Pronoun Inflections

Pronouns are words like I and them that can stand for nouns in sentences (for example: “This is
my sister. She is the tallest woman I know,” where she in the second sentence stands for sister in the
first sentence). Pronouns have the most detailed inflectional system in English: depending on the
specific example, they can show distinctions to indicate whether a word is singular or plural, the subject
or object of a sentence, or singular or plural possessive.

The most complete set of pronouns is found in the first person (i.e. I and we) and the third person
singular masculine (i.e. he) and plural (i.e. they). The other pronouns all have more overlap or
unchanging forms.

Number Function in sentence

Subject I
Singular
Object me
(i.e. one)
Possession my
Subject we
Plural
Object us
(i.e. more than one)
Possession our

Noun Inflections

Nouns (words like girl, woman, child, and sheep: a more complete definition is given in the next tutorial)
have next most complete system. For most nouns (there are some exceptions), we can distinguish
singular against plural and between possession and all other functions. Note how in the noun paradigm,
the same form of each noun appears for the subject and the object:

Number Function in sentence Form

Subject or Object girl woman child
Singular
Possession girl’s woman‘s child’s
Subject or Object girls women childre
Plural
Possession girls’ women’s childre

Adjective Inflections

Adjectives (words like blue, quick, or symbolic that can be used to describe nouns) used to have many of
the same inflections found on the nouns and pronouns. In Modern English, however, the only inflections
that remain are used to indicate degree of comparison and not all adjectives can show even this: while
most short adjective can use -er and -est, longer adjectives use more and most before the word in
question:

Degree Form
Positive blue quick symbolic
bluer or quicker more symbo
Comparative
more blue
Superlative bluest quickest most symbo