Inflection

In grammar, inflection (Latin flexio 'bend'), German also Beugung or (Austrian) Biegung, refers to a change in the form of a word to express its grammatical features. Thus, when a word is inflected (bent), a word form of the same word is created, not a new word (in the sense of lexeme). This represents the difference between inflection and word formation (word derivation and composition). Inflection therefore does not change the type of word, but only added grammatical features.

Such inflectional markers in German are: person, numerus, tense, mode, genus, case, strong inflection (for adjectives) (it is disputed whether the intensification of adjectives also counts as inflection). The markers for inflection (flexives) often consist of attached endings (affixes), but sometimes also in other processes that intervene more deeply in the shape of a word, e.g. ablaut.

Inflectional forms are typically linked to certain types of words and express grammatical features associated with the respective type of word, e.g. the tense in the case of a verb or the case in the case of a noun. A typical phenomenon is that languages can divide a part of speech into subclasses (inflectional classes), in which a certain inflectional feature is represented by different inflectional forms (i.e. different inflectional paradigms). - In contrast to this type of language, to which German also belongs, there are also languages in which the connection between part of speech (of the word stem) and possible inflectional forms is loose; for example, in such languages predicates can be formed by attaching verbal endings to a substantival (or category-less) stem. A classic example of such flexibility is the Tagalog language.

The occurrence of inflection is controlled by grammatical rules; in addition, inflectional features may be more or less interpretable in terms of content. Even in the case of more meaningful categories such as numerus (singular/plural), however, interpretability is limited by the fact that grammatical rules can force their occurrence for purely formal reasons.

The languages of the world vary greatly in the extent to which they display grammatical features through inflectional forms. The term inflectional language (or actually Flektierender Sprachbau) denotes languages which to a high degree form different inflectional forms in words, but is additionally characterized by the fact that these are expressed in fused form, i.e. that several features are also expressed by a single affix and possibly change of stem, not by a longer chain of affixes. Thus, opposite terms to "inflectional language" are both Isolierender Sprachbau (where no inflectional features are indicated, or if so then by independent words) and Agglutinierender Sprachbau (which may provide long chains of affixes instead of a single form change of the word).

Inflections in German

In the grammatical definition, the types of inflection are distinguished depending on the part of speech.

Declination for nouns

Nouns are declined according to case and number, the genus is fixed.

Example:

• the house, of the house, of the houses

adjectival declension

Adjectives are declined according to genus, case, numerus and comparison.

Three types of inflection can be distinguished:

• weak declension with prefixed definite article word, example: in the big round, the old man
• strong or pronominal declension in the case of a missing or inflectional article word, example: in large company, old man
• mixed declension preceded by an indefinite article word, example: in a big round, an old man

verb conjugation

Verbs are conjugated by person, numerus, aspect, action type, tense, and mode.

There are three types of inflection for verbs in parallel:

• weak, external inflection using affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes)

tense inflection by appending -{t}- to the stem in the past tense (for example, as in (I) play - played, (I) say - said)

• strong, internal inflection with the change of the root vowel

for example by ablaut as in (I) singe - sang (tense inflection) and umlaut as in (I) fechte - (you) fichtst (inflection after the person) and (I) sang - sänge (inflection of the mode).

• irregular (mixed) inflection with further change of the root vowel (ablaut and consonant change) as in (I) pull - pulled and sometimes additionally with the tense affix as in (I) bring - brought (vowel change, consonant change and preterite suffix -{t}-) or with suppletive forms as in (I) am - (you) are - (he) is, (you) are, (we, they) are, where different stems are included in the inflectional paradigm (suppletion).

Congruence and group reflection

The congruence of words or word groups in a sentence can be indicated by congruence. In German, this is mainly the case, numerus and genus congruence within a clause, the numerus congruence between subject and predicate as well as the numerus and genus congruence between reference noun and relative pronoun.

Example: We see the little boy. The sentence has a numerical congruence between subject and predicate, and a case, numerical and gender congruence in the object.

Agglutinative languages such as the Turkic languages express the affiliation of (adjective-)attributes (also number words and demonstrative pronouns), not by congruence, but by group inflection. In this case, the subordinate attributes are prefixed to the noun in their uninflected base form, resulting in a group. This is then subjected to inflection as a whole, i.e. only the noun provided with attributes carries numerus and case markers (morphemes for marking the case).