GROUP 2

A WORD AND ITS FORMS: INFLECTION

1. MAYLANI SUWARTININGSIH ( 1803046007)

2. FEBY DWI AMBARWATI (1803046030)
3. SAVIRA LEALY R (1803046033)
4. YESSY MAISARI (1803046037)
4.1 WORDS AND GRAMMAR : LEXEMES, WORD
FORMS AND GRAMMATICAL WORDS
What is inflection ?
inflection is variation in the form of a word, typically by means of an affix, that expresses a
grammatical contrast.
• Lexemes
Kind of word that is abstract (unpredictable) in other definition is bare (unaffixed) word
The example : row

Word forms:
The phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or
identify something ;
The example :
1. There were four rows of seats (n)
2. One person rows the boat (v)
• Grammatical words :
Kind of word which link a lexeme and its word forms contextually

The example :
1. There were four rows of seats
2. One person rows the boat
GRAMMATICAL WORDS :

• Words that show grammatical rule

• Perfoms present tense
• Perfomed past tense
 4.2 REGULAR AND IRREGULAR INFLECTION

• Regular inflection is the way we change a word’s form to reflect things like tense, plurality,
gender, etc., is usually governed by consistent, predictable rules
The example

Regular noun Plural form

Boy Boys
Book Books
Box Boxes
Beach Beaches
Lady Ladies
city cities
• There are many instantances in which the way a word is inflected doesn’t seem to follow any rules
or conventions at all-this is known as irregular inflection.

The example :

Irregular noun Plural form

Person People/person
Mouse Mice
Ghoost Geese
Child Children
Foot Feet
Man Men
woman women
4.3 FORMS OF NOUN

• 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.
• Ex :
Singular : Cat
Plural : Cats Cat : root
S : suffix
There are also some countable nouns that express their plural witn no suffix at all.
Ex :
Teeth Tooth
Men Man

Plural not even a vowel change.

Ex : Sheep, Deer, Fish, Trout.
Singular : A deer
Plural : Two deer
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.

We can say neither :

A scissor or a scissors
A pant or a pants

But pair of pants or pair of scissors

 4.4 FORMS OF PRONOUNS AND DETERMINERS
• Determiners are words such as the, my, this, some, twenty, each, any, which are used before nouns.
We can also use some determiners as nouns. (without a noun following and when the meaning is
clear without including the noun.
The example :
Determiners pronouns
Some apples some can go even faster
His dog those are his
Her cat that belongs to her
This book this is it, here.
These books these are great
That house where is that
Those houses I love those
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
c) Progressive participle . giving
e.g. Mary is giving a lecture today
d) Perfect or passive participle given
e.g. Mary has a given a lecture today
e) Basic form (used everywhere else) give
e.g. Mary may give a lecture
In fact, most verbs have only four forms, because the past tense and the perfect(or passive)
participle fors are the same. This is true for all regular verb.
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
4.6 FORM OF ADJECTIVES

• Many English adjectives exhibit three forms, for example GREEN here:
a) Grass is green
b) The grass is greener now than in winter
c) 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 dimention of comparison.
4.7 CONCLUSION

• Inflection affects nouns, verbs, adjective and a few adverbs, as well as the closed classes of
pronoun, determiners, auxiliaries and modals. However , the maximum number of distinct
inflected forms for any open-closed 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
THANK YOU