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To apply an ''inflection'' is to change the form of a word so as to give it extra meaning. This extra meaning could be:

  • Number

  • Person

  • Case

  • Gender

  • Tense

  • Mood

  • Aspect

  • Politeness (as in the Japanese Language )


Inflectional morphology manifests primarily in the form of a Prefix , Suffix , or vowel change. A Circumfix can also occur, but these are relatively rare.

An example of suffixes in inflectional morphology:


The word ''apples'' is not a different word to ''apple''. The extra ''s'' is simply giving the extra meaning - in this case, that there is more than one apple.

An example of vowel changes in inflectional morphology:


Again, ''throw'' and ''threw'' are not different words. ''threw'' is the result of inflectional morphology being applied to the Root Word ''throw''.

English is relatively poor in inflectional morphology. Other Indo-European languages have a richer system of inflection morphology. Latin is a typical example of a language with a very rich system of inflectional morphology.