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)