Inflection, Derivation, Declension,

Conjugation
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Information can in a general linguistic way be expressed in different

forms. From a somewhat formal viewpoint, inflection and derivation
are morphosyntactic operations in languages that are at least
somewhat synthetic. They visually changing a word to mark properties
or relational information, such as number, person and gender.

Inflection and Derivation

Inflection

 does not change the lexical category

 creates grounded forms, and
 usually creates variations with clear, predictable meanings.
For example: 'come' → 'Comes'. Sometimes words change with
consistent affixes, sometimes with a habit of structural change and/or
interaction with pronunciation.

Derivation are word changes that (usually) change the lexical

category.
Examples: 'joyful' from 'joy', 'amazement' from 'amaze', 'national' from
'nation'.
Derivation may ground, but regularly don't.

These two concepts are not strictly defined and are not the exclusive
opposites they are sometimes taken as; many cases can be said to
fall into one or the other, but there are various cases inbetween. As
such, judging by earmarks of each is a little more accurate.
Conjugation versus Declension
Conjugation and declension refer to specific types of inflection, or
rather, that of specific classes:

 conjugation describes inflection of verbs. In many languages this

is more complex than ...
 declension, which describes inflection of anything else, usually
nouns, but possibly also pronouns, adjectives, determiners,
depending on the language.

Languages tend to structurally mark specific properties on

specific lexical categories. For example, many languages conjugate
verbs for number, and not unusually for another thing or two.

A language's declension system declines things into different forms

while not changing their lexical category, to distinguish certain direct
properties such as number and gender, but also case (a.k.a.
grammatical case), which is a more relational change. For example,
the accusative case marks the direct object of a transitive
verb, dative to relate to whom something is given, genitive as a
wide/abstract and posessive as a more concrete posession relation
between two nouns. Examples:

 German primarily declines nouns, pronouns, articles, and

adjectives - for number, gender, and/or case.
 Modern english primarily just declines nouns for number. It also
declines pronouns somewhat. It doesn't decline adjectives.

Modern English declension is perhaps the simplest among Indo-

European languages, having use for up to four cases, though
regularly not inflecting for them(verify); only grammatical number is
systematically declined. Middle and particularly Old English had richer
declension.
See also