Consider the following:

class Foo {
  private String field
}
class Bar extends Foo {
  def baz() {
    field
  }
}

Execution of "new Bar().baz()" results in: groovy.lang.MissingPropertyException: No such property: field for class: Bar

However, type inferencing shows that the occurrence of "field" within baz() infers to "Foo.field".