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    Rang, Rung, and The Use of Affixes That Are Fused To Their Roots, Having No Independent Existence or

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    Perry Mason
    Inflection refers to changes in words to indicate relationships and meaning changes. It includes verb conjugation showing number, tense, person, mood and voice. It also includes noun and adjective declension showing number, case and gender. Comparison forms like big, bigger, biggest are also inflections. Characteristics are internal changes like ring, rang, rung and affixes fused to roots with no independent meaning like -ing. Most Indo-European languages have inflection systems, though some like Chinese have none. Over time, languages like English have lost inflections, replacing them with word order. This simplifies grammar but loses compactness, as Latin sentences double in words translated to English.

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    Rang, Rung, and The Use of Affixes That Are Fused To Their Roots, Having No Independent Existence or

    Uploaded by

    Perry Mason
    26 views1 page
    Inflection refers to changes in words to indicate relationships and meaning changes. It includes verb conjugation showing number, tense, person, mood and voice. It also includes noun and adjective declension showing number, case and gender. Comparison forms like big, bigger, biggest are also inflections. Characteristics are internal changes like ring, rang, rung and affixes fused to roots with no independent meaning like -ing. Most Indo-European languages have inflection systems, though some like Chinese have none. Over time, languages like English have lost inflections, replacing them with word order. This simplifies grammar but loses compactness, as Latin sentences double in words translated to English.

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    Inflection

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    Inflection refers to changes in words to indicate relationships and meaning changes. It includes verb conjugation showing number, tense, person, mood and voice. It also includes noun and adjective declension showing number, case and gender. Comparison forms like big, bigger, biggest are also inflections. Characteristics are internal changes like ring, rang, rung and affixes fused to roots with no independent meaning like -ing. Most Indo-European languages have inflection systems, though some like Chinese have none. Over time, languages like English have lost inflections, replacing them with word order. This simplifies grammar but loses compactness, as Latin sentences double in words translated to English.

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    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    26 views1 page

    Rang, Rung, and The Use of Affixes That Are Fused To Their Roots, Having No Independent Existence or

    Uploaded by

    Perry Mason
    Inflection refers to changes in words to indicate relationships and meaning changes. It includes verb conjugation showing number, tense, person, mood and voice. It also includes noun and adjective declension showing number, case and gender. Comparison forms like big, bigger, biggest are also inflections. Characteristics are internal changes like ring, rang, rung and affixes fused to roots with no independent meaning like -ing. Most Indo-European languages have inflection systems, though some like Chinese have none. Over time, languages like English have lost inflections, replacing them with word order. This simplifies grammar but loses compactness, as Latin sentences double in words translated to English.

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    INFLECTION, variations or changes that words undergo to indicate their relations with other words and changes in meaning.

    Inflection includes conjugation of verbs, which com rises such distinctions in verbs as number, tense, erson, mood, and voice !as in English go, goes, went, gone"# declension, which com rises such distinctions in nouns and adjectives as number, case and gender !as in $ anish muchacha %girl,% muchachas %girls,% muchacho" %bo&,% muchachos %bo&s%"# and the forms that indicate com arison !such as big, bigger, biggest". Characteristic of inflection are internal word changes, such as English ring, rang, rung, and the use of affi'es that are fused to their roots, having no inde endent e'istence or meaning, such as -ing, in walking, -ed in spelled, and -es in arches. The entire Indo(Euro ean language s&stem is mar)ed b& more or less elaborate s&stems of inflections, one of the most com le' of which a ears to have been e'hibited b& *roto(Indo(Euro ean ! see IN+O( E,-O*E.N L.N/,./E$". 0ost modern Indo(Euro ean languages dis la& both internal inflectional change and e'ternal affi'es, often simultaneousl& in a single word !as /erman Mnner from Mann or English sold from sell". Internal inflectional change is es eciall& characteristic of the $emitic languages. Chinese is an e'am le of a language that does not use inflection at all. In their historical develo ment man& Indo(Euro ean languages, such as French and English, have modified or dro ed their inflections. This loss of inflectional forms is erha s best t& ified in English, where the order of words in a sentence ta)es over some function of inflection ! see EN/LI$1 L.N/,./E". Loss of inflection re resents a loss of com actness# some Latin sentences, for e'am le, more than double in wordage when translated literall& into English. On the other hand, this evolution tends to sim lif& the grammatical structure of a language# a /ree) verb, for e'am le, ma& have as man& as 234 different forms. 5 Co &right 6444 $imon 7 $chuster, Inc. and its licensors.

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