Inflected language structure
In the language typology according to Wilhelm von Humboldt and August Wilhelm Schlegel, an inflected linguistic structure is a subspecies of the synthetic language structure . Languages in which this language structure predominates are called inflectional languages (= " inflective " languages). In an inflected language, the grammatical role of a word in a sentence is - at least largely - marked by the so-called (strong) inflection .
In addition, the term “inflectional languages” is often used synonymously for synthetic languages ; this use of the word then also includes the weak inflection (s) of a language.
As in the agglutinating languages and the fusional languages (the latter are mostly inflectional languages at the same time), grammatical categories are clarified by modifications in the middle of an affected word. In an inflected language, it is a matter of changing the stem of the word , namely by means of ablaut , umlaut , grammatical change .
Indo-European languages
German is considered to be one of the few Germanic languages (alongside Icelandic and Faroese ) that still inflect quite heavily today - which allows greater freedom in sentence structure and word formation. In ancient times, some indo-European languages that were no longer alive , especially Latin , ancient Greek and (most of all ) Sanskrit , inflected even more , but nowadays also the large family of Slavic languages ( Russian , Polish ).
In addition, the Baltic languages have retained more inherited, flexivic peculiarities to this day than German, especially Lithuanian , which, for example, still has three Indo-European numbers ( singular , dual , plural ) in individual dialectal forms and in the written language and seven of the original eight possesses Indo-European falls. The same is often said of the Slavic languages, but only applies to the inflection of nouns and related parts of speech (up to eight cases), whereas the inflection of the Slavic activity words and their derivatives is much poorer than that of the Baltic ones.
Examples:
- Br i ch (you no leg!)
- Br e ch '(... it's me, so ...)
- Bro a ch (I'll keep it).
- ge br o chen (did I's then d me. e., a)
- Br u ch (moved to me - or several)
- Br ü che. -
- Br ä che (I's me so do not: more's it!)
Furthermore, derivatives such as fallow ("broken", that means devastated but undeveloped land), North German brook , brack (water), chunks , crumble , prickle , to thousands of roots .
(On the other hand, without any change in the word stem :)
- a friend (e.g. '... helps') [male, singular, who- (= 1st) case]
- of a friend (e.g. '... help') [male (regarding 'friend'!), singular, Wes- (= 2nd) case]
- a friend (s) (e.g. '… I help') [male, singular, whom- (= 3rd) case
- a friend (e.g. '... everyone needs') [male, singular, whom- (= 4th) case
- one (e.g. '... of your friends') [male, singular, who- (= 1st) case - but this time (see above) single! ]
- one (e.g. '… good friend') [female, singular, who- (= 1st) or who- (= 2nd) case - single! ]
- one (e.g. '... of these things') [neuter, singular, who- (= 1st) or who- (= 2nd) case - single! ].
Russian :
- одна тарелка (odna tarelka) ( Femininum ) - a plate
- одно дерево (odno derevo) ( neuter ) - a tree
- один стол (odin stol) ( masculine nominative ) - a table
- одного стола (odnogo stola) (masculine genitive ) - a table
- одному столу (odnomu stolu) (masculine dative ) - a table
- одним столом (odnim stolom) (masculinum instrumentalis ) - with a table
- на одном столе (na odnom stole) (masculine prepositive ) - on a table
Non- Indo-European languages
Non- Indo-European inflected languages are, for example, the Semitic languages . There, on the other hand, the inflection mainly affects the verb (= activity word), but hardly any nouns and their relatives (with the exception of the “broken plural” in Arabic ).
