Inflection

The flexion (from Latin flectere ) (also: flexion, bending) referred to in the grammar of the change in the shape of a word ( a lexical item ) expressed its grammatical characteristics or the grammatical function in the sentence. The marks for flexion ( flexives ) often consist in the appended suffixes ( affixes ), but sometimes also in other processes that engage more deeply into the shape of a word, eg ablaut. Languages ​​that systematically form different inflections in words, are characterized overall as inflectional languages.

Inflected forms are usually tied to specific parts of speech and grammatical features bring to expression, which are connected to the respective part of speech, eg tense the verb or the noun case. The occurrence of flexion is controlled by grammatical rules, in addition Flexionsmerkmale may be highly interpretable content, more or less; Even with rather meaningless containing categories such as number (singular / plural) is however limited that grammatical rules on purely formal grounds can force their occurrence interpretability.

The term flexion

The term flexion is not only used for flexion in the narrower sense ( fusion), but it often also refers to the so-called agglutination (coarse and easily demountable attachment of affixes ) with a; hence the term inflectional language in many cases is a synonym for synthetic speech. Flexion in the sense of fusion occurs when stems are altered ( inflected words are formed ) to express grammatical categories. Agglutination waived this means largely; only the so-called vowel harmony is permitted. This can be formed in two ways one inflectional form: by agglutination and fusion ( fusion of morphemes ) to express grammatical categories. Grammatical categories of inflection are in German: person, number, tense, mood, gender, case, Komparationsstufe.

• Agglutinating and
• Merging flexion

Differ. The degree of fusion between stem and inflectional ending is different. While the inflectional agglutination ideally represent only one Flexionskategorie are simply appended to the word, and therefore are easily separable, which is not possible with the merger.

To explain some German examples. In the case of " child - he - n" "child" for the word ( lexeme ) - { he } for the plural and - { n } for the dative. The word structure is agglutinative ( aneinanderreihend ): the components of the word do not interfere in their form each other. If all inflectional forms of the words of the German so formed, German would be an agglutinative language. But this is not so. Many plurals are formed differently, such as " fathers." Here, the same inflectional endings are used as " children "; but at the same time changing the vowel of the root word. This is not agglutinative, but a feature for fusion. There are also cases such as " would " ( 3rd person singular subjunctive in the past tense ). This is - { e} for the third person singular; the change of the stem vowel -e ( in "building -en " ) to -a- represents the past tense; the change of this -a- to -a- for the subjunctive. Add -a- coming in this verb so several grammatical categories also expressed: preterite and subjunctive. The stem-form - there'd be therefore stands for the word preterite subjunctive. Something like this is typical of fusion in flexion. Fusion means in addition that the choice between allomorphs not only by the phonetic environment is conditional. In the case of plurals of " dog - dogs " and " mouth - mouths " you can see that the word stems contain almost the same sounds; nevertheless, the plurals are formed differently. So this can not be due to the phonetic environment of the plural endings and is another sign of fusion.

The weak verbs show the German trains of agglutination: " rett -et -e", for example, consists of a series of unaltered stem inflectional ending for past tense ( - { et } - ) inflectional ending for person / number ( - { e} ). " Run " the appropriate form of the verb shows merging trains: " ( he ) runs - ran ". The inflectional ending is lost and in addition will change the stem vowel.

The flexion contrasts with the derivation ( = derivative), which is used to form new words. In the derivation, the merger of the German plays only a relatively minor role.

Overall, the German as almost every language is a mixed language, if you look at the means by which grammatical categories are formed.

Species

In the school grammatical definition of flexion distinction is dependent on the part of speech between

• The declension of nouns ( this is also referred to as flexion bending, to distinguish them from the diffraction of the verbs )

• Declension adjectives according to case, number, gender

• Conjugation with verbs

• The comparation ( increase ) in adjectives and participles

A distinction is made in parallel with verbs three types of flexion

• Weak external flexion of the use of affixes

• Strong inner flexion with the change of the strain

• Irregular inflection with more far-reaching change in the word tribe ( ablaut and consonant change) as in ( i ) draw - drew and sometimes in addition to the Tempusaffix as in ( I ) bring - brought ( vowel change, consonant changes and Präteritumsuffix - {t} - or Suppletivformen as ( I ) am - ( du) are - (it) is, ( you ) are, (we, they ) are where different tribes inflectional form ( suppletion ).

Analogously, during flexion of adjectives distinguish two types

• Weak external flexion if ` word article with inflectional

• Strong inner flexion in the absence or flexionsendungslosem products word

The togetherness of words or groups of words in the sentence comes through congruence expressed. This is mainly to case, number and Genuskongruenz within a set member, the Number disagreement between subject and predicate as well as the number and Genuskongruenz between antecedent and relative pronoun.

The term inflectional language is often used as a generic term for synthetic languages ​​, ie also for agglutinative languages ​​and fusional languages.

An inflected form may well have several different meanings, as well as a grammatical function can be expressed by several inflected forms.

Gruppenflexion

Agglutinating languages, such as the Turkic press the togetherness, some of (adjective ) attribute (including numeral and demonstrative ), not of congruence, but by Gruppenflexion. The subordinate attributes are preceded by the noun in its uninflected base form, which results in a group. This is then subjected to flexion as a whole, that is, only the attributes provided with noun wears number and Kasusmarker ( morphemes to the case marking).

Languages

Many Indo-European languages ​​- eg German, Latin, Slavic languages ​​, Hindi - have an inflecting language structure. Within the Semitic languages ​​very many inflected forms have been preserved, especially in the classical Arabic language.

In contrast, the spoken French has lost many inflections over the centuries. Example: il donne ( he is ) and ils donnent ( give ) can not be distinguished from mere listening.

The English language has given up almost all inflected forms in the last centuries. For this purpose, a comparison of the conjugation of the verb "make" in the Middle English, frühneuenglischen and modern form:

In contrast to synthetic or inflectional languages ​​are analytic or isolating languages.