• Adjective
Definition:
The change in the form of a word to indicate a change in its grammatical usage.
In both English and Spanish, nouns can be inflected to indicate a change in
number (that is, to indicate whether it is singular or plural) or gender (although
changes in gender, such as from "actor" to "actress," are
unusual in English). In both languages, verbs are also inflected to indicate
tense, mood, person and voice. In Spanish, adjectives are inflected to indicate
gender and number.
Related Terms
• Conjugation
• Gender
• Irregular verb
• Mood
• Noun
• Number
• Part of speech
• Past tense
• Person
• Plural
• Prefix
• Root
• Singular
• Suffix
• Tense
• Voice
The inflection can take the form of a prefix (not used for inflection in English or Spanish), a suffix, a change in the word ending or beginning, or a change in the way the word root is formed. In both languages, the suffix and changed word ending are the most common inflections. For example, both languages typically add an "-s" or "-es" to indicate that a word is plural, and Spanish also changes word endings to indicate gender. Similarly, both languages can add a suffix or change the word ending to indicate verb tenses (although English does so only for the past tense). In both languages, changes in the root word are also used in some irregular verbs. For example, the difference in tense can be seen in changing "I go" to "I went," the same as the corresponding Spanish term, voy, changes to fui to indicate the change in tense.
Greek and Russian are examples of highly inflected languages. Spanish is moderately inflected, more so than English is. Chinese is an example of a language that has little inflection. In general, word order tends to be more important in languages that have more inflection. This tendency is true in the comparison of English and Spanish.
When verbs are inflected, the inflection is known as conjugation.
Term in Spanish: inflexión, flexión
Examples of inflection to show number in Spanish: la casa, las casas; un perro, dos perros
Corresponding examples in English: the house, the houses; one dog, two dogs
Examples of inflection to show tense in Spanish: hablo, hablé; trabaja, trabajó; comemos, comeremos
Corresponding examples in English: I speak, I spoke; he works, he worked; we are eating, we will eat (inflection not used in this final English)
Example of inflection to show mood in Spanish: Pablo estudia. Preferimos que Pablo estudie.
Corresponding
example in English:
Pablo studies. We prefer that Pablo study.
Related Resources:
Gender, an Inherent Characteristic
of Spanish Nouns Making Nouns Plural Verb
Conjugation
Adjectives: Agreement
with Nouns
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Glossary>
Both nouns and adjectives are inflected so that they agree in number and gender.
In Spanish, nouns are either feminine or masculine.
The rules are very similar to those of English.
Verb endings need to be learned thoroughly to use verbs in Spanish.
