Inflectional morphemes

Words such as to, it and be are the example of function words of free

morphemes. In English, there are also have a bound morphemes that have strictly

grammatical function. Those bound morphemes called as inflectional morphemes.

This type of morphemes never change the grammatical category of the originate

state to which they are linked to. For instance, ‘he sails the ocean blue’. The –s at the

end of the verb is an agreement marker signify the subject of the bverb is third

person and it is singular. And the verb is in present tense. It does not add lexical

meaning. The sentence of ‘ John sailed the ocean blue’; the suffix –ed indicates past

tense and it is also required by the syntatic rules of the language.

This type of morphemes symbolise the relationships between different parts of

a sentence. For instance, -s convey the connection between the verb and the third

person singular subject; -ing expresses the relationship between the time the

utterance is spoken and the time of the event. Inflectional morphology is closely to

the syntax of the sentence.

English also has other inflectional endings such as the plural suffix, which is

linked up to certain singular nouns as in boy/boys and cat/cats. For

instance,inflectional morphemes -‘s which is possessive in this sentence ‘Disa’s hair

is short’. Inflectional morphemes in English follow the derivational morphemes in a

word. Thus,the derivationally complex word commit + ment one can add a plural

ending to create commit + s+ ment = commitsment.

Inflectional morphemes are productive which is means that those words can

be put freely to nearly every genuine base exception for ‘irregular’ forms such as feet

not foots. Most nouns takes an –s inflectional suffix to form a plural, but only some

nouns take the deprivational suffix –ize to form a verb. For example, idolize, but not

picturize.

In this inflectional morphemes, it is only involved suffixes only which are –s

(plural), -‘s (possessive), -ed (past), -ing (progressive), -er (comparative) and –est

(superlative).

In conclusion, the inflectional morphemes do not change the basic meaning or

part of speech. This type of morphemes also express grammatically-required

features or indicate relations between different words in the sentences. This

morphemes are productive which means that it can combine freely with all members

of some large class of morphemes. It also occur outside any derivational morphemes

and it involved suffixes only.