Inflection

1. The function of lexical items

  • the lexical items found in the dictionary, or lexicon, of the grammar are used in sentencesto convey the speaker’s intentions

example: lexical items are assembled into sentences, according to the syntactic rules of English to convey different meanings

Nouns: farmer, wolf, field

Verbs: see

Determiners: a(n), the

Prepositions: in

Adverbs: often

The farmer often sees a wolf in the field.

The wolf often sees a farmer in the field.

 in many languages, the dictionary form of lexical items may change according to the way they are used in sentences

The farmer often sees a wolf in the field.

Farmers often see wolves in the fields.

The farmer saw a wolf in the field.

farmer vs. farmerssee vs. sees vs. sawwolf vs. wolves

singular vs. pluralplural vs. sing, 3rd p. pastsing. vs. pl.

2. The inflectional sub-module

  • inflectional morphemes

change lexical items depending on their use in sentences

change the grammatical form of a word

  • inflectional forms of words

changes in lexical items depending on their use in sentences

  • inflectional rules

rules that account for these changes

3. The inflectional categories of English

  • many languages have large inventories of inflectional morphemes

 Finnish, Russian, German maintain elaborate inflectional systems

  • by contrast, over the centuries English has shed most of its inflections

Inflectional morphemes of English

Grammaticalgrammatical formexamples

category

Nounsnumber

plural (more than one) vs. singularcat vs. cats, farmer vs. farmers

case (role of noun in sentence)

possessivevs. non-possessivestudent's vs. student

Adjectivescomparison (degree)

superlative ('most') vs.highest vs.

comparative ('more') vs. generalhigher vs. high

Verbstense

pastvs. present picked vs. pick(s)

(the reported action precedes the time
of the linguistic event)

number
(characterization of picks vs. pick
the subject of the verb)sees vs. see

3rd person singular (he, she, it)
(in present tense only)
vs. otherperson

participle

present participleseeing

past participleseen

4. Some concluding terminology

  • paradigm of a lexical entry
    the full set of inflected forms of a given lexical item

the paradigm of the nounhat:

  • singular non-possessive: hat
  • singular possessive: hat's
  • plural non-possessive: hats
  • plural possessive: hat

the paradigm of the adjectivehot:

  • general: hot
  • comparative: hotter
  • superlative: hottest

the paradigm of the verb rot:

  • third person singular present tense: rots
  • other present tense: rot
  • past tense: rotted
  • declension
    the paradigms of nominal forms (nouns, adjectives, pronouns)
  • conjugations
    the paradigms of verbal forms

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