Summary of Words and Its Forms: Inflectional

Name : Hapsari Mutya Rini
Class : C-2019
NIM : 195300063
Summary week 3
1. Words and grammar : lexemes, word forms, and grammatical words.
What is inflection? Let’s discuss about these sentence in order to illustrating the notions ‘more basic’
and ‘grammatically conditioned variant’
1) The pianist performs in the local hall every week.

2) Mary told us the pianist performed in the local hall every week.
3) The performance last week was particularly impressive.
All these words contain a suffix: perform-s, perform-ed, and perform-ance. However, the suffixes -s and
-ed are dependent on the grammatical context in a way that the suffix -ance is not.
For the explanation :
1) The words performs, performed, and performance is belong to the same root which is perform.
2) In sentence (1), the verb perform has a –s suffix is that the subject of the verb is singular (the
pianist), not plural (the pianists)
3) In sentence (2), suffix –ed performed grammatical context. It showed that the verb performed is
a past form.
4) In sentence (3), on the other hand, there is no grammatical factor that requires the presence of
-ance on performance. The most one can say is that, in the context where performance occurs,
one expects to find a noun rather than a verb such as perform.
5) We can describe the difference between performance on the one hand and performs and
performed on the other by saying that the latter pair are grammatically conditioned variant
forms of the verb perform, whereas performance is not a variant form of the verb, but rather a
noun derived from it.
6) The word forms performs, performed and perform are all inflectional variants.
Lexemes : Kind of word that is abstract (unpredictable) in other is bare (unafixxed) word. We can now
say that performs, performed and perform are all inflected forms of the lexeme perform, and we can
describe the grammatical function of performed by calling it the past tense form of the verb perform.
Word forms : The phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of word that can be used to
describe or identify something. For example :
a) There where four rows of seats. (the rows is act as a plural noun)
b) One person rows the boat. (the rows as a verb of singular third person)
Grammatical word : word that show gramatical rules. (the plural of the noun row, the third person
singular present tense of the verb row, and the past tense of the verb perform).
2. Regular and Irregular Inflection
Regular Inflection : adding suffix –s to a noun root is the regular method of forming plurals.
For example : pianist become pianists.
Irregular Inflection : One of a set of hard white structures set in the jaw and used for biting and
chewing. For example : tooth noun (plural teeth).
The allomorphs of a morpheme may be distributed in a fashion that requires reference to individual
lexical items, and also that allomorphs may differ from each other phonologically in idiosyncratic ways
(as -duce differs from -duct-, and -sume from -sump-).
An allomorph has simiiar phoneme(s) as its root. For example :
Root Allomorph
knife knives
Tooth Teeth
Ox Oxen
Suppletion and its root doesn’t have any similar phoneme.

Root Suppletion
Went Go
Better Good
Worse Bad
3. Forms of noun
Inflection in noun shows grammatical category which is number. Thus, to the lexeme cat there
corresponds a singular form cat, consisting of just one morpheme, and a plural form cats, consisting of a
root cat and the suffix -s. Regular forms added by suffix –s. Irregular forms (allophones, zero suffix like
deer, fish, sheep, trout).
We can tell wether they are singular or plural according to the syntax context. Consider the following
sexamples :
a) A deer was visible through the trees.
b) Two deer were visible through the trees.
In sentence (a) we can say that deer is a singular plural because it’s contain article a and the form of be
is agreeing singular number with the subject a deer is was not were.
In sentence (b) we can say that deer is plural because followed by numeral two.
4. Forms of pronouns and determiners
Open-classes : Noun, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Pro-nouns combine a singular-plural contrast with
contrast unique to them, between subject and non-subject forms. He and him are sometimes said to
contrast in case, he belonging to the nominative case and him belonging to the accusative case. The
distinction between this and these : these are the singular and plural forms of the determiners lexeme
this. The determiners that and this demonstrate that number contrast can have grammatical effect
inside noun phrase as well as between subject noun phrase and their accompanying verbs. If he and him
are forms of the lexeme He, and we and us are forms of We (and so on), what are we to say about
corresponding words with a possessive meaning: his and our, as well as my, her, your and their ?
Syntactically and semantically, these words fulfil just the same role as noun phrases with the
aspostrophe-s.
5. Forms of verb
In English, a verb lexeme has at most five distinct forms, as illustrated here with give.
a) Give as a verb of third person singular present tense = gives
b) Give as a verb of past tense = gave
c) Give as a verb of progressive participle = giving
d) Give as a verb of perfect or passive participle = given
When two grammatical words that are distinct for some lexemes are systematically identical for others,
as here, these forms are said to be syncretised, or to exhibit syncretism. The same syncretism also
occurs with some irregular verbs, such as dig and sting (past = perfect participle dug, stung) and all those
that use the suffix -t, such as bell, feel, and teach (bent, felt, taught).
6. Forms of adjective
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 dimension of comparison.
The justification for saying that comparative and superlative forms of adjectives belong to inflectional
rather than to derivational morphology is that there are some grammatical contexts in which
comparative or superlative adjectives are unavoidable.
7. Conclusion :
 Some words (lexemes) have more than one word form, depending on the grammatical context
or on choices that grammar forces us to make (for example, in nouns, between singular and
plural).
 Inflectional is a word formation.
 Inflection affects nouns, verbs, adjectives and a few adverbs, as well as the closed classes of
pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries and modals.

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Name : Hapsari Mutya Rini

1. Words and grammar : lexemes, word forms, and grammatical words.

1) The pianist performs in the local hall every week.

Suppletion and its root doesn’t have any similar phoneme.

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