The grammatical categories of words and their inflections

Kuiper and Allan Chapter 2.1

Word and lexeme

Examine the following simple dictionary entry.
sept , n. Clan, esp. in Ireland.

Word and lexeme

A lexeme is a three part symbol:
form (or a number of forms) syntactic category meaning Lexemes also have non linguistic properties, usage.
2

Grammatical/syntactic categories
determine where in a sentence a word can fit. Two ways to identify the category
looking at the structure of phrases and sentences
done in chapter 7

looking at the inflection of words

done next because it is part of looking at word structure

Inflection & stem

inflected forms of TRY
try, tries, tried, trying, as in the following sentences: The horse must try, The horse tries, The horse tried, The horse is trying. Each is a grammatical word form. The grammatical endings which create these different grammatical word forms are termed inflections.

stem
is the form of the lexeme to which they are attached.
4

Morphological processes
The processes whereby words come to have internal structure such as a stem and inflection are morphological processes. The categories for which words inflect are often called morphosyntactic categories. e.g. tense which accounts for the past tense inflection -ed in tri-ed is an example of a morphosyntactic category. Properties such a present tense or past tense are therefore morphosyntactic properties.
5

Grammatical categories and inflection

Not all grammatical categories of words inflect. When they do, the inflection tells you what the category of the word is.
i.e. If a word can take a plural inflection, then it is a noun.

The converse is not always the case.

ie. Not all nouns inflect for plural. Some grammatical categories do not inflect at all.
6

Major grammatical categories

To begin with we will look only at four grammatical categories:
noun adjective verb preposition

They make up the skeletal, telegraphic structure of sentences.

e.g. young boy sits in chair
7