3.2. Inflection

3.2.1. Europaio is an inflected language. Inflection is a change made in the form of a word to show its grammatical relations.

3.2.2. Inflectional changes sometimes take place in the body of a word, or at the beginning, but oftener in its termination:

owis, the, a sheep; owios, of the sheep; bhero, I carry; bhreti, you carried.

3.2.3. Terminations of inflection had possibly originally independent meanings which are now obscured. They probably corresponded nearly to the use of prepositions, auxiliaries and personal pronouns in English.

Thus, in wlqos, the termination is equivalent to this or the; in bhret (Indicative) and bhret (Subjunctive), the change of vowel grade signifies a change in the mood.

3.2.4. Inflectional changes in the body of a verb usually denote relations of tense or mood, and often correspond to the use of auxiliary verbs in English:

bheresi you (thou) carry or are carrying; bhresi you (thou) carried or have carried, etc.

3.2.5. The inflection of Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns and Participles to denote gender, number and case is called Declension, and these parts of speech are said to be declined.

The inflection of Verbs to denote voice, mood, tense, number and person is called Conjugation, and the verb is said to be conjugated.

NOTE. Adjectives are often said to have inflections of comparison. These are, however, properly stem-formations made by derivations.

3.2.6. Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions and Interjections are not inflected and are usually called Particles.