Nominale: flektiert und unflektiert / Nominals: inflected and uninflected

Abstract

German is, of course, an inflectional language. Some parts of speech are normally inflected: verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns and articles, to name the most predominate ones. This introduction asks whether it makes sense to even mention uninflected forms of inflectional word classes. It is a well-known fact that adjectives are only inflected in one special position -as an attribute preceding a noun. In other syntactic functions adjectives are used in their simple form. Verbal infinitives can be described as partly uninflected as they are not inflected for person and number. Finite and infinite forms have totally different syntactic functions: finite verbs are predicates and infinite verbs are everything else. Now we must ask ourselves if we can also find uninflected, i.e. undeclined nouns? We can also find undeclined forms among pronouns and articles. On the other hand, perhaps there are inflected prepositions and conjunctions. This introduction produces more questions than answers, but it presents the framework for the articles found in this volume.