The same dictionary word appears as walk, walks, walked, and walking. Inflection is the morphological marking of grammatical features such as tense, number, person, case, or gender without creating a new lexical item.

Paradigms organize the set of forms a single lexeme can take. Languages range from almost no inflection to elaborate synthetic systems. Agreement often depends on inflectional features shared across words.

Learners internalize inflection patterns to produce grammatical sentences. Historical change may simplify or reorganize paradigms through analogy and sound change. Descriptive and pedagogical grammars devote major sections to inflection.

• Grammatical modification of a word’s form
• Marks tense, number, case, and similar features
• Does not create a new dictionary word
• Organized in paradigms