (como muchos idiomas nativos americanos ) se denominan idiomas polisintéticos . Los idiomas en los que cada inflexión transmite solo una categoría gramatical, como el finlandés , se conocen como idiomas aglutinantes., mientras que los idiomas en los que una sola inflexión puede transmitir múltiples roles gramaticales (como tanto el caso nominativo como el plural, como en latín y alemán ) se denominan fusionales .

Ejemplos en inglés [ editar ]

En inglés, la mayoría de los sustantivos se declinan por número con el afijo flexional plural -s (como en "dog" → "dog- s "), y la mayoría de los verbos ingleses se declinan para el tiempo con el tiempo pasado inflexivo afijo -s (como en "call "→" call- ed "). El inglés también declina los verbos por afijación para marcar la tercera persona del singular en el tiempo presente (con -s ) y el participio presente (con -ing ). Los adjetivos cortos en inglés se declinan para marcar formas comparativas y superlativas (con -er y -est respectivamente).

Hay nueve afijos de flexión en el idioma inglés. ^{[ cita requerida ]}

Afijos inflexibles en inglés
Afijo	Categoría gramatical	Marcos	Parte del discurso
-s	Número	plural	sustantivos
-s / '/ s	Caso	genitivo	sustantivos y frases nominales , pronombres (marca genitivo independiente )
-uno mismo	Caso	reflexivo	pronombre
-En g	Aspecto	progresivo	verbos
-en / -ed	Aspecto	perfecto no progresivo	verbos
-ed	Tiempo	pasado ( simple )	verbos
-s	Persona , número, aspecto, tiempo	3a persona del singular presente	verbos
-er	Grado de comparación	comparativo	adjetivos (monosilábicos o terminados en -y o -ie)
-est	Grado de comparación	superlativo	adjetivos

A pesar de la marcha hacia la regularización, el inglés moderno conserva rastros de su ascendencia, y una minoría de sus palabras todavía usa la inflexión por ablaut (cambio de sonido, principalmente en verbos) y diéresis (un tipo particular de cambio de sonido, principalmente en sustantivos), también. como alternancia de vocales largas-cortas. Por ejemplo:

Escribir, escribir, escribir (marcar con una variación de ablaut y también añadir sufijos en el participio )
Cantar, cantar, cantar (ablaut)
Pie, pies (marcado por variación de diéresis )
Ratón, ratones (diéresis)
Niño, niños (ablaut, y también sufijo en plural)

Para más detalles, véase el plural Inglés , verbos en inglés , y los verbos irregulares en inglés .

Inflexión regular e irregular [ editar ]

Cuando una determinada clase de palabras está sujeta a inflexión en un idioma en particular, generalmente hay uno o más patrones estándar de inflexión (los paradigmas que se describen a continuación) que pueden seguir las palabras de esa clase. Se dice que las palabras que siguen este patrón estándar son regulares ; los que declinan de manera diferente se llaman irregulares .

Por ejemplo, muchos idiomas que presentan inflexión verbal tienen tanto verbos regulares como verbos irregulares . En inglés, los verbos regulares forman su tiempo pasado y participio pasado con la terminación - [e] d ; por tanto, los verbos como jugar , llegar y entrar son regulares. Sin embargo, hay unos pocos cientos de verbos que siguen patrones diferentes, como cantar, cantar, cantar y mantener, mantener, mantener.; estos se describen como irregulares. Los verbos irregulares a menudo conservan patrones que eran regulares en formas pasadas del lenguaje, pero que ahora se han vuelto anómalos; en casos raros, hay verbos regulares que eran irregulares en formas pasadas del idioma. (Para obtener más detalles, consulte Verbos en inglés y Verbos irregulares en inglés ).

Otros tipos de forma flexionada irregular incluyen sustantivos en plural irregular , como los ratones ingleses , niños y mujeres (ver plural en inglés ) y el francés yeux (el plural de œil , "ojo"); y formas comparativas y superlativas irregulares de adjetivos o adverbios, como el inglés better and best (que corresponde a la forma positiva good or well ).

Las irregularidades pueden tener cuatro causas básicas:

eufonía : inflexión regulares resultaría en formas que estéticamente desagradable sonido o son difíciles de pronunciar (Inglés ahora → más lejos o más, Español Tener → tengo , tendre vs esquina → Como , Comere , portugués vs. español andar → portugués andaram vs. español anduvieron ).
Partes principales : Generalmente se considera que se han formado de forma independiente entre sí, por lo que el alumno debe memorizarlas al aprender una nueva palabra. Ejemplo: Latín dīcō, dīcere, dīxī, dictum → Español digo, decir, dije, dicho .
inflexión fuerte frente a débil : en algunos casos, existen dos sistemas de inflexión, clasificados convencionalmente como "fuerte" y "débil". Por ejemplo, el inglés y el alemán tienen verbos débiles que forman el tiempo pasado y el participio pasado añadiendo una terminación (inglés jump → saltado, alemán machen → machte ) y verbos fuertes que cambian de vocal y, en algunos casos, forman el participio pasado añadiendo - en (inglés nadar → nadar, nadar , alemán schwimmen → schwamm , geschwommen ). También se dice que los verbos griegos antiguos tenían un primer aoristo ( ἔλῡσα) y un segundo aoristo ( ἔλιπον ).
suplementación : La forma "irregular" se derivó originalmente de una raíz diferente ( persona inglesa → pueblo ). Las formas comparativas y superlativas del bien en muchos idiomas muestran este fenómeno.

Para obtener más detalles sobre algunas de las consideraciones que se aplican a las formas de inflexión regular e irregular, consulte el artículo sobre verbos regulares e irregulares .

Declinación y conjugación [ editar ]

Dos términos gramaticales tradicionales se refieren a inflexiones de clases de palabras específicas :

Inflexión de un sustantivo , pronombre , adjetivo , artículo o determinante se conoce como declinarlo . Los afijos pueden expresar número , caso o género .
Inflexionar un verbo se llama conjugarlo . Los afijos pueden expresar tiempo , estado de ánimo , voz , aspecto , persona o número.

Una lista organizada de las formas flexionadas de un lexema o palabra raíz determinada se llama declinación si es un sustantivo, o conjugación si es un verbo.

A continuación se muestra la declinación del pronombre inglés I , que se declina por caso y número.

	singular	plural
nominativo	I	nosotros
oblicuo	me	nosotros
determinante posesivo	mi	nuestro
pronombre posesivo	mía	nuestro
reflexivo	yo mismo	Nosotros mismos

El pronombre que también se declina según el caso. Su declinación es defectuosa , en el sentido de que carece de forma reflexiva.

	singular y plural
nominativo	OMS
oblicuo	quién (anticuado), quién (informal)
posesivo	cuyo
reflexivo	-

The following table shows the conjugation of the verb to arrive in the indicative mood: suffixes inflect it for person, number, and tense:

Tense	I	you	he, she, it	we	you	they
Present	arrive	arrive	arrives	arrive	arrive	arrive
Past	arrived	arrived	arrived	arrived	arrived	arrived

The non-finite forms arrive (bare infinitive), arrived (past participle) and arriving (gerund/present participle), although not inflected for person or number, can also be regarded as part of the conjugation of the verb to arrive. Compound verb forms, such as I have arrived, I had arrived, or I will arrive, can be included also in the conjugation of the verb for didactical purposes, but they are not overt conjugations of arrive. The formula for deriving the covert form, in which the relevant inflections do not occur in the main verb, is

pronoun + conjugated auxiliary verb + non-finite form of main verb.

Inflectional paradigm[edit]

An inflectional paradigm refers to a pattern (usually a set of inflectional endings), where a class of words follow the same pattern. Nominal inflectional paradigms are called declensions, and verbal inflectional paradigms are termed conjugations. For instance, there are five types of Latin declension. Words that belong to the first declension usually end in -a and are usually feminine. These words share a common inflectional framework. In Old English, nouns are divided into two major categories of declension, the strong and weak ones, as shown below:

	gender and number
	Masculine		Neuter		Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
case	Strong noun declension
case	engel 'angel'		scip 'ship'		sorg 'sorrow'
Nominative	engel	englas	scip	scipu	sorg	sorga
Accusative	engel	englas	scip	scipu	sorge	sorga/sorge
Genitive	engles	engla	scipes	scipa	sorge	sorga
Dative	engle	englum	scipe	scipum	sorge	sorgum
case	Weak noun declension
case	nama 'name'		ēage 'eye'		tunge 'tongue'
Nominative	nama	naman	ēage	ēagan	tunge	tungan
Accusative	naman	naman	ēage	ēagan	tungan	tungan
Genitive	naman	namena	ēagan	ēagena	tungan	tungena
Dative	naman	namum	ēagan	ēagum	tungan	tungum

The terms "strong declension" and "weak declension" are primarily relevant to well-known dependent-marking languages^{[citation needed]} (such as the Indo-European languages,^{[citation needed]} or Japanese). In dependent-marking languages, nouns in adpositional (prepositional or postpositional) phrases can carry inflectional morphemes.

In head-marking languages, the adpositions can carry the inflection in adpositional phrases. This means that these languages will have inflected adpositions. In Western Apache (San Carlos dialect), the postposition -ká’ 'on' is inflected for person and number with prefixes:

	Singular		Dual		Plural
1st	shi-ká	on me	noh-ká	on us two	da-noh-ká	'on us'
2nd	ni-ká	on you	nohwi-ká	'on you two'	da-nohwi-ká	'on you all'
3rd	bi-ká	'on him'	–		da-bi-ká	'on them'

Traditional grammars have specific terms for inflections of nouns and verbs but not for those of adpositions.^{[clarification needed]}

Compared to derivation[edit]

Inflection is the process of adding inflectional morphemes that modify a verb's tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, or number or a noun's case, gender, or number, rarely affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited.

In contrast, derivation is the process of adding derivational morphemes, which create a new word from existing words and change the semantic meaning or the part of speech of the affected word, such as by changing a noun to a verb.^[4]

Distinctions between verbal moods are mainly indicated by derivational morphemes.

Words are rarely listed in dictionaries on the basis of their inflectional morphemes (in which case they would be lexical items). However, they often are listed on the basis of their derivational morphemes. For instance, English dictionaries list readable and readability, words with derivational suffixes, along with their root read. However, no traditional English dictionary lists book as one entry and books as a separate entry; the same goes for jump and jumped.

Inflectional morphology[edit]

Languages that add inflectional morphemes to words are sometimes called inflectional languages, which is a synonym for inflected languages. Morphemes may be added in several different ways:

Affixation, or simply adding morphemes onto the word without changing the root,
Reduplication, doubling all or part of a word to change its meaning,
Alternation, exchanging one sound for another in the root (usually vowel sounds, as in the ablaut process found in Germanic strong verbs and the umlaut often found in nouns, among others).
Suprasegmental variations, such as of stress, pitch or tone, where no sounds are added or changed but the intonation and relative strength of each sound is altered regularly. For an example, see Initial-stress-derived noun.

Inflection through reduplication[edit]

Reduplication is a morphological process where a constituent is repeated. The direct repetition of a word or root is called total reduplication (or full reduplication). The repetition of a segment is referred to as partial reduplication. Reduplication can serve both derivational and inflectional functions. A few examples are given below:

Inflectional Reduplication
Value	Language	Original	Reduplicated
Plurality	Indonesian^[5]	buku 'book'	buku-buku 'books'
Distribution	Chinese^[6]	ren²⁴ 'person'	ren²⁴ ren²⁴ 'everyone'
Intensity	Taiwanese Hokkien^[7]	ang²⁴ 'red'	ang²⁴ ang²⁴ 'reddish'
Imperfective	Ilokano^[8]	ag-bása 'read'	ag-basbása 'reading'
Inchoative	Nukuoro^[8]	gohu 'dark'	gohu-gohu 'getting dark'
Progressive	Pazeh language^[9]	bazu’ 'wash'	baabazu’ 'be washing'

Inflection through tone change[edit]

Palancar and Léonard provided an example with Tlatepuzco Chinantec (an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Southern Mexico), where tones are able to distinguish mood, person, and number:^[10]^[11]

Verb paradigm of 'bend' in Tlatepuzco Chinantec
	1 SG	1 PL	2	3
Completive	húʔ¹	húʔ¹³	húʔ¹	húʔ²
Incompletive	húʔ¹²	húʔ¹²	húʔ¹²	húʔ²
Irrealis	húʔ¹³	húʔ¹³	húʔ¹³	húʔ²

Case can be distinguished with tone as well, as in Maasai language (a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania) (Hyman, 2016):^[12]

Case Inflection in Maasai
gloss	Nominative	Accusative
'head'	èlʊ̀kʊ̀nyá	èlʊ́kʊ́nyá
'rat'	èndérònì	èndèrónì

In various languages[edit]

Indo-European languages (fusional)[edit]

Because the Proto-Indo-European language was highly inflected, all of its descendant Indo-European languages, such as Albanian, Armenian, English, German, Ukrainian, Russian, Persian, Kurdish, Italian, Irish, Spanish, French, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Bengali, and Nepali, are inflected to a greater or lesser extent. In general, older Indo-European languages such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Old English, Old Norse, Old Church Slavonic and Sanskrit are extensively inflected because of their temporal proximity to Proto-Indo-European. Deflexion has caused modern versions of some Indo-European languages that were previously highly inflected to be much less so; an example is Modern English, as compared to Old English. In general, languages where deflexion occurs replace inflectional complexity with more rigorous word order, which provides the lost inflectional details. Most Slavic languages and some Indo-Aryan languages are an exception to the general Indo-European deflexion trend, continuing to be highly inflected (in some cases acquiring additional inflectional complexity and grammatical genders, as in Czech & Marathi).

English[edit]

Old English was a moderately inflected language, using an extensive case system similar to that of modern Icelandic or German. Middle and Modern English lost progressively more of the Old English inflectional system. Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since its nouns have only vestiges of inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular verbs have only four forms: an inflected form for the past indicative and subjunctive (looked), an inflected form for the third-person-singular present indicative (looks), an inflected form for the present participle (looking), and an uninflected form for everything else (look). While the English possessive indicator 's (as in "Jane's book") is a remnant of the Old English genitive case suffix, it is now considered by syntacticians not to be a suffix but a clitic,^[13] although some linguists argue that it has properties of both.^[14]

Scandinavian languages[edit]

Old Norse was inflected, but modern Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish have lost much of their inflection. Grammatical case has largely died out with the exception of pronouns, just like English. However, adjectives, nouns, determiners and articles still have different forms according to grammatical number and grammatical gender. Danish and Swedish only inflect for two different genders while Norwegian has to some degree retained the feminine forms and inflects for three grammatical genders like Icelandic. However in comparison to Icelandic, there are considerably fewer feminine forms left in the language.

In comparison, Icelandic preserves almost all of the inflections of Old Norse and remains heavily inflected. It retains all the grammatical cases from Old Norse and is inflected for number and three different grammatical genders. The dual number forms are however almost completely lost in comparison to Old Norse.

Unlike other Germanic languages, nouns are inflected for definiteness in all Scandinavian languages, like in the following case for Norwegian (nynorsk):

Inflection of nouns in Norwegian (nynorsk)
	Singular		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
masculine	ein bil	bilen	bilar	bilane
masculine	a car	the car	cars	the cars
feminine	ei vogn	vogna	vogner	vognene
feminine	a wagon	the wagon	wagons	the wagons
neuter	eit hus	huset	hus	husa
neuter	a house	the house	houses	the houses

Articles in Norwegian (nynorsk)
	Singular		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
masculine	ein	-en	-ar	-ane
feminine	ei	-a	-er	-ene
neuter	eit	-et	-	-a

Adjectives and participles are also inflected for definiteness in all Scandinavian languages like in Proto-Germanic.

Other Germanic languages[edit]

Modern German remains moderately inflected, retaining four noun cases, although the genitive started falling into disuse in all but formal writing in Early New High German. The case system of Dutch, simpler than that of German, is also simplified in common usage. Afrikaans, recognized as a distinct language in its own right rather than a Dutch dialect only in the early 20th century, has lost almost all inflection.

Latin and the Romance languages[edit]

The Romance languages, such as Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and Romanian, have more overt inflection than English, especially in verb conjugation. Adjectives, nouns and articles are considerably less inflected than verbs, but they still have different forms according to number and grammatical gender.

Latin, the mother tongue of the Romance languages, was highly inflected; nouns and adjectives had different forms according to seven grammatical cases (including five major ones) with five major patterns of declension, and three genders instead of the two found in most Romance tongues. There were four patterns of conjugation in six tenses, three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, plus the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive, and supine) and two voices (passive and active), all overtly expressed by affixes (passive voice forms were periphrastic in three tenses).

Baltic languages[edit]

The Baltic languages are highly inflected. Nouns and adjectives are declined in up to seven overt cases. Additional cases are defined in various covert ways. For example, an inessive case, an illative case, an adessive case and allative case are borrowed from Finnic. Latvian has only one overt locative case but it syncretizes the above four cases to the locative marking them by differences in the use of prepositions.^[15] Lithuanian breaks them out of the genitive case, accusative case and locative case by using different postpositions.^[16]

Dual form is obsolete in standard Latvian and nowadays it is also considered nearly obsolete in standard Lithuanian. For instance, in standard Lithuanian it is normal to say "dvi varnos (plural) – two crows" instead of "dvi varni (dual)". Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals are declined for number, gender, and case to agree with the noun they modify or for which they substitute. Baltic verbs are inflected for tense, mood, aspect, and voice. They agree with the subject in person and number (not in all forms in modern Latvian).

Slavic languages[edit]

All Slavic languages make use of a high degree of inflection, typically having six or seven cases and three genders for nouns and adjectives. However, the overt case system has disappeared almost completely in modern Bulgarian and Macedonian. Most verb tenses and moods are also formed by inflection (however, some are periphrastic, typically the future and conditional). Inflection is also present in adjective comparation and word derivation.

Declensional endings depend on case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, instrumental, vocative), number (singular, dual or plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and animacy (animate vs inanimate). Unusual in other language families, declension in most Slavic languages also depends on whether the word is a noun or an adjective. Slovene and Sorbian languages use a rare third number, (in addition to singular and plural numbers) known as dual (in case of some words dual survived also in Polish and other Slavic languages). Modern Russian, Serbian and Czech also use a more complex form of dual, but this misnomer applies instead to numbers 2, 3, 4, and larger numbers ending in 2, 3, or 4 (with the exception of the teens, which are handled as plural; thus, 102 is dual, but 12 or 127 are not). In addition, in some Slavic languages, such as Polish, word stems are frequently modified by the addition or absence of endings, resulting in consonant and vowel alternation.

Arabic (fusional)[edit]

Modern Standard Arabic (also called Literary Arabic) is an inflected language. It uses a system of independent and suffix pronouns classified by person and number and verbal inflections marking person and number. Suffix pronouns are used as markers of possession and as objects of verbs and prepositions. The tatweel (ـــ) marks where the verb stem, verb form, noun, or preposition is placed.^[17]

			Singular			Plural			Dual
			Independent Pronoun	Suffix Pronoun	Present Tense Affix	Independent Pronoun	Suffix Pronoun	Present Tense Affix	Independent Pronoun	Suffix Pronoun	Present Tense Affix
Person	First		أَنَا ʾanā "I"	ـــِـي, ـــيَ, ـــنِي —ī, —ya, —nī	أ ʾ—	نَحْنُ naḥnu	ـــنَا —nā	نـــ n—	same as plural
	Second	masc.	أَنْتَ ʾanta "you"	ـــكَ —ka	تـــ t—	أَنْتُمْ ʾantum	ـــكُمْ —kum	تــــُونَ t—ūn	أَنْتُمَا ʾantumā	ـــكُمَا —kumā	تــــَانِ t—āni
	Second	fem.	أَنْتِ ʾanti "you"	ـــكِ —ki	تــــِينَ t—īna	أَنْتُنَّ ʾantunna	ـــكُنَّ —kunna	تــــْنَ t—na	أَنْتُمَا ʾantumā	ـــكُمَا —kumā	تــــَانِ t—āni
	Third	masc.	هُوَ huwa "he"	ـــهُ —hu	يـــ y—	هُمْ hum	ـــهُمْ —hum	يــــُونَ y—ūna	هُمَا humā	ـــهُمَا —humā	يــــَانِ y—āni
	Third	fem.	هِيَ hiya "she"	ـــهَا —hā	تـــ t—	هُنَّ hunna	ـــهُنَّ —hunna	تــــْنَ t—na	هُمَا humā	ـــهُمَا —humā	يــــَانِ y—āni

Arabic regional dialects (e.g. Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic), used for everyday communication, tend to have less inflection than the more formal Literary Arabic. For example, in Jordanian Arabic, the second- and third-person feminine plurals (أنتنّ antunna and هنّ hunna) and their respective unique conjugations are lost and replaced by the masculine (أنتم antum and هم hum), whereas in Lebanese and Syrian Arabic, هم hum is replaced by هنّ hunna.

In addition, the system known as ʾIʿrāb places vowel suffixes on each verb, noun, adjective, and adverb, according to its function within a sentence and its relation to surrounding words.^[17]

Uralic languages (agglutinative)[edit]

The Uralic languages are agglutinative, following from the agglutination in Proto-Uralic. The largest languages are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian—all European Union official languages. Uralic inflection is, or is developed from, affixing. Grammatical markers directly added to the word perform the same function as prepositions in English. Almost all words are inflected according to their roles in the sentence: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and some particles.

Hungarian and Finnish, in particular, often simply concatenate suffixes. For example, Finnish talossanikinko "in my house, too?" consists of talo-ssa-ni-kin-ko. However, in the Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian etc.) and the Sami languages, there are processes which affect the root, particularly consonant gradation. The original suffixes may disappear (and appear only by liaison), leaving behind the modification of the root. This process is extensively developed in Estonian and Sami, and makes them also inflected, not only agglutinating languages. The Estonian illative case, for example, is expressed by a modified root: maja → majja (historical form *maja-han).

Altaic languages (agglutinative)[edit]

The three language families often united as the Altaic languages—Turkic, Mongolic, and Manchu-Tungus—are agglutinative. The largest languages are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Uzbek—all Turkic languages. Altaic inflection is, or is developed from, affixing. Grammatical markers directly added to the word perform the same function as prepositions in English. Almost all words are inflected according to their roles in the sentence: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and some particles.

Basque (agglutinative nominal inflection / fusional verb inflection)[edit]

Basque, a language isolate, is a highly inflected language, heavily inflecting both nouns and verbs.

Noun phrase morphology is agglutinative and consists of suffixes which simply attach to the end of a stem. These suffixes are in many cases fused with the article (-a for singular and -ak for plural), which in general is required to close a noun phrase in Basque if no other determiner is present, and unlike an article in many languages, it can only partially be correlated with the concept of definiteness. Proper nouns do not take an article, and indefinite nouns without the article (called mugagabe in Basque grammar) are highly restricted syntactically. Basque is an ergative language, meaning that inflectionally the single argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is marked in the same way as the direct object of a transitive verb. This is called the absolutive case and in Basque, as in most ergative languages, it is realized with a zero morph; in other words, it receives no special inflection. The subject of a transitive verb receives a special case suffix, called the ergative case.^[18]

There is no case marking concord in Basque and case suffixes, including those fused with the article, are added only to the last word in a noun phrase. Plurality is not marked on the noun and is identified only in the article or other determiner, possibly fused with a case marker. The examples below are in the absolutive case with zero case marking, and include the article only:^[18]

txakurr-a	(the/a) dog
txakurr-ak	(the) dogs
txakur polit-a	(the/a) pretty dog
txakur polit-ak	(the) pretty dogs

The noun phrase is declined for 11 cases: Absolutive, ergative, dative, possessive-genitive, benefactive, comitative, instrumental, inessive, allative, ablative, and local-genitive. These are signaled by suffixes that vary according to the categories of Singular, Plural, Indefinite, and Proper Noun, and many vary depending on whether the stem ends in a consonant or vowel. The Singular and Plural categories are fused with the article, and these endings are used when the noun phrase is not closed by any other determiner. This gives a potential 88 different forms, but the Indefinite and Proper Noun categories are identical in all but the local cases (inessive, allative, ablative, local-genitive), and many other variations in the endings can be accounted for by phonological rules operating to avoid impermissible consonant clusters. Local case endings are not normally added to animate Proper Nouns. The precise meaning of the local cases can be further specified by additional suffixes added after the local case suffixes.^[18]

Verb forms are extremely complex, agreeing with the subject, direct object, and indirect object; and include forms that agree with a "dative of interest" for intransitive verbs as well as allocutive forms where the verb form is altered if one is speaking to a close acquaintance. These allocutive forms also have different forms depending on whether the addressee is male or female. This is the only area in Basque grammar where gender plays any role at all.^[18] Subordination could also plausibly be considered an inflectional category of the Basque verb since subordination is signaled by prefixes and suffixes on the conjugated verb, further multiplying the number of potential forms.^[19]

Transitivity is a thoroughgoing division of Basque verbs, and it is necessary to know the transitivity of a particular verb in order to conjugate it successfully. In the spoken language only a handful of commonly used verbs are fully conjugated in the present and simple past, most verbs being conjugated by means of an auxiliary which differs according to transitivity. The literary language includes a few more such verbs, but the number is still very small. Even these few verbs require an auxiliary to conjugate other tenses besides the present and simple past.^[18]

The most common intransitive auxiliary is izan, which is also the verb for "to be". The most common transitive auxiliary is ukan, which is also the verb for "to have". (Other auxiliaries can be used in some of the tenses and may vary by dialect.) The compound tenses use an invariable form of the main verb (which appears in different forms according to the "tense group") and a conjugated form of the auxiliary. Pronouns are normally omitted if recoverable from the verb form. A couple of examples will have to suffice to demonstrate the complexity of the Basque verb:^[18]

Liburu-ak saldu dizkiegu.

Book-plural.the sell Auxiliary.3rd/Pl/Absolutive.3rd/Pl/Dative.1st/Pl/Ergative

"We sold the books to them."

Kafe-a gusta-tzen zaidak.

Coffee-the please-Habitual Auxiliary.Allocutive/Male.3rd/Sng/Absolutive.1st/Sng/Dative

"I like coffee." ("Coffee pleases me.") (Used when speaking to a male friend.)

The morphs that represent the various tense/person/case/mood categories of Basque verbs, especially in the auxiliaries, are so highly fused that segmenting them into individual meaningful units is nearly impossible, if not pointless. Considering the multitude of forms that a particular Basque verb can take, it seems unlikely that an individual speaker would have an opportunity to utter them all in his or her lifetime.^[20]

Mainland Southeast Asian languages (isolating)[edit]

Most languages in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area (such as the varieties of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai) are not overtly inflected, or show very little overt inflection, and are therefore considered analytic languages (also known as isolating languages).

Chinese[edit]

Standard Chinese does not possess overt inflectional morphology. While some languages indicate grammatical relations with inflectional morphemes, Chinese utilizes word order and particles. Consider the following examples:

Latin:
- Puer puellam videt.
- Puellam puer videt.

Both sentences mean 'The boy sees the girl.' This is because puer (boy) is singular nominative, puellam (girl) is singular accusative. Since the roles of puer and puellam have been marked with case endings, the change in position does not matter.

Modern Standard Chinese:
- 我给了他一本书 (wǒ gěile tā yī běn shū) 'I gave him a book'
- 他给了我一本书 (tā gěile wǒ yī běn shū) 'He gave me a book'

The situation is very different in Chinese. Since Modern Chinese makes no use of inflection, the meanings of wǒ ('I' or 'me') and tā ('he' or 'him') shall be determined with their position.

In Classical Chinese, pronouns were overtly inflected to mark case. However, these overt case forms are no longer used; most of the alternative pronouns are considered archaic in modern Mandarin Chinese. Classically, 我 (wǒ) was used solely as the first person accusative. 吾 (Wú) was generally used as the first person nominative.^[21]

Certain varieties of Chinese are known to express meaning by means of tone change, although further investigations are required^{[dubious – discuss]}. Note that the tone change must be distinguished from tone sandhi. Tone sandhi is a compulsory change that occurs when certain tones are juxtaposed. Tone change, however, is a morphologically conditioned alternation and is used as an inflectional or a derivational strategy. Examples from Taishan and Zhongshan (both Yue dialects spoken in Guangdong Province) are shown below:^[22]

Taishan

ngwoi³³	‘I’ (singular)
ngwoi²²	‘we’ (plural)

Zhongshan

hy²²	‘go’
hy³⁵	‘gone’ (perfective)

The following table compares the personal pronouns of Sixian dialect (a dialect of Taiwanese Hakka)^[23] with Zaiwa and Jingpho^[24] (both Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Yunnan and Burma). The superscripted numbers indicate the Chao tone numerals.

Comparison of Personal Pronouns
	Sixian	Zaiwa	Jingpho
1 Nom	ŋai¹¹	ŋo⁵¹	ŋai³³
1 Gen	ŋa²⁴ or ŋai¹¹ ke⁵⁵	ŋa⁵⁵	ŋjeʔ⁵⁵
1 Acc	ŋai¹¹	ŋo³¹	ŋai³³
2 Nom	ŋ̍¹¹	naŋ⁵¹	naŋ³³
2 Gen	ŋia²⁴ or ŋ̍¹¹ ke⁵⁵	naŋ⁵⁵	naʔ⁵⁵
2 Acc	ŋ̍¹¹	naŋ³¹	naŋ³³
3 Nom	ki¹¹	jaŋ³¹	khji³³
3 Gen	kia²⁴ or ki¹¹ ke⁵⁵	jaŋ⁵¹	khjiʔ⁵⁵
3 Acc	ki¹¹	jaŋ³¹	khji³³

In Shanghainese, the third-person singular pronoun is overtly inflected as to case and the first- and second-person singular pronouns exhibit a change in tone depending on case.^{[citation needed]}

Japanese (isolating/agglutinative)[edit]

Japanese shows a high degree of overt inflection of verbs, less so of adjectives, and very little of nouns, but it is mostly strictly agglutinative and extremely regular. Fusion of morphemes also happen in colloquial speech, for example: the causative-passive 〜せられ〜 (-serare-) fuses into 〜され〜 (-sare-), as in　行かされる (ikasareru, "is made to go"), and the non-past progressive 〜ている (-teiru) fuses into 〜てる (-teru) as in　食べてる (tabeteru, "is eating"). Formally, every noun phrase must be marked for case, but this is done by invariable particles (clitic postpositions). (Many grammarians consider Japanese particles to be separate words, and therefore not an inflection, while others consider agglutination a type of overt inflection, and therefore consider Japanese nouns as overtly inflected.)

Auxiliary languages[edit]

Some auxiliary languages, such as Lingua Franca Nova, Glosa, and Frater, have no inflection. Other auxiliary languages, such as Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua have comparatively simple inflectional systems.

Esperanto[edit]

In Esperanto, an agglutinative language, nouns and adjectives are inflected for case (nominative, accusative) and number (singular, plural), according to a simple paradigm without irregularities. Verbs are not inflected for person or number, but they are inflected for tense (past, present, future) and mood (indicative, infinitive, conditional, jussive). They also form active and passive participles, which may be past, present or future. All verbs are regular.

Ido[edit]

Ido has a different form for each verbal tense (past, present, future, volitive and imperative) plus an infinitive, and both a present and past participle. There are though no verbal inflections for person or number, and all verbs are regular.

Nouns are marked for number (singular and plural), and the accusative case may be shown in certain situations, typically when the direct object of a sentence precedes its verb. On the other hand, adjectives are unmarked for gender, number or case (unless they stand on their own, without a noun, in which case they take on the same desinences as the missing noun would have taken). The definite article "la" ("the") remains unaltered regardless of gender or case, and also of number, except when there is no other word to show plurality. Pronouns are identical in all cases, though exceptionally the accusative case may be marked, as for nouns.

Interlingua[edit]

Interlingua, in contrast with the Romance languages, has no irregular verb conjugations, and its verb forms are the same for all persons and numbers. It does, however, have compound verb tenses similar to those in the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages: ille ha vivite, "he has lived"; illa habeva vivite, "she had lived". Nouns are inflected by number, taking a plural -s, but rarely by gender: only when referring to a male or female being. Interlingua has no noun-adjective agreement by gender, number, or case. As a result, adjectives ordinarily have no inflections. They may take the plural form if they are being used in place of a noun: le povres, "the poor".

Notes[edit]

^ But see American and British English grammatical differences § Subject-verb agreement in English

Citations[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

^ Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed., pp. 243-244). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231886303_Case_and_proto-Arabic_Part_I
^ Brinton, Laurel J. (2000). The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. p. 104. ISBN 9781556196621.
^ Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), "Inflectional Morphology", in Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 162–164
^ Nadarajan, S. (2006). "A Crosslinguistic study of Reduplication". The Arizona Working Papers in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. 13: 39–53.
^ Xu, D. (2012). "Reduplication in languages: A case study of languages of China". Plurality and classifiers across languages in China. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 43–66.
^ Hsu, S.-C. (2008). "The Structure Analysis and Tone Sandhi of Reduplicative Adjectives in Taiwanese". Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences of NHCUE. 1 (1): 27–48.
^ a b Rubino, C. (2005). Reduplication: Form, function and distribution. In B. Hurch (Ed.). Studies on Reduplication (pp. 11-29). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
^ Reid, L. A. (2009). "On the diachronic development of C1V1 reduplication in some Austronesian languages". Morphology. 19 (2): 239.
^ Palancar, Enrique L. & Léonard, Jean-Léo. (2014). Tone and inflection: An introduction. In Enrique L. Palancar & Jean-Léo Léonard (Eds.), Tone and Inflection: New facts under new perspectives. HAL 01099327
^ Feist, Timothy & Enrique L. Palancar. (2015). Oto-Manguean Inflectional Class Database: Tlatepuzco Chinantec. University of Surrey. doi:10.15126/SMG.28/1.01
^ Hyman, L. M. (2016). "Morphological tonal assignments in conflict: Who wins?". In Palancar, E. L.; Léonard, J. L. (eds.). Tone and Inflection: New Facts and New Perspectives. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 15–39.
^ Lyons, C. (1986). The Syntax of English Genitive Constructions. Journal of Linguistics, 22(1), 123-143.
^ Lowe, J.J. Nat Lang Linguist Theory (2016) 34: 157. doi:10.1007/s11049-015-9300-1
^ Dahl, Östen; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (2001). The Circum-Baltic Languages: Grammar and typology. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. p. 672. |volume= has extra text (help)
^ Hewson, John; Bubeník, Vít (2006). From case to adposition : the development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, Volume 4. Amsterdam: Benjamins. p. 206.
^ a b Ryding, Karin C. (2005). A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic.
^ a b c d e f King, Alan R. The Basque Language: A Practical Introduction. University of Nevada Press. Reno, Nevada
^ Manandise, Esméralda. "Evidence from Basque for a New Theory of Grammar," doctoral dissertation in Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics: A Garland Series, Jorge Hankamer, general ed. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York & London.
^ Manandise, Esméralda. "Evidence from Basque for a New Theory of Grammar," doctoral dissertation in Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics: A Garland Series, Jorge Hankamer, general ed. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York & London.
^ Norman, Jerry. (1988). Chinese (p. 98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^ Chen, M. Y. (2000). Tone Sandhi: Patterns across Chinese dialects. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
^ Lai, W.-Y. (2010). "The Source of Hakka Personal Pronoun and Genitive with the Viewpoint of Diminutive". Journal of Taiwanese Languages and Literature. 5 (1): 53–80.
^ Sun, H.-K. (1996). "Case markers of personal pronouns in Tibeto-Burman languages". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 19 (2): 1–15.

References[edit]

Agirre, E.; et al. (1992), "XUXEN: A spelling checker/corrector for Basque based on two-level morphology", Proceedings of the Third Conference of Applied Natural Language Processing (PDF), pp. 119–125, archived from the original (PDF) on 2005-09-30
Bubeník, Vit. (1999). An introduction to the study of morphology. LINCOM coursebooks in linguistics, 07. Munich: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-570-2.
Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29653-6 (pbk).

External links[edit]

Look up inflection in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

SIL articles[edit]

SIL: What is inflection?
SIL: What is an inflectional affix?
SIL: What is an inflectional category?
SIL: What is a morphological process?
SIL: What is derivation?
SIL: Comparison of inflection and derivation
SIL: What is an agglutinative language?
SIL: What is a fusional language?
SIL: What is an isolating language?
SIL: What is a polysynthetic language?

Lexicon of Linguistics articles[edit]

Lexicon of Linguistics: Agglutinating Language, Fusional Morphology, Isolating Language, Polysynthetic Language
Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection, Derivation
Lexicon of Linguistics: Conjugation, Declension
Lexicon of Linguistics: Base, Stem, Root
Lexicon of Linguistics: Defective Paradigm
Lexicon of Linguistics: Strong Verb
Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection Phrase (IP), INFL, AGR, Tense
Lexicon of Linguistics: Lexicalist Hypothesis

[4] But see American and British English grammatical differences § Subject-verb agreement in English

[1] Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed., pp. 243-244). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

[2] ttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/231886303_Case_and_proto-Arabic_Part_I

[3] Brinton, Laurel J. (2000). The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. p. 104. ISBN 9781556196621.

[5] Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), "Inflectional Morphology", in Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 162–164

[6] Nadarajan, S. (2006). "A Crosslinguistic study of Reduplication". The Arizona Working Papers in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. 13: 39–53.

[7] Xu, D. (2012). "Reduplication in languages: A case study of languages of China". Plurality and classifiers across languages in China. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 43–66.

[8] Hsu, S.-C. (2008). "The Structure Analysis and Tone Sandhi of Reduplicative Adjectives in Taiwanese". Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences of NHCUE. 1 (1): 27–48.

[Rubino-9] Rubino, C. (2005). Reduplication: Form, function and distribution. In B. Hurch (Ed.). Studies on Reduplication (pp. 11-29). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

[10] Reid, L. A. (2009). "On the diachronic development of C1V1 reduplication in some Austronesian languages". Morphology. 19 (2): 239.

[11] Palancar, Enrique L. & Léonard, Jean-Léo. (2014). Tone and inflection: An introduction. In Enrique L. Palancar & Jean-Léo Léonard (Eds.), Tone and Inflection: New facts under new perspectives. HAL 01099327

[12] Feist, Timothy & Enrique L. Palancar. (2015). Oto-Manguean Inflectional Class Database: Tlatepuzco Chinantec. University of Surrey. doi:10.15126/SMG.28/1.01

[13] Hyman, L. M. (2016). "Morphological tonal assignments in conflict: Who wins?". In Palancar, E. L.; Léonard, J. L. (eds.). Tone and Inflection: New Facts and New Perspectives. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 15–39.

[14] Lyons, C. (1986). The Syntax of English Genitive Constructions. Journal of Linguistics, 22(1), 123-143.

[15] Lowe, J.J. Nat Lang Linguist Theory (2016) 34: 157. doi:10.1007/s11049-015-9300-1

[16] Dahl, Östen; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (2001). The Circum-Baltic Languages: Grammar and typology. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. p. 672. |volume= has extra text (help)

[17] Hewson, John; Bubeník, Vít (2006). From case to adposition : the development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, Volume 4. Amsterdam: Benjamins. p. 206.

[MSA-18] Ryding, Karin C. (2005). A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic.

[ReferenceA-19] King, Alan R. The Basque Language: A Practical Introduction. University of Nevada Press. Reno, Nevada

[20] Manandise, Esméralda. "Evidence from Basque for a New Theory of Grammar," doctoral dissertation in Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics: A Garland Series, Jorge Hankamer, general ed. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York & London.

[21] Manandise, Esméralda. "Evidence from Basque for a New Theory of Grammar," doctoral dissertation in Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics: A Garland Series, Jorge Hankamer, general ed. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York & London.

[22] Norman, Jerry. (1988). Chinese (p. 98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[Chen2004-23] Chen, M. Y. (2000). Tone Sandhi: Patterns across Chinese dialects. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

[24] Lai, W.-Y. (2010). "The Source of Hakka Personal Pronoun and Genitive with the Viewpoint of Diminutive". Journal of Taiwanese Languages and Literature. 5 (1): 53–80.

[25] Sun, H.-K. (1996). "Case markers of personal pronouns in Tibeto-Burman languages". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 19 (2): 1–15.