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| Grammatical features |
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In linguisticmorphology,inflection (less commonly,inflexion) is a process ofword formation[1] in which a word is modified to express differentgrammatical categories such astense,case,voice,aspect,person,number,gender,mood,animacy, anddefiniteness.[2] The inflection ofverbs is calledconjugation, while the inflection ofnouns,adjectives,adverbs, etc.[a] can be calleddeclension.
An inflection expresses grammatical categories withaffixation (such asprefix,suffix,infix,circumfix, andtransfix),apophony (asIndo-European ablaut), or other modifications.[3] For example, the Latin verbducam, meaning "I will lead", includes the suffix-am, expressing person (first), number (singular), and tense-mood (future indicative or present subjunctive). The use of this suffix is an inflection. In contrast, in the English clause "I will lead", the wordlead is not inflected for any of person, number, or tense; it is simply thebare form of a verb. The inflected form of a word often contains both one or morefree morphemes (a unit of meaning which can stand by itself as a word), and one or morebound morphemes (a unit of meaning which cannot stand alone as a word). For example, the English wordcars is a noun that is inflected fornumber, specifically to express the plural; the content morphemecar is unbound because it could stand alone as a word, while the suffix-s is bound because it cannot stand alone as a word. These two morphemes together form the inflected wordcars.
Words that are never subject to inflection are said to beinvariant; for example, the English verbmust is an invariant item: it never takes a suffix or changes form to signify a different grammatical category. Its categories can be determined only from its context. Languages that seldom make use of inflection, such asEnglish, are said to beanalytic. Analytic languages that do not make use ofderivational morphemes, such asStandard Chinese, are said to beisolating.
Requiring the forms or inflections of more than one word in a sentence to be compatible with each other according to the rules of the language is known asconcord oragreement. For example, in "the man jumps", "man" is a singular noun, so "jump" is constrained in the present tense to use the third person singular suffix "s".
Languages that have some degree of inflection aresynthetic languages. They can be highly inflected (such asGeorgian orKichwa), moderately inflected (such asRussian orLatin), weakly inflected (such asEnglish), but not uninflected (such asChinese). Languages that are so inflected that a sentence can consist of a single highly inflected word (such as manyNative American languages) are calledpolysynthetic languages. Languages in which each inflection conveys only a single grammatical category, such asFinnish, are known asagglutinative languages, while languages in which a single inflection can convey multiple grammatical roles (such as both nominative case and plural, as in Latin andGerman) are calledfusional.
In English most nouns are inflected fornumber with the inflectional pluralaffix-s (as in "dog" → "dog-s"), and most English verbs are inflected fortense with the inflectional past tense affix-ed (as in "call" → "call-ed"). English also inflects verbs by affixation to mark the third person singular in the present tense (with-s), and the present participle (with-ing). English short adjectives are inflected to mark comparative and superlative forms (with-er and-est respectively).
There are eightregular inflectional affixes in the English language.[4][5]
| Affix | Grammatical category | Mark | Part of speech |
|---|---|---|---|
| -s | Number | plural | nouns |
| -'s/'/s | Case | genitive | nouns andnoun phrases, pronouns (marksindependent genitive) |
| -ing | Aspect | progressive | gerunds orparticiples |
| -en/-ed | Aspect | perfect | verbs |
| -ed/-t | Tense | past (simple) | verbs |
| -s | Person, number, aspect, tense | 3rd person singular presentindicative | verbs |
| -er | Degree of comparison | comparative | adjectives andadverbs |
| -est | Degree of comparison | superlative | adjectives andadverbs |
Despite the march toward regularization, modern English retains traces of its ancestry, with a minority of its words still using inflection byablaut (sound change, mostly in verbs) andumlaut (a particular type of sound change, mostly in nouns), as well as long-short vowel alternation. For example:
For details, seeEnglish plural,English verbs, andEnglish irregular verbs.
When a givenword class is subject to inflection in a particular language, there are generally one or more standard patterns of inflection (theparadigms described below) that words in that class may follow. Words which follow such a standard pattern are said to beregular; those that inflect differently are calledirregular.
For instance, many languages that featureverb inflection have bothregular verbs and irregular verbs. In English, regular verbs form theirpast tense andpast participle with the ending-[e]d. Therefore, verbs likeplay,arrive andenter are regular, while verbs likesing,keep andgo are irregular. Irregular verbs often preserve patterns that were regular in past forms of the language, but which have now become anomalous; in rare cases, there are regular verbs that were irregular in past forms of the language. (For more details seeEnglish verbs andEnglish irregular verbs.)
Other types of irregular inflected form include irregularplural nouns, such as the Englishmice,children andwomen (seeEnglish plural) and the Frenchyeux (the plural ofœil, "eye"); and irregularcomparative andsuperlative forms of adjectives or adverbs, such as the Englishbetter andbest (which correspond to the positive formgood orwell).
Irregularities can have four basic causes:[citation needed]
For more details on some of the considerations that apply to regularly and irregularly inflected forms, see the article onregular and irregular verbs.
Two traditional grammatical terms refer to inflections of specificword classes:
An organized list of the inflected forms of a givenlexeme or root word is called itsdeclension if it is a noun, or itsconjugation if it is a verb.
Below is the declension of the English pronounI, which is inflected for case and number.
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | I | we |
| oblique | me | us |
| possessive determiner | my | our |
| possessive pronoun | mine | ours |
| reflexive | myself | ourselves |
The pronounwho is also inflected according to case. Its declension isdefective, in the sense that it lacks a reflexive form.
| singular and plural | |
|---|---|
| nominative | who |
| oblique | whom (traditional), who (informal) |
| possessive | whose |
| reflexive | – |
The following table shows the conjugation of the verbto arrive in the indicativemood:suffixes inflect it for person, number, and tense:
| Tense | I | you | he, she, it | we | you | they |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present | arrive | arrive | arrives | arrive | arrive | arrive |
| Past | arrived | arrived | arrived | arrived | arrived | arrived |
Thenon-finite formsarrive (bare infinitive),arrived (past participle) andarriving (gerund/present participle), although not inflected for person or number, can also be regarded as part of the conjugation of the verbto arrive.Compound verb forms, such asI have arrived,I had arrived, orI will arrive, can be included also in the conjugation of the verb for didactic purposes, but they are not overt inflections ofarrive. The formula for deriving the covert form, in which the relevant inflections do not occur in the main verb, is
Aninflectional paradigm refers to a pattern (usually a set of inflectional endings), where a class of words follow the same pattern. Nominal inflectional paradigms are calleddeclensions, and verbal inflectional paradigms are termedconjugations. For instance, there are five types ofLatin declension. Words that belong to the first declension usually end in-a and are usually feminine. These words share a common inflectional framework. InOld English, nouns are divided into two major categories of declension, thestrong andweak ones, as shown below:
| gender and number | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| case | Strong noun declension | |||||
| engel 'angel' | scip 'ship' | sorg 'sorrow' | ||||
| Nominative | engel | englas | scip | scipu | sorg | sorga |
| Accusative | engel | englas | scip | scipu | sorge | sorga/sorge |
| Genitive | engles | engla | scipes | scipa | sorge | sorga |
| Dative | engle | englum | scipe | scipum | sorge | sorgum |
| case | Weak noun declension | |||||
| nama 'name' | ēage 'eye' | tunge 'tongue' | ||||
| Nominative | nama | naman | ēage | ēagan | tunge | tungan |
| Accusative | naman | naman | ēage | ēagan | tungan | tungan |
| Genitive | naman | namena | ēagan | ēagena | tungan | tungena |
| Dative | naman | namum | ēagan | ēagum | tungan | tungum |
The terms "strong declension" and "weak declension" are primarily relevant to well-knowndependent-marking languages[citation needed] (such as theIndo-European languages,[citation needed] orJapanese). In dependent-marking languages, nouns in adpositional (prepositional or postpositional) phrases can carry inflectional morphemes.
Inhead-marking languages, the adpositions can carry the inflection in adpositional phrases. This means that these languages will have inflected adpositions. InWestern Apache (San Carlos dialect), the postposition-ká’ 'on' is inflected for person and number with prefixes:
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | shi-ká | on me | noh-ká | on us two | da-noh-ká | 'on us' |
| 2nd | ni-ká | on you | nohwi-ká | 'on you two' | da-nohwi-ká | 'on you all' |
| 3rd | bi-ká | 'on him' | – | da-bi-ká | 'on them' | |
Traditional grammars have specific terms for inflections of nouns and verbs but not for those ofadpositions.[clarification needed]
Inflection is the process of addinginflectionalmorphemes that modify a verb's tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, or number or a noun's case, gender, or number, rarely affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the rootdog to formdogs and adding -ed towait to formwaited.
In contrast,derivation is the process of addingderivational morphemes, which create a new word from existing words and change the semantic meaning or the part of speech of the affected word, such as by changing a noun to a verb.[6]
Distinctions between verbalmoods are mainly indicated by derivational morphemes.
Words are rarely listed in dictionaries on the basis of their inflectional morphemes (in which case they would be lexical items). However, they often are listed on the basis of their derivational morphemes. For instance, English dictionaries listreadable andreadability, words with derivational suffixes, along with their rootread. However, no traditional English dictionary listsbook as one entry andbooks as a separate entry; the same goes forjump andjumped.
Languages that add inflectional morphemes to words are sometimes calledinflectional languages, which is a synonym forinflected languages. Morphemes may be added in several different ways:
Reduplication is a morphological process where a constituent is repeated. The direct repetition of a word or root is calledtotal reduplication (orfull reduplication). The repetition of a segment is referred to aspartial reduplication. Reduplication can serve bothderivational and inflectional functions. A few examples are given below:
| Value | Language | Original | Reduplicated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plurality | Indonesian[7] | buku 'book' | buku-buku 'books' |
| Distribution | Standard Chinese[8] | ren24 'person' | ren24 ren24 'everyone' |
| Intensity | Taiwanese Hokkien[9] | ang24 'red' | ang24 ang24 'reddish' |
| Imperfective | Ilokano[10] | ag-bása 'read' | ag-basbása 'reading' |
| Inchoative | Nukuoro[10] | gohu 'dark' | gohu-gohu 'getting dark' |
| Progressive | Pazeh language[11] | bazu’ 'wash' | baabazu’ 'be washing' |
Palancar and Léonard provided an example withTlatepuzco Chinantec (anOto-Manguean language spoken in SouthernMexico), where tones are able to distinguish mood, person, and number:[12][13]
| 1 SG | 1 PL | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Completive | húʔ1 | húʔ13 | húʔ1 | húʔ2 |
| Incompletive | húʔ12 | húʔ12 | húʔ12 | húʔ2 |
| Irrealis | húʔ13 | húʔ13 | húʔ13 | húʔ2 |
Case can be distinguished with tone as well, as inMaasai language (aNilo-Saharan language spoken inKenya andTanzania) (Hyman, 2016):[14]
| gloss | Nominative | Accusative |
|---|---|---|
| 'head' | èlʊ̀kʊ̀nyá | èlʊ́kʊ́nyá |
| 'rat' | èndérònì | èndèrónì |
Because theProto-Indo-European language was highly inflected, all of its descendantIndo-European languages, such asAlbanian,Armenian,English,German,Ukrainian,Russian,Persian,Kurdish,Italian,Irish,Spanish,French,Hindi,Marathi,Urdu,Bengali, andNepali, are inflected to a greater or lesser extent. In general, older Indo-European languages such asLatin,Ancient Greek,Old English,Old Norse,Old Church Slavonic andSanskrit are extensively inflected because of their temporal proximity to Proto-Indo-European.Deflexion has caused modern versions of some Indo-European languages that were previously highly inflected to be much less so; an example is Modern English, as compared to Old English. In general, languages where deflexion occurs replace inflectional complexity with more rigorousword order, which provides the lost inflectional details. MostSlavic languages and someIndo-Aryan languages are an exception to the general Indo-European deflexion trend, continuing to be highly inflected (in some cases acquiring additional inflectional complexity andgrammatical genders, as inCzech &Marathi).
Old English was a moderately inflected language, using an extensive case system similar to that of modernIcelandic,Faroese orGerman. Middle and Modern English lost progressively more of the Old English inflectional system. Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since its nouns have only vestiges of inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular verbs have only four forms: an inflected form for the past indicative and subjunctive (looked), an inflected form for the third-person-singular present indicative (looks), an inflected form for the present participle (looking), and an uninflected form for everything else (look). While the English possessive indicator's (as in "Jennifer's book") is a remnant of the Old Englishgenitive case suffix, it is now considered by syntacticians not to be a suffix but aclitic,[15] although some linguists argue that it has properties of both.[16]
Old Norse was inflected, but modernSwedish,Norwegian, andDanish have lost much of their inflection.Grammatical case has largely died out with the exception ofpronouns, just like English. However,adjectives,nouns,determiners andarticles still have different forms according to grammatical number and grammatical gender. Danish and Swedish only inflect for two different genders while Norwegian has to some degree retained the feminine forms and inflects for three grammatical genders like Icelandic. However, in comparison to Icelandic, there are considerably fewer feminine forms left in the language.
In comparison,Icelandic preserves almost all of theinflections of Old Norse and remains heavily inflected. It retains all the grammatical cases from Old Norse and is inflected for number and three different grammatical genders. Thedual number forms are however almost completely lost in comparison to Old Norse.
Unlike other Germanic languages, nouns are inflected fordefiniteness in all Scandinavian languages, like in the following case forNorwegian (nynorsk):
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indefinite | Definite | Indefinite | Definite | |
| masculine | ein bil | bilen | bilar | bilane |
| a car | the car | cars | the cars | |
| feminine | ei vogn | vogna | vogner | vognene |
| a wagon | the wagon | wagons | the wagons | |
| neuter | eit hus | huset | hus | husa |
| a house | the house | houses | the houses | |
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indefinite | Definite | Indefinite | Definite | |
| masculine | ein | -en | -ar | -ane |
| feminine | ei | -a | -er | -ene |
| neuter | eit | -et | - | -a |
Adjectives andparticiples are also inflected for definiteness in all Scandinavian languages like inProto-Germanic.
ModernGerman remains moderately inflected, retaining four noun cases, although the genitive started falling into disuse in all but formal writing inEarly New High German. The case system ofDutch, simpler than that of German, is also simplified in common usage.Afrikaans, recognized as a distinct language in its own right rather than a Dutch dialect only in the early 20th century, has lost almost all inflection.
TheRomance languages, such asSpanish,Italian,French,Portuguese and especially – with its many cases –Romanian, have more overt inflection than English, especially inverb conjugation. Adjectives, nouns and articles are considerably less inflected than verbs, but they still have different forms according to number and grammatical gender.
Latin, the mother tongue of the Romance languages, was highly inflected; nouns and adjectives had different forms according to sevengrammatical cases (including five major ones) with five major patterns of declension, and three genders instead of the two found in most Romance tongues. There were four patterns of conjugation in six tenses, three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, plus the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive, and supine) and two voices (passive and active), all overtly expressed by affixes (passive voice forms were periphrastic in three tenses).
TheBaltic languages are highly inflected. Nouns and adjectives are declined in up to seven overt cases. Additional cases are defined in various covert ways. For example, aninessive case, anillative case, anadessive case andallative case are borrowed from Finnic.Latvian has only one overtlocative case but itsyncretizes the above four cases to the locative marking them by differences in the use of prepositions.[17] Lithuanian breaks them out of thegenitive case,accusative case andlocative case by using different postpositions.[18]
Dual form is obsolete in standard Latvian and nowadays it is also considered nearly obsolete in standard Lithuanian. For instance, in standard Lithuanian it is normal to say "dvi varnos (plural) – two crows" instead of "dvi varni (dual)". Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals are declined for number, gender, and case to agree with the noun they modify or for which they substitute. Baltic verbs are inflected for tense, mood, aspect, and voice. They agree with the subject in person and number (not in all forms in modern Latvian).
AllSlavic languages make use of a high degree of inflection, typically having six or seven cases and three genders for nouns and adjectives. However, the overt case system has disappeared almost completely in modernBulgarian andMacedonian. Most verb tenses and moods are also formed by inflection (however, some areperiphrastic, typically the future and conditional). Inflection is also present in adjective comparation and word derivation.
Declensional endings depend on case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, instrumental, vocative), number (singular, dual or plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and animacy (animate vs inanimate). Unusual in other language families, declension in most Slavic languages also depends on whether the word is a noun or an adjective. Slovene andSorbian languages use a rare third number, (in addition to singular and plural numbers) known asdual (in case of some words dual survived also inPolish and other Slavic languages). Modern Russian, Serbian and Czech also use a more complex form ofdual, but this misnomer applies instead to numbers 2, 3, 4, and larger numbers ending in 2, 3, or 4 (with the exception of the teens, which are handled as plural; thus, 102 is dual, but 12 or 127 are not).In addition, in some Slavic languages, such as Polish, word stems are frequently modified by the addition or absence of endings, resulting inconsonant and vowel alternation.
Modern Standard Arabic (also called Literary Arabic) is an inflected language. It uses a system of independent and suffix pronouns classified by person and number and verbal inflections marking person and number. Suffix pronouns are used as markers ofpossession and as objects of verbs and prepositions. Thetatweel (ـــ) marks where the verb stem, verb form, noun, or preposition is placed.[19]
| Singular | Plural | Dual | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent Pronoun | Suffix Pronoun | Present Tense Affix | Independent Pronoun | Suffix Pronoun | Present Tense Affix | Independent Pronoun | Suffix Pronoun | Present Tense Affix | |||
| Person | First | أَنَاʾanā "I" | ـــِـي, ـــيَ, ـــنِي —ī, —ya, —nī | أʾ— | نَحْنُnaḥnu | ـــنَا—nā | نـــn— | same as plural | |||
| Second | masc. | أَنْتَʾanta "you" | ـــكَ—ka | تـــt— | أَنْتُمْʾantum | ـــكُمْ—kum | تــــُونَt—ūn | أَنْتُمَاʾantumā | ـــكُمَا—kumā | تــــَانِt—āni | |
| fem. | أَنْتِʾanti "you" | ـــكِ—ki | تــــِينَt—īna | أَنْتُنَّʾantunna | ـــكُنَّ—kunna | تــــْنَt—na | |||||
| Third | masc. | هُوَhuwa "he" | ـــهُ—hu | يـــy— | هُمْhum | ـــهُمْ—hum | يــــُونَy—ūna | هُمَاhumā | ـــهُمَا—humā | يــــَانِy—āni | |
| fem. | هِيَhiya "she" | ـــهَا—hā | تـــt— | هُنَّhunna | ـــهُنَّ—hunna | تــــْنَt—na | |||||
Arabicregional dialects (e.g.Moroccan Arabic,Egyptian Arabic,Gulf Arabic), used for everyday communication, tend to have less inflection than the more formal Literary Arabic. For example, inJordanian Arabic, the second- and third-person feminine plurals (أنتنّantunna andهنّhunna) and their respective unique conjugations are lost and replaced by the masculine (أنتمantum andهمhum), whereas in Lebanese and Syrian Arabic,همhum is replaced byهنّhunna.
In addition, the system known asʾIʿrāb places vowel suffixes on each verb, noun, adjective, and adverb, according to its function within a sentence and its relation to surrounding words.[19]
TheUralic languages areagglutinative, following from the agglutination inProto-Uralic. The largest languages areHungarian,Finnish, andEstonian—allEuropean Union official languages. Uralic inflection is, or is developed from, affixing. Grammatical markers directly added to the word perform the same function as prepositions in English. Almost all words are inflected according to their roles in the sentence: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and some particles.
Hungarian and Finnish, in particular, often simply concatenate suffixes. For example, Finnishtalossanikinko "in my house, too?" consists oftalo-ssa-ni-kin-ko. However, in theFinnic languages (Finnish, Estonian etc.) and theSami languages, there are processes which affect the root, particularlyconsonant gradation. The original suffixes may disappear (and appear only by liaison), leaving behind the modification of the root. This process is extensively developed in Estonian and Sami, and makes them also inflected, not only agglutinating languages. The Estonianillative case, for example, is expressed by a modified root:maja →majja (historical form *maja-han).
Though Altaic is widely considered to be asprachbund by linguists, three language families united by a small subset of linguists as the Altaic language family—Turkic,Mongolic, andManchu-Tungus—areagglutinative. The largest languages areTurkish,Azerbaijani andUzbek—all Turkic languages. Altaic inflection is, or is developed from, affixing. Grammatical markers directly added to the word perform the same function as prepositions in English. Almost all words are inflected according to their roles in the sentence: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and some particles.
Basque, alanguage isolate, is a highly inflected language, heavily inflecting both nouns and verbs.
Noun phrase morphology is agglutinative and consists of suffixes which simply attach to the end of a stem. These suffixes are in many cases fused with the article (-a for singular and-ak for plural), which in general is required to close a noun phrase in Basque if no other determiner is present, and unlike an article in many languages, it can only partially be correlated with the concept of definiteness. Proper nouns do not take an article, and indefinite nouns without the article (calledmugagabe in Basque grammar) are highly restricted syntactically. Basque is an ergative language, meaning that inflectionally the single argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is marked in the same way as the direct object of a transitive verb. This is called theabsolutive case and in Basque, as in most ergative languages, it is realized with a zero morph; in other words, it receives no special inflection. The subject of a transitive verb receives a special case suffix, called theergative case.[20]
There is no case marking concord in Basque and case suffixes, including those fused with the article, are added only to the last word in a noun phrase. Plurality is not marked on the noun and is identified only in the article or other determiner, possibly fused with a case marker. The examples below are in the absolutive case with zero case marking, and include the article only:[20]
| txakurr-a | (the/a) dog |
| txakurr-ak | (the) dogs |
| txakur polit-a | (the/a) pretty dog |
| txakur polit-ak | (the) pretty dogs |
The noun phrase is declined for 11 cases:Absolutive, ergative, dative, possessive-genitive, benefactive, comitative, instrumental, inessive, allative, ablative, andlocal-genitive. These are signaled by suffixes that vary according to the categories ofSingular, Plural, Indefinite, andProper Noun, and many vary depending on whether the stem ends in a consonant or vowel. The Singular and Plural categories are fused with the article, and these endings are used when the noun phrase is not closed by any other determiner. This gives a potential 88 different forms, but the Indefinite and Proper Noun categories are identical in all but the local cases (inessive, allative, ablative, local-genitive), and many other variations in the endings can be accounted for by phonological rules operating to avoid impermissible consonant clusters. Local case endings are not normally added to animate Proper Nouns. The precise meaning of the local cases can be further specified by additional suffixes added after the local case suffixes.[20]
Verb forms are extremely complex, agreeing with the subject, direct object, and indirect object; and include forms that agree with a "dative of interest" for intransitive verbs as well as allocutive forms where the verb form is altered if one is speaking to a close acquaintance. These allocutive forms also have different forms depending on whether the addressee is male or female. This is the only area in Basque grammar where gender plays any role at all.[20] Subordination could also plausibly be considered an inflectional category of the Basque verb since subordination is signaled by prefixes and suffixes on the conjugated verb, further multiplying the number of potential forms.[21]
Transitivity is a thoroughgoing division of Basque verbs, and it is necessary to know the transitivity of a particular verb in order to conjugate it successfully. In the spoken language only a handful of commonly used verbs are fully conjugated in the present and simple past, most verbs being conjugated by means of an auxiliary which differs according to transitivity. The literary language includes a few more such verbs, but the number is still very small. Even these few verbs require an auxiliary to conjugate other tenses besides the present and simple past.[20]
The most common intransitive auxiliary isizan, which is also the verb for "to be". The most common transitive auxiliary isukan, which is also the verb for "to have". (Other auxiliaries can be used in some of the tenses and may vary by dialect.) The compound tenses use an invariable form of the main verb (which appears in different forms according to the "tense group") and a conjugated form of the auxiliary. Pronouns are normally omitted if recoverable from the verb form. A couple of examples will have to suffice to demonstrate the complexity of the Basque verb:[20]
Liburu-ak
Book-PL.the
saldu
sell
Liburu-ak saldu dizkiegu.
Book-PL.the sell AUX.3PL/ABS.3PL/DAT.1PL/ERG
"We sold the books to them."
Kafe-a
Coffee-the
gusta-tzen
please-HAB
Kafe-a gusta-tzen zaidak.
Coffee-the please-HAB AUX.ALLOC/M.3SG/ABS.1SG/DAT
"I like coffee." ("Coffee pleases me.")(Used when speaking to a male friend.)
The morphs that represent the various tense/person/case/mood categories of Basque verbs, especially in the auxiliaries, are so highly fused that segmenting them into individual meaningful units is nearly impossible, if not pointless. Considering the multitude of forms that a particular Basque verb can take, it seems unlikely that an individual speaker would have an opportunity to utter them all in his or her lifetime.[22]
Most languages in theMainland Southeast Asia linguistic area (such as thevarieties of Chinese,Vietnamese, andThai) are not overtly inflected, or show very little overt inflection, and are therefore consideredanalytic languages (also known asisolating languages).
Standard Chinese does not possess overt inflectional morphology. While some languages indicate grammatical relations with inflectional morphemes, Chinese utilizes word order andparticles. Consider the following examples:
Both sentences mean 'The boy sees the girl.' This is becausepuer (boy) is singular nominative,puellam (girl) is singular accusative. Since the roles of puer and puellam have been marked with case endings, the change in position does not matter.
The situation is very different in Chinese. Since Modern Chinese makes no use of inflection, the meanings ofwǒ ('I' or 'me') andtā ('he' or 'him') shall be determined with their position.
InClassical Chinese, pronouns were overtly inflected to mark case. However, these overt case forms are no longer used; most of the alternative pronouns are considered archaic in modern Mandarin Chinese. Classically, 我 (wǒ) was used solely as the first person accusative. 吾 (Wú) was generally used as the first person nominative.[23]
Certainvarieties of Chinese are known to express meaning by means of tone change, although further investigations are required[dubious –discuss]. Note that thetone change must be distinguished fromtone sandhi.Tone sandhi is a compulsory change that occurs when certain tones are juxtaposed. Tone change, however, is a morphologically conditionedalternation and is used as an inflectional or a derivational strategy. Examples fromTaishan and Zhongshan (bothYue dialects spoken inGuangdong Province) are shown below:[24]
| ngwoi33 | ‘I’ (singular) |
| ngwoi22 | ‘we’ (plural) |
| hy22 | ‘go’ |
| hy35 | ‘gone’ (perfective) |
The following table compares the personal pronouns of Sixian dialect (a dialect ofTaiwanese Hakka)[25] with Zaiwa and Jingpho[26] (bothTibeto-Burman languages spoken inYunnan andBurma). The superscripted numbers indicate theChao tone numerals.
| Sixian | Zaiwa | Jingpho | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Nom | ŋai11 | ŋo51 | ŋai33 |
| 1 Gen | ŋa24 or ŋai11 ke55 | ŋa55 | ŋjeʔ55 |
| 1 Acc | ŋai11 | ŋo31 | ŋai33 |
| 2 Nom | ŋ̍11 | naŋ51 | naŋ33 |
| 2 Gen | ŋia24 or ŋ̍11 ke55 | naŋ55 | naʔ55 |
| 2 Acc | ŋ̍11 | naŋ31 | naŋ33 |
| 3 Nom | ki11 | jaŋ31 | khji33 |
| 3 Gen | kia24 or ki11 ke55 | jaŋ51 | khjiʔ55 |
| 3 Acc | ki11 | jaŋ31 | khji33 |
InShanghainese, the third-person singular pronoun is overtly inflected as to case and the first- and second-person singular pronouns exhibit a change in tone depending on case.[citation needed]
Japanese shows a high degree of overt inflection of verbs, less so of adjectives, and very little of nouns, but it is mostly strictlyagglutinative and extremely regular. Fusion of morphemes also happen in colloquial speech, for example: the causative-passive〜せられ〜 (-serare-) fuses into〜され〜 (-sare-), as in行かされる (ikasareru, "is made to go"), and the non-past progressive〜ている (-teiru) fuses into〜てる (-teru) as in食べてる (tabeteru, "is eating"). Formally, every noun phrase must bemarked for case, but this is done by invariable particles (cliticpostpositions). (Many[citation needed] grammarians consider Japanese particles to be separate words, and therefore not an inflection, while others[citation needed] consider agglutination a type of overt inflection, and therefore consider Japanese nouns as overtly inflected.)
Someauxiliary languages, such asLingua Franca Nova,Glosa, andFrater, have no inflection. Other auxiliary languages, such as Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua have comparatively simple inflectional systems.
InEsperanto, an agglutinative language, nouns and adjectives are inflected for case (nominative, accusative) and number (singular, plural), according to a simple paradigm without irregularities. Verbs are not inflected for person or number, but they are inflected for tense (past, present, future) and mood (indicative, infinitive, conditional, jussive). They also form active and passive participles, which may be past, present or future. All verbs are regular.
Ido has a different form for each verbal tense (past, present, future, volitive and imperative) plus an infinitive, and both a present and past participle. There are though no verbal inflections for person or number, and all verbs are regular.
Nouns are marked for number (singular and plural), and the accusative case may be shown in certain situations, typically when the direct object of a sentence precedes its verb. On the other hand, adjectives are unmarked for gender, number or case (unless they stand on their own, without a noun, in which case they take on the same desinences as the missing noun would have taken). The definite article "la" ("the") remains unaltered regardless of gender or case, and also of number, except when there is no other word to show plurality. Pronouns are identical in all cases, though exceptionally the accusative case may be marked, as for nouns.
Interlingua, in contrast with the Romance languages, has almost no irregular verb conjugations, and its verb forms are the same for all persons and numbers. It does, however, have compound verb tenses similar to those in the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages:ille ha vivite, "he has lived";illa habeva vivite, "she had lived". Nouns are inflected by number, taking a plural-s, but rarely by gender: only when referring to a male or female being. Interlingua has no noun-adjective agreement by gender, number, or case. As a result, adjectives ordinarily have no inflections. They may take the plural form if they are being used in place of a noun:le povres, "the poor".
