Changing a word's form to fit its grammar, without making it a new word.
In precise terms
Morphology expressing grammatical categories required by the syntax — number, case, tense, agreement — without changing the word's lexical identity or word class. Inflected forms share a dictionary entry.
An example
canto, cantas, canta, cantamos
I sing, you sing, he/she sings, we sing
What is going on here
All four are forms of one verb, 'cantar', and a dictionary lists them under that single entry. Nothing new has been created; the same word has been fitted to different subjects.
Why this matters when you are learning a language
The inflection/derivation distinction is exactly the distinction between a conjugation table and a dictionary. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you where to look something up.
Across languages
Inflectional richness varies hugely: Mandarin has essentially none, English very little, Spanish a great deal on the verb, Finnish a great deal on the noun.
Related terms
- DerivationAdvanced — Making a new word from an existing one — often changing its word class.
- MorphemeAdvanced — The smallest unit of a language that carries meaning or grammatical function.
- Grammatical caseIntermediate — Endings on nouns showing their role in the sentence — who did it, who it was done to, whose it is.
- AgreementIntermediate — When one word changes form to match another — a verb matching its subject, an adjective matching its noun.
- ReduplicationAdvanced — A word-building pattern that copies all or part of a form to express a grammatical or lexical contrast.
- PolysynthesisAdvanced — A label for language patterns in which one word—often a verb—can contain many meaningful and grammatical parts.
Where to go next
- Language guides — See grammatical and lexical categories used in context.
- Terminology quiz — Test the terms on this page.