Inflection

SOURCES:
R. CARTER, M. MCCARTHY (2011), CAMBRIDGE
GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH / A COMPREHENSIVE
GUIDE: SPOKEN AND WRITTEN ENGLISH
GRAMMAR AND USAGE,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
A. CARSTAIRS-MCCARTHY (2002)
AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY,
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
 Definition
2

A process of word formation in which items are added to the

base form of a word to express grammatical meanings.
For example, the -s on dogs indicates plural; the past form drank
contrasts with the present drink; the -est on cleverest indicates
the superlative form (Cambridge Grammar of English, p. 907)
English does not make much use of word structure to express
grammatical meaning
Inflection in English occurs through:
inflectional suffixes
vowel or consonant change
syncretism
suppletion
 Inflection: inflectional suffixes
3

noun plurals (e.g. -s, -es, -en) : cars, bushes, oxen

3rd person singular present tense -s: he works; it
rises
past tense -ed: we walked; I smoked
-ing form as progressive aspect : she’s running; we
were laughing
-ed form as -ed participle: they’ve landed; he was
beaten
comparative form -er, -est: he’s smaller; I’m smallest
negative verb inflection -n’t: I can’t; they won’t
 Inflection: vowel / consonant change
4

goose - geese (plural)

hang – hung (past tense)
far – further (comparative)
advise – advice (verb to noun)
 Inflection: syncretism
5

Examples of syncretism: an inflected form is

identical to its non-inflected form (e.g. where the
singular and plural have the same form)
deer (singular) -- deer (plural)
set – set (past tense, -ed participle)
 Inflection: suppletion
6

Examples of suppletion: an alternative word is

used for a particular inflectional meaning
be: am, is, are (present tense)
go: went (past tense)
 Interim summary
7

Inflections do not change the meaning of a word

Walk and walked have the same lexical meaning;
they are forms of the same lexeme
Responsible and irresponsible have different
meanings; they are different lexemes
 Words and grammar
8

‘more basic’ vs. ‘grammatically conditioned variant’

Cf. performs, performed and performance in (1) – (3):
(1) The pianist performs in the local hall every week.
(2) Mary told us that this pianist performed in the
local hall last week.
(3) The performance last week was particularly
impressive.
Suffixes: -s, -ed, -ance
-s and -ed are dependent on the grammatical context
-ance is not dependent on the grammatical context
 Words and grammar
9

 Performs and performed: grammatically conditioned

variant forms of the verb perform
 Performance is not a variant form of the verb perform, but
rather a noun derived from it.
 Inflectional morphology (inflection) deals with the
inflected forms of words (i.e. the kind of variation that
words exhibit on the basis of their grammatical context)
 Derivational morphology is concerned with the way in
which lexemes are related to one another (in which one
lexeme is derived from another through processes such as
affixation).
 Words and grammar
10

Lexeme: abstract, bare, unaffixed form

Word form: tied to its pronunciation (two word forms are the
same if they are pronounced the same)
NB the same word form can belong to two different lexemes, as
does rows in:
There were four rows of seats.
One person rows the boat.
Grammatical word: the plural of the noun ROW, the third
person singular present tense of the verb ROW; the past tense of
the verb PERFORM, etc.
What links a word form with a lexeme in a given context is the
grammatical word that the word form expresses
 Regular and irregular inflection
11

 CHILD – children
 TOOTH – teeth

 MAN – men

http://
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tooth
Irregular nouns in their plural formation
Irregularity is a kind of idiosyncrasy that dictionaries need
to acknowledge
Cf. mans in G. Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four Newspeak and
the speech of young children and of non-native learners
Irregular forms have to be specially learned
 Forms of nouns
12

Countable nouns: singular and plural (number)

-s in cats
-i, -ae, -a in cacti, formulae, phenomena
-(r)en in oxen, brethren, children
-im in cherubim, kibbutzim
teeth, men
fish, deer, trout
A deer was visible through the trees.
Two deer were visible through the trees.
‘Zero-plural’ nouns: a minority pattern of plural formation (a common
semantic factor – they all denote animals, birds or fish that are either
domesticated (SHEEP) or hunted (DEER), usually for food (TROUT, COD,
PHEASANT), but the relationship is not hard-and-fast, cf. the regular -s plurals
COW, GOAT, PIGEON, HEN)
 Forms of nouns
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NB a few nouns such as SCISSORS and PANTS which exist only
in an -s plural form, and which appear only in plural syntactic
contexts, even though they denote single countable entities:
a. Those scissors belong in the top drawer. b. Your pants have a
hole in the seat.
a. *That scissors belongs in the top drawer. b. *Your pants has a
hole in the seat.
The idiosyncratic lack of a morphological singular form (except
in compounds such as scissor factory)
*a scissor, *a scissors, *a pant, *a pants
Periphrastic forms: pair of pants, pair of scissors, That pair
of scissors belongs in the top drawer.
 Forms of nouns
14

The singular – plural distinction is the only grammatical

distinction that is expressed morphologically in English nouns.
‘the apostrophe-s’ form attaches itself to a syntactic unit – a noun
phrase (not a morphological unit such as a noun root):
that man’s bicycle
that old man’s bicycle
that man next door’s bicycle
that man you met yesterday’s bicycle
that man you met’s bicycle
The only morphological peculiarity of the ‘the apostrophe-s’ form is
that with the plural suffix -s, the two fuse, both in pronunciation and
spelling:
these pianists’ performances
Forms of pronouns and determiners
15

In morphology, we are mainly concerned with the behaviour

of words which belong to open classes (nouns, adjectives,
verbs and adverbs).
Pronouns: sg vs. pl, subject vs. non-subject form
Personal pronouns: case (He loves her. She loves him. – he,
she – the nominative case; her, him – the accusative case).
The genitive case: his, our, my, her, your, their
(syntactically and semantically these forms perform the
same role as the noun phrases with the ‘apostrophe -s’ form)
Determiners: this – these, that - those
 Forms of verbs
16

In English, a verb lexeme has at most five distinct forms:

GIVE
1. third person sg present tense – gives (e.g. Mary gives a lecture every
year.)
2. past tense – gave (e.g. Mary gave a lecture last year.)
3. progressive participle – giving (e.g. Mary is giving a lecture today.)
4. perfect or passive participle – given (e.g. Mary has given a lecture
today.)
5. basic form, used everywhere else – give (e.g. Mary wants to give a
lecture. Mary may give a lecture. Mary and John give a lecture every
year.)
1. and 2. manifest a contrast of tense
1. manifests contrasts of person (third person vs. the rest) and number
(sg vs. pl)
 Forms of verbs
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All regular verbs have only four forms:

 PERFORM

a. third person sg present tense – performs

b. past tense – performed
c. progressive participle – performing
d. perfect or passive participle – performed
e. basic form – perform
When two grammatical words that are distinct for some lexemes
are systematically identical for others, as here, these forms are
said to exhibit syncretism.
The same syncretism also occurs in: DIG and STING (past=perfect
participle dug, stung), BEND, FEEL, TEACH (bent, felt, taught)
 Forms of verbs
18

Modals distinguish only two forms (e.g. can, could)

or even just one (e.g. must), while BE distinguishes
eight (am, is, are, was, were, being, been, be)
 Forms of adjectives
19

Most English adjectives distinguish three forms:

GREEN:
Grass is green.
The grass is greener now than in winter.
The grass is greenest in early summer.
The dimension of comparison: positive, comparative, superlative
Happy, happier, happiest
Long, longer, longest
Pure, purer, purest
Untidy, untidier, untidiest
Good, better, best
 Forms of adjectives
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However, many adjectives lack these forms:

*Curiouser and curiouser! (Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland)
*This field is fertiler than that one.
*The fertilest fields of all are here.
The above forms are expressible in English, but the
grammatically acceptable forms are the periphrastic
ones:
More and more curious!
This field is more fertile than that one.
The most fertile field of all are here.
 Forms of adjectives
21

The suffixes -er and -est appear on adjectives

whose basic form has one syllable, or two provided
that the second syllable ends in a vowel (e.g. tidy,
yellow), while longer adjectives usually require the
periphrasis.
 Conclusions
22

Inflection affects nouns, verbs, adjectives and a few adverbs, as well

as the closed classes of pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries and
modals. However, the maximum number of distinct inflected forms
for any open-class lexeme is small:
Nouns: 2 e.g. cat, cats
Verbs: 5 e.g. gives, gave, giving, given, give
Adjectives: 3 e.g. green, greener, greenest
Adverbs: 3 e.g. soon, sooner, soonest
Inflection plays a much more modest role in modern English than in
German (for example), or in Old English.
On the other hand, English makes more use of inflection than
languages such as Afrikaans, Vietnamese and Chinese, which have
little or none.
 Exercise 1
23

In each of the following groups of word forms,

identify those that are, or can be, according to
context) forms of the same lexeme:
(a) woman, woman’s, women, womanly, girl
(b) greenish, greener, green, greens
(c) written, wrote, writer, rewrites, writing.
 Exercise 2: What word form represents each of the following
grammatical words?
24

(a) the plural of the noun NOOSE

(b) the plural of the noun GOOSE
(c) the plural of the noun MOOSE
(d) the past tense of the verb PLAY
(e) the past tense of the verb LAY
(f) the past tense of the verb LIE ‘rest horizontally’
(g) the past tense of the verb LIE ‘tell untruths’
(h) the third person singular past of the verb BE
(i) the perfect participle of the verb DIVE
(j) the perfect participle of the verb STRIVE
(k) the perfect participle of the verb GLIDE
(l) the perfect participle of the verb RIDE
(m) the perfect participle of STRIDE
(n) the accusative of the pronoun YOU
(o) the accusative of the pronoun WE
 Exercise 3
25

Which of the forms in question 2 are irregular?

Are any of them suppletive?
 Exercise 4
26

Identify at least one adjective that has a suppletive

comparative form.