inflected language; fusional language
Linguistics term for a language where words change form to express grammatical relationships, such as Latin or Russian. Contrasts with agglutinative and isolating languages.
Latin is a typical example of an inflected language.
In inflected languages, changes in word endings indicate grammatical functions.
Isolating language, where words tend to be invariable and grammatical relations are shown by word order or particles, like Chinese. 屈折語 relies on internal word changes.
Compound of 屈折 (inflection) and 語 (language). The term is a calque from Western linguistics.