Inflection (linguistics)

“ After certain verbs (bid, dare, help, make, need, etc.) the to is omitted from the infinitive group. (He bids me go. I need not hesitate.) Inflection.Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less numerous, inflection is still a convenient term in grammar. Its scope is general: it includes the declension of nouns, the comparison of adjectives and adverbs, and the conjugation of verbs. ”

“ It is so natural to let the voice fall too much and too far at the close of a paragraph, that those who wish to be heard make a point of learning how to use the rising inflection—not to the degree which implies interrogation, but, so to speak, leaving off with tones on the level, so that the voice carries well across the room. ”

“ Punch represents an Irish waiter with hand on dish-cover, asking:—'Will I sthrip ma'am?'
What is called the regular formation of the past tense (in ed) is commonly known as the weak inflection:—call, called: the irregular formation (by changing the vowel) is the strong inflection:—run, ran. In old English the strong inflection appears to have been almost universal; but for some hundreds of years the English tendency is to replace strong by weak inflection. ”

“ In works on elocution, the first is often used to denote the rising inflection of the voice; the second, the falling inflection; and the third (^) , the compound or waving inflection. In dictionaries, spelling books, and the like, the acute accent is used to designate the syllable which receives the chief stress of voice. ”

“ Each inflection has a definite and fixed meaning recognized by every one, and it is because of the laws of inflection that we can tell what meaning a speaker intends to convey when he uses certain words ”

“ When words which naturally take the rising inflection become emphatic by repetition or any other cause, they often take the falling inflection.
Exception to the Rule.—While the tendency of emphasis is decidedly to the use of the falling inflection, sometimes a word to which the falling inflection naturally belongs changes this, when it is emphatic, for the rising inflection. ”

“ There is no reason against the inflection of the word love running thus—I love, thou lovest, he loves; we lave, ye lave, they lave; in other words, there is no reason against the vowel of the root being changed with the number. In such a case there would be no personal inflection, though there would be a plural, or a numeral, inflection. ”

“ We can easily understand that the system of inflection, however useful in itself, prevents the possibility of one part of speech being used for another. In English, ‘love’ may be a noun or a verb; but in Latin or French, we must use ‘amare’ or ‘aimer’ for the verb, and ‘amor’ or ‘amour’ for the noun. This power of using one part of speech for another, exists to such an extent in English, that it may be almost said, that every word in the language may be applied in a variety of senses and grammatical constructions. ”

“ When a passage is read without any inflection, the words are uttered in what is called a monotone; the voice being commonly pitched at a grum note, and made to move for the time, slowly and gravely, on a perfect level.
"Rising inflections are far more numerous than falling inflections; the former constitute the main body of oral language, while the latter are employed for the purposes of emphasis, and in the formation of cadences. Rising inflections are often emphatic; but their emphasis is weaker than that of falling inflections."—Comstock's Elocution, p. ”

“ But just such pasting together of word elements into words occurs in many of the Aryan languages, in fact in forms of speech all over the world. It is hard to see why on account of some subsidiary difference the same process should be called "inflection" when it takes place in our own language, and "agglutination" when it occurs in Indian or other idioms. It is probably only a desire to set off ourselves from all other people that is at the bottom of the distinction between "inflecting" and "agglutinating" languages. ”

“ Inflection. If we listen to the speech of the people around us, we can easily detect an upward slide of the voice on some words, a downward slide on others, and on others again a combination of the two. This slide of the voice on words—generally on the accented syllable of an emphatic [Pg 15] word—is called inflection, and the various inflections are known as rising (/) , falling (\) , rising circumflex (\/) , and falling circumflex (/\) . ”

“ In speaking or reading, the voice must either rise or fall, if it do not continue in the same uniform tone. This rising and falling, or upward and downward sliding of the voice, is called inflection.
When the voice rises, it is, of course, called the rising inflection, and when it falls, the falling inflection. ”

“ On the other hand, inflection also is but a finer and closer kind of agglutination, peculiar to certain race-qualities, and belongs probably to a much earlier stage than we are wont to suppose : nor is it necessarily preceded by a monosyllabic formation. Thus the disintegrative and constructive processes, so readily recognized in later stages of linguistic growth, probably go on side by side in very early ones. Man, the centre of polarities, at once destroyer and builder, is true to his functions even in these infantile motions of his thought. ”

“ By inflection is meant the glide of the voice within a word to a higher or a lower pitch. This glide may be quick and short, or long and slow. It may be a rising or a falling glide, or both. The value of inflection rests in its power to make what is said more emphatic, to aid in clear enunciation, to aid in overcoming monotony. On all emphasized words we have an intensified inflection. This is illustrated in Portia’s speech in “The Merchant of Venice.” In studying this excerpt we discover that all the emphasized words have a pronounced inflection. ”

“ In inflection the voice slides up or down in pitch on a word, and by so doing impresses your meaning on the listener. Inflections are infinite in number; but a few of them practised will be of benefit in getting command over them. When the voice slides up, it is called rising inflection; if down, a falling. If it slides both ways on the same word, it is called circumflex; and if it varies but little, and is very like a chant in song, it is called monotone. A major inflection gives an effect of strength ”

“ Thus, in the later English, inflection has been reduced to a minimum: a word is invariable, its special meaning and force being shown by its position, according to the natural syntax of the idea of which it forms a part. This structure, which so closely resembles the Chinese, is in modern languages the sign of advanced intellectual growth; and, as a result of the adaptation of speech to the growing demands of civilization, it enables us to comprehend how large a scope of expression may be secured by the uninflected syllables of that apparently inorganic tongue. ”

“ But whatever necessity there may be for a great variety of modes and tenses in dialects, constructed upon arbitrary principles, it does not appear that any more than one is needful for a natural language, or that the modes of conjugating verbs or any other, are in fact expressible by human speech any otherwise than by the whole form or order of inflection and things. ”

“ I am well aware that there are many inflections which have not yielded, as yet, to any rational analysis, but, with that reservation, I thought, and I still think, it right to say that, until some other process of forming those inflections has been pointed out, inflection may be considered as the invariable result of combination.
It is impossible in writing, always to repeat such qualifications and reservations. They must be taken as understood. Take for instance the augment in Greek and Sanskrit. Some scholars have explained it as a negative particle, others as a demonstrative pronoun ”

“ Very young children rarely use inflected forms in any language. The English child of three or four years says, ‘Mary cup,’ for ‘Mary’s cup;’ and ‘Dog bite Harry’ will represent every tense and mood. It is by no means improbable that, if the children had continued to use their own language for a few years longer, inflections would have been developed in it, as we see that peculiar forms of construction and novel compounds—which are the germs of inflection—had already made their appearance. ”

“ It is hardly to be believed that there is so much ignorance as to the meaning of inflection. During the past two years, in schools of our largest cities, the author has heard teachers reprimand their pupils for allowing their voices “to fall at a comma.” As if commas were intended to indicate vocal [77] expression! Once when a bright lad used a falling inflection on “want,” in such a sentence as “What do you want?” a class nearly shook their hands off in their endeavors to attract the teacher’s attention, in order that, when he said, “What’s wrong?” ”

“ Thus, it will be observed, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a process which has been happily termed agglutination, so as to form one word, conveying a complicated idea. There is also an elaborate system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection to express the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express number. The genius of the language has been described as accumulative: it “tends rather to add syllables or letters, making farther distinctions in objects already before the mind, than to introduce new words.” ”

“ There are, indeed, a large number of languages that fuse radical element and affix in as complete and intricate a fashion as one could hope to find anywhere without thereby giving signs of that particular kind of formalism that marks off such languages as Latin and Greek as inflective.
What is true of fusion is equally true of the “symbolic” processes. [105] There are linguists that speak of alternations like drink and drank as though they represented the high-water mark of inflection, a kind of spiritualized essence of pure inflective form. ”

“ Serious as they are, they need not frighten any one who is in the habit of learning foreign tongues. The ear and the tongue gradually become familiar with the peculiarities of inflection and accentuation, and practice fulfils the same function as abstract rules. ”

“ Again, let our scheme of verbal inflection be as imperfect as it may, so long as we continue to say I love, thou lovest, he loves, and to set you love against thou lovest, and they love against he loves, so long shall we continue to attribute person and number to our verbs, through their whole conjugation. ”

“ Notice another example of this willingness to dispense with inflection, of this endeavour on the part of the speakers of a language to reduce its forms to the fewest possible, consistent with the accurate communication of thought. Of our adjectives in ‘en’, formed on substantives, and expressing the material or substance of a thing, some have gone, others are going, out of use; while we content ourselves with the bare juxtaposition of the substantive itself, as sufficiently expressing our meaning. ”

“ A middle tone is used in the rendering of expressions which while not conversational in character are too unimpassioned to require a full tone. A low or subdued tone is used in passages where the sense requires a suppression of sound. The only rule necessary is this: Study so to regulate the tone of voice that it shall always be in harmony with the thoughts expressed.
Inflection.
Inflection is the upward or downward movement of the voice in speaking or reading. There are two inflections: the rising inflection, in which the voice slides upward ”

“ Not only are the inflexions entirely different from those of the languages to which we are accustomed, but the very use of inflexions is altogether peculiar. For example, in the Chippewa language there is an inflexion of nouns, similar to our conjugation of verbs, by which all the states of the noun are expressed. Thus the word man can be inflected for person, to signify, ‘I am a man,’ ‘thou art a man,’ ‘he is a man;’ &c. ”

“ No doubt there is a reason for the particular mode of spelling each particular word in the language—but that reason is hidden in the past history of the word and in facts connected with its origin and derivation from some barbarous or dead language, and is as utterly beyond the reach of each generation of spellers as if there were no such reasons in existence. ”

“ As soon as phonetic corruption shows itself in a language, that language has lost what we considered to be the most essential character of all human speech, namely, that every part of it should have a meaning. ”

“ My aim in dealing with the linguistic side of my subject has been to show that rules for pronunciation and syntax are not the monopoly of educated people who have been taught to preach as well as practise them. Dialect-speaking people obey sound-laws and grammatical rules even more faithfully than we do, because theirs is a natural and unconscious obedience. ”

“ This will everywhere is present, and ever busy changing, mutilating, repairing, and transforming language. Countless millions of efforts are made every day to express a little more clearly than language permits, those ideas which the mind seeks to utter. Millions of these efforts mutilate whilst trying to simplify grammar; millions combine to form the crude and simpler phrases of slang; millions of efforts hack away at an adverb until it is trimmed down to a preposition. In this continual process countless individuals combine all unwittingly against existing forms of speech. ”

“ One of the elementary principles of linguistics is the tendency and ability of every living language to absorb words and phrases from outside sources, including other languages, without losing its individuality and its essential characteritsics. There is no fact better known than the fact that in all languages additions are continually made to the vocabulary by the legitimization of slang and dialectic words and phrases. Among the thousands of slang words that live for a day, there are some that have sprung into favor and have become immortal. ”