Morphology Ch 4 - Inflection PDF

Ch 4: A word and its forms: inflection 1 4.1 Words & grammar: lexemes, word forms & grammatical words ▷ Inflection: is a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, gender etc....

Ch 4: A word and its forms: inflection 1 4.1 Words & grammar: lexemes, word forms & grammatical words ▷ Inflection: is a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, gender etc. ▷ In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation, in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice etc. 2 4.1 Words & grammar: lexemes, word forms & grammatical words ▷ Lexeme is the basic unit of meaning in the vocabulary of a specific language or culture. A lexeme has a morphological form, semantic content, and a syntactic category. Lexeme is basically an abstract notion used in the linguistic morphology, the concrete realization of which is a word. In other words, a lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. 3 Inflection Let us consider the words performs, performed, and performance in the following examples: 1. This pianist performs in the local hall every week. 2. Sara told us that this pianist performed in the local hall every week. 3. The performance last week was particularly impressive. perform-s, perform-ed (dependent on grammatical context perform-ance is (a noun derived from a verb) 4  performs, performed, and perform are all inflected forms of the lexeme PERFORM. Inflectional morphology deals with the inflected forms of words, a kind of variation that words exhibit on the basis of their grammatical context. 5 ▷ To define the term word form is to tie it so closely to pronunciation: Two word forms are the same if and only if they are pronounced the same, or are homophonous. ▷ The same word form can belong to two quite different lexemes, as does rows in (4) and (5): 4. There were 4 rows of seats. 5. One person rows the boat. 6 ▷ In (4), rows is the plural of the noun ROW meaning ‘line of people or things’, while in (5) it is one of the present tense forms of the verb ROW meaning ‘propel with oars’ ▷ One lexeme may be represented by more than one word form, and one word form may represent more than one lexeme. 7 4.2 Regular & irregular inflection  The words performs and performed alongside perform, or pianists alongside pianist don’t need to be listed in a dictionary because they are merely grammatically conditioned variants of one basic word – of one lexeme.  Most of the nouns in English make plurals by the addition of the suffix -s or the appropriate allomorphs of this suffix. In other words, suffixing –s is the regular method of forming plurals. 8  However, there are nouns that form their plural in some other way than by adding -s. For example:  CHILD has the plural form children, TOOTH has the plural teeth, and MAN has the plural men. Dictionary entries for these lexemes include something about how the plural is formed. Thus, for example, a dictionary entry for TOOTH will look like this: tooth noun (plural teeth). One of a set of hard white structures set in the jaw and used for biting and chewing. 9 Suppletion Lets consider the lexeme GO. Because it is a verb, we expect it to have a past tense form. However, the past tense form is went, which is phonologically quite different from the verb’s other forms go, goes, going and gone. In this case go and went are said to be distinct roots (and hence distinct morphemes), standing in a suppletive relationship as representatives, in different grammatical contexts, of one lexeme. 10 Suppletion Suppletion is seen as a relationship between roots rather than between allomorphs. Suppletion is generally applied only to roots, not to affixes. This is because suppletion is generally seen as a relationship between forms of the same lexeme, whereas allomorphy need not to be. 11 4.3 Forms of Nouns Most countable nouns in English have two word forms: a singular and a plural. ▷ Inflectionally, for any noun lexeme X, there are just two grammatical words, ‘singular of X’ and ‘plural of X’, contrasting in number. ▷ To the lexeme CAT there is a singular form cat, consisting of just one morpheme, and a plural form cats, consisting of a root cat and the suffix -s. 12 ▷ -s is the regular suffix for forming plurals. ▷ Irregular suffixes expressing plurality include -i, -ae and -a (as in cacti, formulae, phenomena) found with some words borrowed from Latin or Greek; the suffix -(r)en that shows up only in oxen, children and brethren. 13 ▷ There are also some countable nouns that express their plural with no suffix at all, such as (teeth, men) where there is a change in the vowel of the root – or, more precisely, an allomorph of the root with a different vowel from the singular. ▷ However, there are also some whose plurals display not even a vowel change: for example, sheep, fish, deer, trout. 14  The countable nouns that express their plural with no suffix at all are called ‘zero plurals’ carrying ‘zero suffix’. How can we tell whether a word is singular or plural? The answer is: according to the syntactic context. Let’s consider the following examples: 6. A deer was visible through the trees. 7. Two deer were visible through the trees. 15 ▷ In (6) deer is singular (more strictly, it represents the grammatical word ‘singular of the lexeme DEER) because it is accompanied by the indefinite article a, which only ever accompanies singular nouns and because the form of the verb be found in (6) is agreeing in singular number with the subject a deer, is was, not were. In (7), deer is plural: the numeral two accompanies only plural nouns (two cats, not *two cat), and the form of the verb be in (7) is the plural were. 16 ▷ Nevertheless, there are exceptions, animals like GOAT, COW, HEN, PIGEON take ‘-s’ to make plurals. ▷ There are a few nouns such as SCISSORS and PANTS which exist only in an -s-plural form, and which appear only in plural syntactic contexts, even though they denote single countable entities. 8. a. Those scissors belong in the top drawer. b. Your pants have a hole in the seat. 17  Thus, the singular-plural distinction is the only grammatical distinction that is expressed morphologically in English nouns.  The ‘apostrophe-s’ form: pianist’s, man’s, child’s, children’s etc. Do these count as further inflected forms of the lexemes PIANIST, MAN and CHILD, namely ‘possessive’ forms? NO. Because the -’s doesn’t attach itself to a morphological unit such as noun root (e.g. man) but a syntactic unit, namely a noun phrase:  that man’s bicycle 18  Because the -’s doesn’t attach itself to a morphological unit such as noun root (e.g. man) but a syntactic unit, namely a noun phrase. See the following example: 9. that man’s bicycle ▷ Thus, ‘possessive’ forms belong to the study of syntax, not morphology. 19 Forms of pronouns and determiners ▷ Some words belong to open classes. These are (nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs). These classes are so called because new words of these categories can be added to the language. On the contrary, one does not expect in English to encounter a new pronoun (a word such as I or she or us) or a new preposition (a word such as in or at or without). 20 ▷ What about determiners (e.g. this, that, those, these)? ▷ Some of determiners display a singular-plural contrast, and pronouns combine a singular-plural contrast with contrast unique to them, between subject and non- subject forms. ▷ There is a distinction between this and these, as in this pianist and these pianists. These are the singular and plural forms of the determiner lexeme THIS. 21 ▷ Other determiners include THE, A(N) and SOME, but only one other determiner exhibits a singular-plural contrast: THAT, with singular and plural forms that and those. The determiners THAT and THIS demonstrate that number contrasts can have a grammatical effect inside noun phrase as well as between subject noun phrases and their accompanying verbs. 22 10. He loves her. 11. She loves him. ▷ He and him contrast in case, he belonging to the nominative case and him belonging to the accusative case. ▷ If we treat HE as a lexeme, we must recognize it as having two forms: he and him. Thus, the relationship between nominative and accusative forms is suppletive, as in I/me, she/her, we/us, and they/them, except that for YOU the two forms are identical (you). 23 ▷ What about corresponding words with a possessive meaning: his and our, as well as my, her, your and their? Are they determiners? ▷ One possibility is to say that these are pronoun forms belonging to a third case, the genitive or possessive, which stand in for apostrophe-s forms in noun phrases that consist only of a personal pronoun. 24 ▷ Another is to classify these words as determiners, because they perform a determiner-like role and cannot be combined with other determiners. (we cannot say *the my hat any more than we can say *the that hat). ▷ But these are issues of syntax rather than morphology. 25 4.5 Forms of verbs ▷ In English, a verb lexeme has at most five distinct forms, as illustrated here with GIVE. ▷ GIVE. a. third person singular present tense: gives e.g. Mary gives a lecture every year. b. past tense: gave e.g. Mary gave a lecture last week. 26 c. progressive participle: giving e.g. Mary is giving a lecture today. d. perfect or passive participle: given e.g. Mary has given a lecture today. The lecture is always given by Mary. e. basic form (used everywhere else): give e.g. Mary may give a lecture. Mary wants to give a lecture. Mary and John give a lecture every year. 27 ▷ In fact, most verbs have only four forms, because the past tense and the perfect (or passive) participle forms are the same. This is true for all regular verbs (those that form the past tense with the suffix -ed), such as PERFORM: a. third person singular present tense: performs b. past tense: performed c. progressive participle: performing d. perfect or passive participle: performed e. basic form (used everywhere else): perform 28 4.6 Forms of adjectives Many English adjectives exhibit three forms. For example, GREEN. 12. Grass is green. 13. The grass is greener now than in winter. 14. The grass is greenest in early summer. ▷ The grammatical words that green, greener and greenest express are the positive, comparative and superlative of GREEN, contrasting on the dimension of comparison. 29 ▷ The suffixes -er and -est appear on adjectives whose basic form has one syllable, or two provided that the second syllable ends in a vowel (e.g. tidy, yellow), while longer adjectives usually use periphrastic forms with more or most: 15. More and more curious! 16. This field is more fertile than that one. 17. The most fertile fields of all are here. 30  4.7 conclusion and summary ▷ Some words (lexemes) have more than one word form depending on the grammatical context, for example, between singular and plural. This kind of word formation is called ‘inflectional’. ▷ Inflection affects nouns, verbs, adjectives, and a few adverbs, as well as the closed classes of pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries, and modals. 31  However, the maximum number of distinct inflected forms for any open-class lexeme is small:  nouns: 2 e.g. cat, cats verbs: 5 e.g. gives, gave, giving, given, give adjectives: 3 e.g. green, greener, greenest adverbs: 3 e.g. soon, sooner, soonest Inflection thus plays a modest role in English than in German or in Old English. 32 Exercises: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pages. 42-43 33 Thank you 34