What is meant by inflectional affixes?

Inflectional affixes are a type of grammatical morpheme that modify a word's grammatical function or meaning without changing its core lexical meaning. They are typically added to the end of a word (suffixes) but can sometimes be added to the beginning (prefixes).

Here's what you need to know about inflectional affixes:

* Grammatical Function: They alter how a word functions in a sentence, like changing a noun from singular to plural or a verb from present tense to past tense.

* No Change in Meaning: They don't fundamentally change the meaning of the word itself.

* Common Types:

* Number: Singular/Plural (e.g., -s, -es)

* Tense: Present/Past/Future (e.g., -ed, -ing, -s)

* Person: First/Second/Third (e.g., -s)

* Gender: Masculine/Feminine (e.g., -a in Spanish)

* Case: Nominative/Accusative/Dative/Genitive (e.g., -us, -i in Latin)

Examples:

* Noun: "cat" -> "cats" (plural)

* Verb: "walk" -> "walked" (past tense)

* Adjective: "big" -> "bigger" (comparative)

In contrast to derivational affixes, which create new words with different meanings (e.g., "happy" -> "happiness"), inflectional affixes only modify the grammatical role of the word.

Understanding inflectional affixes is crucial for understanding grammar and for effectively using and interpreting language.