What is inflection?

Definition
	Inflection is variation in the form of a word, typically by means of an affix, that expresses a grammatical contrast which is obligatory for the stem’s word class in some given grammatical context.

Discussion
	In contrast to derivation, inflection
	does not result in a change of word class, and usually produces a predictable, nonidiosyncratic change of meaning.

Characteristics of inflectional operations
	Inflectional operations ground the semantic content of a root according to place, time, and participant reference, without substantially affecting the basic semantic content of the root. They often specify when an event or situation took place, who or what were the participants, and sometimes where, how or whether an event or situation really took place. In other words, roots can be inflected for such things as:
	Agreement: person, number, and gender Sequential, temporal or epistemological grounding: tense, aspect, mode
	Inflectional operations
	are grammatically required in certain syntactic environments Example: The main verb of an English sentence must be inflected for subject and tense. tend to be regular and productive, in comparison to derivational operations, and tend to occur in paradigms .

Example (English)
	In the following English sentence, come is inflected for person and number by the suffix -s: The mailman comes about noon.

Example (Spanish)
	In the following Spanish noun phrase, las and rojas are inflected for agreement with manzanas in grammatical gender by -a and in number by -s:
	las manzanas rojas ‘the red apples’

Generic
	Inflection is a kind of
	What is a morphosyntactic operation?