= Inflection
<Inflection> expresses grammatical distinctions through the forms of a <lexeme>, without normally creating a new lexical item. <Grammatical number>, <grammatical tense> and <grammatical agreement> can be expressed inflectionally, depending on the <language>. The distinctions and their overt expression must be kept separate: a grammatical meaning can instead be expressed by a separate word.<Essentials of Linguistics (2nd edition) by Catherine Anderson and others>[§5.7, introduction, Number, Agreement, Tense and Aspect]{ref}
In `one boat` and `two boats`, the ending marks a number contrast while both forms belong to the same <lexeme>. The pair `walk` and `walked` similarly contrasts grammatical forms of a <verb>. By comparison, deriving `kindness` from `kind` creates a new lexical item through <derivational morphology>. A computational description can store the base together with grammatical features, then predict its surface form. Irregular forms show why that prediction cannot always be reduced to concatenating one universal ending.
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