Morpholgy

Inflection in English
 What ‘s meant by Inflection
• Inflection refers to the kind of variation that words
exhibit on the basis of their grammatical context. For
example performs and performed are ‘grammatically
conditioned variants’ or ‘inflected forms’ of ‘the verb
perform’. This means that they are used in different
contexts: she performs well (simple present), she
performed well yesterday (simple past) .
• Specifically, Inflection rules yield variant/different
forms of the "same" word (lexeme) e.g.
work/works/working/worked=These words of the
lexeme WORK remain verbs. TABLE= table/ tables
• BIG: bigger and biggest
• Wonderful : more / most wonderful
 Inflectional Affixes
• Inflectional affixes are added to the end of an
existing word for purely grammatical reasons.
• e.g.
• She works hard (overt inflection) 3rd person
singular
• They work-Ø hard (covert inflection 3rd person pl. )
• They are working hard. overt
• They worked hard. Overt
• I hit the man yesterday. Covert inflection for past
 Inflectional Affixes
• In English there are only eight total inflectional affixes:
• -s 3rd person singular present she waits
• -ed past tense he walked
• -ing progressive she's watching
• -en past participle she has eaten
• -s plural three tables
• -'s possessive Holly's cat
• -er comparative you are taller
• -est superlative you are the tallest
 Lexemes and Word Forms
• The term "word" has no well-defined meaning.
Instead, two related terms are used in
morphology: Lexeme and word-form.

• WORK:
• A lexeme is not strictly speaking something that
can be uttered or pronounced; only the word
forms that belong to it (lexeme) can be.
 Lexeme and Word Forms
• Generally, a lexeme is a set of inflected word-
forms ; a lexeme is often represented with the
form of capital letters.
• For instance, the lexeme EAT contains the word-
forms eat, eats, eaten, eating, and ate. ‘eat and
eats’ are thus considered different word-forms
belonging to the same lexeme EAT.
• ‘Eat v and Eater’, n on the other hand, are
different lexemes, as they refer to two different
concepts. The word-forms of EATER are eater
(singular) and eaters (plural).
 Lexemes and Word Forms
PERFORM (verb) (Lexeme)

Perform performs performing performed (word-forms)

We use only word-forms in daily communication through constructing sentences in English

 WRITE

write writes writing wrote written

 Homophonous Words
• It follows that the same word form can belong to two
quite different lexemes, as does rows in (10) and (11):
ROW
• (10) There were four rows of seats. Rows/ row
• (11) One person rows v the boat. Rows/
row/rowing/rowed
• rows in (10) and rows in (11) are homophonous= two
words can be pronounced the same but have different
meaning as each one belongs to a different lexeme.
 PERFORMANCE (n)

Performance (sg.) performance (pl.)

• PERFORMER

• Performer performers
• BIG

• Big bigger biggest

 Homophonous Words
Row (v) Row (n)

Row rows rowing rowed row (sg) rows (pl.)

•
Irregular inflection
a- Zero-inflection-Ø: A zero-morph, consisting of no phonetic form, is an allomorph of a
morpheme that is otherwise realized in speech.
• Plural : zero-sheep/ s- tables- hit
• In the phrase two sheep-∅, the plural marker is a zero-morph, which is an allomorph of -s as in two
cows. S ----------cow-s
• PL. s
• ∅, ………….. Two sheep -zero
• Pl. in English is one morpheme : This morpheme could be either overt (s) or covert (zero) :
allomorphs
• In the phrase I like-∅ it, the verb conjugation has a zero-affix, as opposed to the third-person
singular present -s in S ------ HE likes
he likes it.. SG S
∅, -------- I like
Singular form: zero- I like-/s- he likes

• We conclude that a zero inflection is an unrealized inflection, such as in nouns with identical
singular and plural forms. For example, plural of sheep can be analyzed as sheep-∅.
 Irregular Inflection
• b- Replacement: a morphological process that involves the
substitution of a non-morphemic segment for another with
the purpose of showing grammatical contrast.
For example:
Sing sang------i- a
Tooth teeth-------u---i:
Wife wives---voiceless------voiced
Make made
Man men
Leaf leaves
Foot feet
Have had
 Irregular Inflection
c-suppletion: is the replacement of one stem (core
word) with another, resulting in an allomorph of a
morpheme which has no phonological similarity to
the other allomorphs. Examples:
The following table illustrates stem suppletion:
Morphological process Regular, Irregular,
nonsuppletive stem (core Suppletive stem
word)
Addition of past tense suffix walk—walked go—went

Addition of comparative or big—bigger— biggest good—better—best

superlative suffix Be------is
i----------me
i---------my
 Irregular Inflection
The following table illustrates affix suppletion:
Morphological process Regular, nonsuppletive Suppletive affix
affix

Addition of plural suffix cat—cats cherub—cherubim ox —

ox-en
 Irregular Inflection
Here are some kinds of suppletion:
1-Stem suppletion : total suppletion :complete change: new different word e.g.
go-went
2-Affix –partial suppletion :partial suppletion :partial change: more than two
sounds e.g. think – thought
There are Four levels of irregular inflections:
1) No change e.g. deer---deer (pl.)

2) Replacement e.g. a one sound change e.g. sing-sang

–i- a
3) Partial change: more than one sound e.g. buy-bought
-bai /bɔːt/
4) Total change: new word e.g. bad –worse
 Inflectional Periphrastic forms
• A periphrastic construction is one
in which an independent word or
multi-word expression has the
same role as an inflection.
i.e. additional words added to verbs,
adjectives and nouns to show
inflection: grammatical contrast
 Verbs
• Verbs: A tense is inflectional if it is realized as an
affix on a head (in English, a verb), periphrastic if
it is realized as an independent word. Thus the
English past is inflectional, but the future is
periphrastic, co-opting the modal will .i.e. the use
of the auxiliary will with another verb to form the
future tense.
• I will help him.
• I have helped him.
 Adjectives
• Adjectives: "There are two patterns of comparison of adjectives, the inflected and the
periphrastic.
• The inflected pattern adds -er to the positive degree: small becomes smaller, happy
becomes happier. To form the superlative degree, it adds -est: smallest, happiest.
• The periphrastic pattern uses the adverbial intensifiers more and most: the
comparatives of beautiful and ostentatious are more beautiful and more ostentatious;
the superlatives are most beautiful and most ostentatious.
• The generalizations that seem to account for whether we choose the inflected pattern
or the periphrastic are these:
(1) most one- and two-syllable adjectives use the inflected pattern;
(2) adjectives of three and more syllables almost always use the periphrastic;
(3) the higher the frequency of two-syllable adjectives, the more likely they are to inflect
for comparison e.g. narrower, gentler , simpler, quieter; and
(4) the periphrastic more and most may on occasion be used with any one-syllable or
high-frequency two-syllable adjective, e.g., more dear, most happy."​
(Emphasis)??????
 Nouns
• Nouns: when a noun ends by –s and can be interpreted either singular or
plural, it is preferable to use a periphrastaic form to remove any kind of
vagueness. For example.
• a. Those scissors belong in the top drawer.
• b. Your pants have a hole in the seat.
• In the previous example, both scissors and pants are vague; using
periphrastic forms pair of /pairs of resolves that vagueness. Examine the
following:
• (c) That pair of scissors belongs in the top drawer. One scissors
• (d) Those pairs of scissors belong in the top drawer. More than one
scissors
 Nouns-Possessive
• The Periphrastic Possessive: To attribute
possessiveness to inanimate objects we generally
use the periphrastic possessive, that is a
prepositional phrase (beginning with a
preposition and followed by a noun). For the
inanimate examples, we might expect the
following:
The expense of getting wool down to the side of the
ship would eat up the farmer's profits.
 Two Classes of Words
• There are two groups: lexical (or content) and function
(or grammatical) words.
• Lexical words are called open class words and include
nouns, verbs, adjectives . New words can regularly be
added to this group. This group accepts affixes.
• Function words, or closed class words, are conjunctions,
prepositions, articles and pronouns, adverbs; and new
words cannot be (or are very rarely) added to this class.
This group can’t be inflected or derived.
 CASE
• Cases describe the grammatical functions of
nouns, pronouns and noun phrases, such as
whether they are the subject of the clause or
a subordinate object.
• Three Cases:
• Nominative He
• Accusative him
• Genitive/ possessive his
 Nominative Case
1-The nominative case, also called the
subjective, marks the subject of a phrase. The
subject is the noun (or pronoun) that performs
the action of the verb. For example, in the
sentence "She helped him", the subject is "she",
who performs the action of helping.
•In Arabic, this nominative case is very clear by
diacritical marker –u (damma).
•sa:’da al-waladu al-binta ‘the boy helped the
girl’
 Accusative Case
• 2) The accusative case deals with direct
objects.
• In English for example, in the sentence "I
drink coffee", the direct object is "coffee",
and thus it is in the accusative case.
• In Arabic. It is expressed by diacritical
marker –a (fatha).
• Sa’ad-a al-rajul-u al-walad-a
 Genitive Case
• Genitive Case (al-muda:f il-e:h ): Also called the
possessive case, the genitive case marks objects
as pertaining or belonging to another object and
expressed by diacritical marker –i (kasra).
• For example, in the phrase "it is mine", the
pronoun "mine" is in the genitive case.
• Qar`atu qissat-a al-walad-i ‘ I read the boy’s story’
• English doesn’t show case inflection except the
personal pronouns.
• we –nominative, us- accusative, our-genitive.
 Gender
• In English, unlike many other related languages,
nouns, determiners, and adjectives have no
inflectionally-marked gender distinctions except
for some nouns, such as 'princess, poetess,
businesswoman, etc.'
• For example, there is no gender inflectional
markers for boy and girl in the following
sentences: the girl came /the boy came.
 Gender
• Gender in English as a grammatical category is
used for the analysis of word-classes displaying
such contrasts as (masculine, feminine and
neuter, animate and inanimate, etc.).
• Inanimate Gender differentiates between:
• 'natural/ biological gender' which is related to
sex, e.g. ‘asfu:r ‘sparrow’ vs. ‘hama:ma’ dove
• 'grammatical gender' which refers to inanimate
objects e.g. qalam ‘pen’ is masculine.
 Gender
• In contrast, Arabic is inflected for gender. Each
noun can be classified either masculine or
feminine e.g. qalam ‘pen’ is masculine,
whereas midbase ‘stapler’ is feminine.
• When a noun is used as a subject, it must
agree with verb/predicate in the sentence e.g.
the feminine suffix–t agrees with the
feminine word ‘al-bintu ‘the girl’ in the
following sentence ja:`a-t al-bintu ‘the girl
came’
 Person
• The two languages(Arabic and English) differ in
terms of the second and the third person
pronouns.
• In Arabic, there are five second person
pronouns(ʔnta, ʔnti, ʔntuma:, ʔntum, ʔntuna)
that are expressed in English by means of one
pronoun 'you'.
• The third person pronouns in Arabic are also
more than their English counterparts(he-huwa,
she-hiya, they- huma:, hum, hun). In addition,
there is no neuter pronoun(it) in Arabic
 Number
• Many languages make a distinction between singular and
plural: English, for example, distinguishes between man
and men, or house and houses. English has words
distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: both/all,
either/any, neither/none, between/among, former/first,
and latter/last. These words are free morphemes added
to specify number e.g. two houses.
• In addition to singular and plural, Arabic uses bound
morphemes - the inflectional suffixes –i:n and –a:n – for
expressing duality (two numbers).
• In this regard Arabic is inflected for duality, whereas
English is not.