Inflection

44166. STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH II: THE WORD

Prof. Yehuda N. Falk

Inflection in English, p. 1 Inflection is based on the concept of a paradigm. Every lexeme of a particular category has to occur in certain forms. For each chart below, the first column shows the form of “regular” morphology, the form that is used productively for new words. The other columns show the major “irregular” patterns. Notice that (in English), the regular forms always are made of either the basic form of the lexeme by itself, or by adding a bound morpheme after the lexeme (a suUx). Some of the irregular forms involve a change in the word rather than the addition of a second morpheme. DiTerent forms of morphemes are the “allomorphs” of the morpheme. In the charts, changes to the stem are shown by boldface.

Nouns lexeme

FRIEND

WIFE

OX

CHILD

FOOT

SHEEP

singular

friend

wife

ox

child

foot

sheep

plural

friend+s

wive+s

ox+en

child+ren

feet

sheep

Comments: Nouns like wife include house, knife, path, dwarf. There is some variation between speakers on some words, like roof (roofs or rooves) and hoof (hoofs or hooves).

Aside from irregular suUxes and nouns that don’t change for the plural, irregular plurals generally involve ablaut (vowel change).

Pronouns There is no regular inflection for pronouns. The chart shows the singular pronouns only. lexeme

I

YOU

HE

SHE

IT

nominative Case

I

you

he

she

it

accusative Case

me

you

him

her

it

genitive Case

my mine

your yours

his

her hers

its

lexeme

SHORT

GOOD

BAD

INTERESTING*

absolute

short

good

bad

interesting

comparative

short+er

bett+er

worse

(more interesting)

superlative short+est b+est worst *and all adjectives longer than two syllables

(most interesting)

Adjectives

44166. STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH II: THE WORD

Prof. Yehuda N. Falk

Inflection in English, p. 2 Verbs lexeme

WALK

KEEP

BREAK

SING

THROW

GO

present tense (not 3rd person singular)*

walk

keep

break

sing

throw

go

present tense (3rd person singular)

walk+s

keep+s

break+s

sing+s

throw+s

goe+s

past tense**

walk+ed

kep+t

broke

sang

threw

wen+t

bare infinitive

walk

keep

break

sing

throw

go

present participle

walk+ing

keep+ing

break+ing sing+ing

throw+ing go+ing

past participle walk+ed kep+t brok+en throw+n go+ne sung st * The verb be has a separate form for 1 person singular (am, as opposed to are) **The verb be has a separate form for 1st and 3rd persons singular (was as opposed to were) Present tense 3rd person singular: every verb uses the suUx -s. A few have irregular forms for the stem: does [dāz], has.

Past tense: irregular alveolar: -t as in keep-kept, leave-left, build-built (=build+t), put-put (=put+t); occasionally d as in bleed-bled+d . There are often changes in the pronunciation of the stem, which we will discuss when we talk about phonology. ablaut: various vowel changes Past Participle: In verbs with regular and irregular alveolar suUxes, the past participle is identical to the past tense.

Verbs with ablauted past tenses: if the verb ends with a nasal and/or a velar and has a past tense with the vowel [æ] or [ā], the past participle has the vowel [ā] (singsang-sung, ring-rang-rung, hang-hung-hung, swim-swam-swum, strike-struckstruck). Otherwise, the past participle has the suUx -en (just -n if the verb ends in a vowel).

Modals* (often called Infl in current syntactic research) lexeme

MUST

WILL

positive

must

will

negative must+n’t wo+n’t *The “auxiliary verbs” be, have, and do also have positive and negative inflections for each of their present tense and past tense forms (except for *amn’t in most dialects of English)