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Inflection
1. The function of lexical items
 the lexical items found in the dictionary, or lexicon, of the grammar are used in
sentences to 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. farmers
singular vs.
plural
see vs. sees vs. saw
plural vs.
rd
sing, 3 p.
past
wolf vs. wolves
sing.
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
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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
GRAMMATICAL GRAMMATICAL FORM
EXAMPLES
CATEGORY
Nouns
ADJECTIVES
VERBS
number
plural (more than one) vs. singular
farmers
cat vs. cats, farmer vs.
case (role of noun in sentence)
possessive vs. non-possessive
student's vs. student
comparison (degree)
superlative ('most') vs.
comparative ('more') vs. general
highest vs.
higher vs. high
tense
past vs. present
(the reported action precedes the time
of the linguistic event)
number
(characterization of
the subject of the verb)
3rd person singular (he, she, it)
(in present tense only)
vs. other person
participle
present participle
past participle
picked vs. pick(s)
picks vs. pick
sees vs. see
seeing
seen
4. Some concluding terminology
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 paradigm of a lexical entry
the full set of inflected forms of a given lexical item
the paradigm of the noun hat:
o
o
o
o
singular non-possessive: hat
singular possessive: hat's
plural non-possessive: hats
plural possessive: hat
the paradigm of the adjective hot:
o general: hot
o comparative: hotter
o superlative: hottest
the paradigm of the verb rot:
o third person singular present tense: rots
o other present tense: rot
o past tense: rotted
 declension
the paradigms of nominal forms (nouns, adjectives, pronouns)

conjugations
the paradigms of verbal forms
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