Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
inflection [Lat. inflexio ‘bending, modification’] (also accidence)
Word stems (
lexemes) of particular parts of speech are realized in morphologically different word forms that regularly mark different syntactic and semantic functions: declination (nouns), conjugation (verbs), comparison (adjectives). The complete set of inflectional forms of a word constitute its inflectional paradigm. Such paradigms categorize inflectional classes according to parallels in and predictability of morphological forms. Inflection can occur in different morphological forms in English, such as through a change in the stem (sing>sang) or through the addition of particular endings (worked, dreamt). In some cases, inflectional endings may signal different inflectional categories (e.g. -s in works signals both present tense in the verb and plural in the noun). In other languages (e.g. Greek, Latin, Gothic), reduplication is used as a means for inflection (Goth. haihait ‘was called’). Regardless of certain borderline cases (such as comparatives and participles) a distinction is generally drawn between inflection (=formation of word forms) and word formation (=formation of word stems) as separate areas of study in morphology. In more recent studies on word syntax, the distinctness in function of inflectional vs derivational affixes has been subject to doubt ( word structure).
References
Anderson, S.
1982. Where’s morphology? LingI 13. 571–612.
Carstairs-McCarthy, A. 1987. Allomorphy in inflection. London.
Di Sciullo, A.M. and E.Williams. 1987. On the definition of word. Cambridge, MA.
Lapointe, S. 1984. The representation of inflectional morphology within the lexicon. Proceedings of the Northeastern Linguistics Society 14. 190–204.
Plank, F. 1991. Paradigms: the economy of inflection. Berlin and New York.
morphology
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