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

Adjectives

lexeme SHORT GOOD BAD INTERESTING*

absolute short good bad interesting

comparative short+er bett+er worse (more interesting)

superlative short+est b+est worst (most interesting)

*and all adjectives longer than two syllables

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 singu-

lar)

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 sung throw+n go+ne

* The verb be has a separate form for 1st 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] (sing-

sang-sung, ring-rang-rung, hang-hung-hung, swim-swam-swum, strike-struck-

struck). 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)