inflectional ending
- noun
- /ɪnˈflɛkʃənəl ˈɛndɪŋ/
- Specialized
:
terminación flexional
- In English, the inflectional ending -s is added to nouns to indicate plurality.
Examples
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The verb changes meaning based on its inflectional ending, such as -ed for past tense.
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Students often struggle with the correct use of inflectional endings, like -ing for continuous tenses.
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One of the more interesting questions in Latin instruction has been the process by which the reader focuses attention on word meanings, word order cues, and cues given by the inflectional endings.
Academic text (2001)
Synonyms
43
2.8
The letters added to a word to change its form, for example -s or -ness
5
2.8
Letters added to the end of a word to make a new word or change its form
3
6.7
The end part of a word, like the suffix '-ness' that changes its form
An ending added to a word to show tense or number without changing its main meaning
Something you add to the end of a word to change its meaning or form
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'inflectional' (relating to grammatical modifications of a word) + 'ending' (a suffix at the end of a word); together they describe a suffix that marks grammatical features. This adjective+noun combination follows a regular, cross-linguistic pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Inflectional ending comes from the idea of adding a small 'tail' to a word. The ending is the extra letters at the end, for example '-s' for 'plural' or '-ed' for 'past'. That's why the phrase means letters added to a word to show its grammar.