Inflectional morphology

Video Part 1:

So far we’ve focused on derivational morphology. The next kind of morphology we’ll discuss is inflectional morphology.

Unlike derivational morphology, inflectional morphology never changes the category of its base. Instead it simply suits the category of its base, expressing grammatical information that’s required in a particular language.

In English we find a very limited system of inflectional morphology:

• Nouns
  • Number: singular vs. plural
  • Case (only on pronouns)
    • Nominative: I, we, you, he, she, it, they
    • Accusative: me, us, you, him, her, it, them
    • Possessive: my, our, your, his, her, its, their
• Verbs
  • Agreement: most verbs agree with third person singular subjects only in the present tense (-s), but the verb to be has more forms (am/is/are/was/were).
  • Tense: Past vs. Present
  • Perfect/Passive Participle: -ed or -en (Perfect after auxiliary have, Passive after auxiliary be)
  • Progressive -ing (after auxiliary be)
• Adjectives
  • Comparative -er, Superlative -est

That’s all of it! But if we look at other languages, we find more types of inflectional morphology.

One thing about inflectional morphology is that lots of it can be expressed syntactically instead of morphologically. So some languages have tense, but express it with a particle (a separate word) rather than with an affix on the verb. This is still tense, but it’s not part of inflectional morphology.

For information about inflections in other languages, please see the original source of this page.