A word and its forms:

inflection

Chapter 4
Week 3
Review

● What is a morpheme?
● What are the features/characteristics of a morpheme?
● Give an example of a monomorphemic word.
● Consider the following words and divide them into morphemes.
A. Tigers
B. Speakers
C. Wholesome
By the end of this chapter…

- What is a grammatically conditioned variant of a word.

- Branches of morphology: inflectional and derivational.
- Lexems and word forms.
- Homophones and homographs.
- Regular and irregular inflection
- Forms of nouns: zero-plurals
- Forms of pronouns and determiners.
- Forms of verbs, and how to identify different forms.
- Forms of adjectives.
Consider the following…

(1) This pianist performs in the local hall every week.

(2) Mary told us that this pianist performed in the local hall every week.
(3) The performance last week was particularly impressive.

Perfom in the examples above..

-s,-ed are dependent on the grammatical context, but not -ance.
perform-s ➔ The suffixes -s is dependent on the grammatical context (subject-
verb agreement: if a subject is a singular noun phrase it takes –s and vice versa)

perform-ed ➔ the suffixes -ed is dependent on the grammatical context

Reported speech ➔ sequences of tenses: if a verb of saying or thinking is in the
past tense, as told is here, then a verb in any sentence reported as having been
said or thought is likely to be shifted backwards in tense.

perform-ance ➔ the suffix –ance is NOT dependent on the grammatical

context
(there is no grammatical factor. The most one can say is that one expects to
find a noun rather than a verb)
• performs, performed ➔ variant forms of the verb perform. Performance
➔ NOT a variant form of the verb, but rather a noun derived from it

• performs, performed and perform are all inflectional variants, but

the more abstract kind of word PERFORM is a lexeme
Consider the following examples:

A. *This pianist perform in the local hall.

B. *These pianists performs in the local hall.
C. *The perform last week was particularly impressive.

The asterisk (*) is a conventional symbol to indicate that a linguistic expression (a word,
phrase or sentence) is unacceptable for some reason to do with grammar or with the
structure of the language
Branches of Morphology:

Derivational morphology:
When a morpheme is added to create (derive) another word. The
morpheme carries semantic information, and changes the part of
speech.

Inflectional morphology:
When a morpheme is added to modify a word’s tense, number,
aspect etc., without deriving a new word in a new grammatical
category.
Lexeme and Word form

A lexeme:
A lexeme is the bare, unaffixed form. The abstract kind of a word.
Lexemes are written small caps, for example:
PERFORM performs, performed and perform
Word Form:
- Two word forms are the same if and only if they are pronounced the
same, or are homophonous.
- Two words can be pronounced the same but spelled differently in
English, and vice versa.

Two – too ➔ (homophones)

Can (v. be able to) – Can (n. a metal container) ➔ (homographs)
• The same word form can belong to two quite different lexemes:

(10) There were four rows of seats. ➔ plural of the noun ROW meaning
‘line of people or things’
(11) One person rows the boat. ➔ the present tense forms of the verb
ROW meaning ‘propel with oars’

• The term grammatical word is used for designations like:

➢ the plural of the noun ROW
➢ the third person singular present tense of the verb ROW
 4.2

REGULAR AND IRREGULAR

INFLECTION
• One does not have to list performs and performed alongside perform, or
pianists alongside pianist

Why? Because they are merely grammatically conditioned variants of one

basic word – of one lexeme
• But it is not correct to say that dictionaries never have anything to say about
inflectional morphology
Why?
There are two reasons for a word form such as pianists does not have to be listed:
1. Once we know that an English word is a noun denoting a kind of thing that can
be counted. e.g., cat ➔ cats, then we can be confident that it will have a plural
form with no idiosyncrasies of meaning: it will mean simply ‘more than one X’,
whatever X may be.
2. We can be confident that the plural form of any countable noun will be
formed by adding to the singular form the suffix -s (or rather, the appropriate
allomorph of this suffix); in other words, suffixing -s is the regular method of
forming plurals.
• Any native speaker of English should be able to think of at least two or three nouns that
form their plural in some other way (Irregular plurals) than by adding -s:
CHILD ➔ children
TOOTH ➔ teeth

MAN ➔ men

• A dictionary entry for TOOTH will look like this:

tooth noun (plural teeth). One of a set of hard white structures set in the jaw and used
for biting and chewing.
• The very fact that regularisation takes place confirms that there is something about the
irregular forms that requires them to be specially learned.
• The lexeme GO

➢ The past tense form, went, is phonologically quite dissimilar to the verb’s other
forms go, goes, going and gone.
➢ Should we say that go and went are allomorphs of one morpheme? Most linguists
would say no believing that one lexeme may be represented by two (or more) quite
distinct root morphemes (NOT allomorphs).
➢ The term given to this phenomenon is suppletion; go and went are said to be
distinct roots (and hence distinct morphemes), standing in a suppletive relationship
as representatives, in different grammatical contexts, of one lexeme.
• It may seem that go and went stand in just the same relationship as the plural suffixes -
s, -en, -ae and –i in (e.g. in pianists, oxen, formulae, cacti)
• Hence, if the term ‘suppletion’ is used for the former relationship, it should be used for
the latter too
• However, ‘suppletion’ is generally applied only to roots, NOT to affixes.
• Why? Because suppletion is generally seen as a relationship between forms of the same
lexeme, whereas allomorphy need not be.
Example:
The allomorphs wife and wive- ➔ forms of the lexeme WIFE
but
The plural allomorphs [s], [z] and [əz] ➔ do not belong to any one lexeme
 4.3

FORMS OF NOUNS
Most countable nouns in English have two word forms:
1. Singular
2. Plural
Inflectionally, for any noun lexeme X, there are just two grammatical words:
1. Singular of X Contrasting in number
2. Plural of X’

Example:
CAT
1. A singular form cat ➔ consisting of just one morpheme
2. A plural form cats ➔ consisting of a root cat and the suffix -s.
• -s is the regular suffix for forming plurals.

• Irregular suffixes expressing plurality include:

a) -i, -ae and -a (as in cacti, formulae, phenomena) found with some relatively
learned words borrowed from Latin or Greek
b) -(r)en (as in oxen, children and brethren)
c) A very few others such as the Hebrew -im (as in cherubim and kibbutzim)
• There are also some countable nouns that express their plural with no suffix at all.
teeth, men ➔ there is a change in the vowel of the root – or, more precisely, an
allomorph of the root with a different vowel from the singular
• There are some whose plurals display no vowel change. sheep, fish, deer, trout
❖ Question:
If the plural and singular forms of these nouns are the same, how can we tell
whether they are singular or plural?
Answer:
According to the syntactic context.
Examples:
(12) A deer was visible through the trees. ➔ Indefinite article a + was
(13) Two deer were visible through the trees. ➔ two + were
‘Zero-plural’ nouns:
• ‘zero-plural’ nouns which carry a ‘zero suffix’ could conceivably be just as random as the
class of those with vowel change (tooth, man, etc.).
• But there seems to be a common semantic factor among the zero-plurals: they all denote
animals, birds or fish that are either:
a) domesticated SHEEP
b) hunted DEER
c) or for food TRAUT, COD.
• There are also plenty of domesticated and game animals which have regular -s plurals
(e.g. COW, GOAT, PIGEON, HEN), but the majority have zero-plurals.
• Only nouns that refer to countable entities have plural forms
cats, pianists *astonishments *rices (except in contexts where they
can be interpreted as denoting countable entities, such as
astonishing events or varieties of rice)
Question:
Does that mean that all nouns referring to countable entities have both singular and
plural forms?
Answer:
Not quite. Few nouns such as SCISSORS and PANTS which:
a) exist only in an -s-plural form
b) appear only in plural syntactic contexts, even though they denote single countable
entities
Examples:
(14) a. Those scissors belong in the top drawer.
b. Your pants have a hole in the seat.
(15) a. *That scissors belongs in the top drawer.
b. *Your pants has a hole in the seat.
We cannot say *a scissor, *a scissors, *a pant or *a pants.
However, for these lexemes, there is a conventional circumlocution or periphrastic
form: pair of pants and pair of scissors
• The choice between singular and plural is determined by:
1. Grammar
2. Meaning
Example:
(16) I saw a cat in the garden.
(17) I saw (some) cats in the garden.
(18) *I saw cat in the garden. ➔ The best we can do to express the intended content of is
use a circumlocution like one or more cats or at least one cat.
• The singular–plural distinction is the ONLY grammatical distinction that is expressed
morphologically in English nouns.
 4.4

FORMS OF PRONOUNS AND

DETERMINERS
• In morphology we are mainly concerned with the behaviour of words which belong to
open classes: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
• These classes are so called because their membership can be added to constantly as new
words come into use.
• By contrast, one does not expect in English to encounter a new pronoun (e.g. I, she, us)
or a new preposition (e.g. in, at, without).

Determiners:
• Some determiners, like nouns, display a singular–plural contrast: (e.g. this
pianist, these pianists)
• Other determiners include THE, and SOME do not display a singular–plural
contrast.
Pronouns:
• HE as a lexeme has two forms:
1. he
2. him
Examples:
(26) He loves her.
(27) She loves him.
he, she ➔ nominative case (subject of the verb)
her, him ➔ accusative case (direct object of the verb)
• The relationship between nominative and accusative forms is consistently suppletive,
(e.g. as in I/me, she/her, we/us, they/them), except that for YOU the two forms are
identical (you).
Free morphemes are divided into two types:

Lexical Morphemes Functional Morphemes

The set of ordinary nouns, verbs, The functional words in the language such as
adjectives, adverbs that we think of as the conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and
words that carry the “content” of the pronouns.
massages we convey.
Examples: girl – sad – fast – open – break Examples: and – on – an – you

“Open” class of words, “Closed” class of words,

i.e., we can add new i.e., we almost never add
lexical morphemes to new functional morphemes
the language rather to the language.
easily.
 4.5

FORMS OF VERBS
• In English, a verb lexeme has at most five distinct forms:
• Example → GIVE
a) third person singular present tense:
e.g. Mary gives a lecture every year.
b) past tense:
e.g. Mary gave a lecture last week.
c) progressive participle:
e.g. Mary is giving a lecture today.
d) perfect or passive participle:
e.g. Mary has given a lecture today.
The lecture is always given by Mary.
e) basic form (used everywhere else):
e.g. Mary may give a lecture.
Mary and John give a lecture every year.
Dimensions of contrast between distinct forms of verbs:

1. Tense
2. Person (third person versus the rest).
3. number (singular versus plural, just as for nouns and pronouns).
• Most verbs have only four forms, because the past tense and the perfect (or passive)
participle forms are the same.
• This is true for all regular verbs (those that form the past tense with the suffix -ed)
• Example:
(29) PERFORM
a. third person singular present tense: performs
b. past tense: performed
c. progressive participle: performing
d. perfect or passive participle: performed
e. basic form (used everywhere else): perform
• Syncretism:
➢ When two grammatical words that are distinct for some lexemes are systematically
identical for others these forms are said to be syncretised.
➢ Syncretism occurs with:
1. Regular verbs
PERFORM ➔ past = perfect participle performed
2. Some irregular verbs
DIG, STING ➔ past = perfect participle dug, stung
3. Irregular verbs that suffix –t
BEND, FEEL, TEACH ➔ past = perfect participle bent, felt, taught
 4.6

FORMS OF ADJECTIVES
• Many English adjectives exhibit three forms
• Example:
GREEN
(30) Grass is green. ➔ positive
(31) The grass is greener now than in winter. ➔ comparative
(32) The grass is greenest in early summer. ➔ superlative
green, greener, and greenest contrast on the dimension of comparison.
• Other adjectives with similar forms are:
Positive Comparative Superlative
happy happier happiest
untidy untidier untidiest
good better best
• Every adjective lexeme should possess a comparative and a superlative form.
• However, many adjectives lack these forms:
(36) *Curiouser and curiouser!
(37) *This field is fertiler than that one.
(38) *The fertilest fields of all are here.

• Instead of the suffixes -er and -est, we use periphrastic forms with more or most:
(39) More and more curious!
(40) This field is more fertile than that one.
(41) The most fertile fields of all are here.
Rule:
➢ One-syllable adjectives (e.g. green) + two-syllable adjectives whose
second syllabus ends in a vowel (e.g. yellow) ➔ the suffixes -er and -est
(e.g. greener, yellower)
➢ Longer adjectives (e.g. curious) ➔ periphrastic forms more or most (e.g.
more curious, most curious)
 4.7

CONCLUSION AND
SUMMARY
Inflection:
• It refers to the idea that some words (lexemes) have more than one word form,
depending on the grammatical context.
• Inflection affects:
a) The open-class of words: nouns, verbs, adjectives and a few adverbs
b) The closed-class of words: pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries and modals.
• However, the maximum number of distinct inflected forms for any open-class lexeme is
small:
o nouns: 2 e.g. cat, cats
o verbs: 5 e.g. gives, gave, giving, given, give
o adjectives: 3 e.g. green, greener, greenest
o adverbs: 3 e.g. soon, sooner, soonest
Practice:
In the following group of words identify those that are, or can
be, according to context forms of the same lexeme.
(1) Woman, woman’s, womanly, girl, women.
Woman and women are forms of the same lexeme,
representing the singular of the plural of WOMAN.

Woman’s is not a form of WOMAN because, as explained in the

chapter, -’s is not an inflectional affix, so woman’s is formed
syntactically rather than morphologically.

The adjective WOMANLY and the noun GIRL are different lexemes
From WOMAN ,although of course related in meaning.