word | inflection |
---|---|
definition | (1) A change in the pitch, tone, or loudness of the voice. (2) The change in form of a word showing its case, gender, number, person, tense, mood, voice, or comparison. |
eg_sentence | She couldn't understand her grandfather's words, but she knew from his inflection that he was asking a question. |
explanation | Changing the pitch, tone, or loudness of our words are ways we communicate meaning in speech, though not on the printed page. A rising inflection at the end of a sentence generally indicates a question, and a falling inflection indicates a statement, for example. Another way of inflecting words is by adding endings: -s to make a noun plural, -ed to put a verb in the past tense, -er to form the comparative form of an adjective, and so on |
IPA | ˌɪnˈflɛkʃən |
Tags: mwvb::unit:4, mwvb::unit:4:word, mwvb::word, mwvb::word-cloze, mwvb::word-reverse, obsidian_to_anki
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