English inflectional morphology
Thursday, November 8, 2007
English has only three categories of meaning which are expressed inflectionally, known as inflectional categories. They are number in nouns, tense/aspect in verbs, and comparison in adjectives. Within these categories, English has a remarkably small inventory of affixes, by comparison with languages such as Spanish or Russian. English does not always use affixes to express these categories (see the discussion of irregular morphology).
Inflectional categories and affixes of English| Word class to which inflection applies | Inflectional category | Regular affix used to express category |
| Nouns | Number | -s, -es: book/books, bush/bushes |
| . | Possessive | -'s, -': the cat's tail, Charles' toe |
| Verbs | 3rd person singular present | -s, -es: it rains, Karen writes, the water sloshes |
| . | past tense | -ed: paint/painted |
| . | perfect aspect | -ed: paint/painted ('has painted) (past participle) |
| . | progressive or continunous aspect | -ing: fall/falling, write/writing (present participle) |
| Adjectives | comparative (comparing two items) | -er: tall/taller |
| . | superlative (comparing +2 items) | -est: tall/tallest |
Labels: Morphology
