inflection/inflexion (n.)

(1) A term used in MORPHOLOGY to refer to one of the two main CATEGORIES or processes of WORD-FORMATION (inflectional morphology), the other being DERIVATION(AL). These terms also apply to the two types of AFFIX involved in word-formation. Inflectional affixes signal GRAMMATICAL relationships, such as plural, past TENSE and possession, and do not change the grammatical CLASS of the STEMS to which they are attached; that is, the words constitute a single PARADIGM, e.g. walk, walks, walked. A word is said to inflect for past tense, plural, etc. In traditional (prelinguistic) grammatical studies, the term ‘accidence’ was used in this sense, as was the term flexion.

(2) (INFL, I) A term used in GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY (at first symbolized as INFL, later as I) for an abstract CONSTITUENT which subsumes various grammatical properties – in particular, tense, PERSON and NUMBER (the latter two being separately grouped as AGREEMENT features, or AGR). In X-BAR theory, I is like the LEXICAL categories N, V, A and P in that it is a ZERO-level category with two PHRASAL PROJECTIONS, I′ and I″. I″, the maximal projection of I, is usually referred to as inflection phrase (IP). It is equivalent to S in earlier GB and certain other theories.

(3) In the phrase inflecting language (inflectional or inflected languages), the term characterizes a type of LANGUAGE established by COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS using STRUCTURAL (as opposed to DIACHRONIC) criteria, and focusing on the characteristics of the WORD. In this kind of language, words display grammatical relationships morphologically: they typically contain more than one MORPHEME but, unlike AGGLUTINATIVE languages, there is no one-to-one correspondence between these morphemes and the linear SEQUENCE of MORPHS. In languages such as Latin, Greek and Arabic, the inflectional forms of words may represent several morphological OPPOSITIONS, e.g. in Latin amo (‘I love’), the form simultaneously represents tense, ACTIVE, first person singular, INDICATIVE. This ‘fusing’ of properties has led to such languages being called FUSIONAL, and has motivated the WORD-AND-PARADIGM MODEL of analysis. As always in such classifications, the categories are not clear-cut: different languages will display the characteristic of inflection to a greater or lesser degree.