Escuela Universitaria de Educacin a Distancia.

EUDED

ESPECIALIDAD INGLS

MORPHOLOGY

STUDENTS

Flor Llaure

Rosario Velsquez

Lizet Marcelo

Estrella Cruz

Diego Quiroz

CYCLE

VI

TEACHER

Rocio Garvich Ormeo

ROOM

5th

July 7th, 2017

Were thankful to God and our families
for the motivation that they give to us
every single day.
 INTRODUCTION

This research is part of the course of English Morphology in EUDED

cycle 2017-I. We had to investigate about inflectional morphemes

and in this investigation we present the results of our work.

When we talk about English grammar we have to talk about suffixes

and prefixes. In this study a particular kind of suffixes are

presented, these are Inflectional Morphemes. Inflectional Morphemes

serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number,

possession, or comparison.

The first part is about general aspects of Inflectional Morphemes

such as concept, all the eight kinds of inflectional morphemes and

some practice examples of the use of inflectional morphemes.

The second part is a research made by everyone of us about theories

that talk about inflectional morphemes so we can have a better idea

of the differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes

because they usually create confusion but there are some differences

that can help you to recognize which are inflectional morphemes and

which ones are derivational morphemes.

 INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

CONTENTS

Introduction..3

Chapter I. General Aspects.

1.1. Concept..............................................................................5

1.2. Inflectional morphemes.............................................................6

1.3. Importance of inflectional morphemes......7

Chapter II. Theories About Inflectional Morphemes.

2.1 The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis.....................................8

2.2 Typological Distinctions in Word-Formation..............................10

2.3 Inflection vs. Derivation....11

Conclusion12

Bibliography.13
 CHAPTER I

GENERAL ASPECTS

1.1 Concept

In English morphology, an inflectional morpheme is a suffix that's

added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to this

word itself. Inflection allows speaker to morphologically encode

grammatical information.

Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate

tense, number, possession, or comparison. Inflectional morphemes

in English include the bound morphemes -s (or -es); 's (or s'); -ed; -

en; -er; -est; and -ing.

Unlike derivational morphemes, inflectional morphemes do not

change the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word.

An inflectional morpheme is used to create a variant form of a word

in order to signal grammatical information. For example, the suffix

[-ed] signals that a verb is past tense: walk-ed.

 1.2 Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that tell tense,

number, gender, possession, and so on. Inflection contributes a

morpheme that is required in order to ensure that the word has a

form that is appropriate for the grammatical context in which it is

used.

The morphemes in the following sentences contribute in some way to

the insertion of the words in a particular grammatical context, so

that the word agrees with this context in terms of tense, number,

person etc. The changes in meaning that these morphemes bring are

minimal. These are called inflectional morphemes, note that these

are all suffixes.

There are a total of 8 bound inflectional affixes in today's English:

English Inflectional Morphemes Examples

Third person singular s She works from Monday to Friday.

Simple past-regular verbs
Present Participle
Comparative Form
Superlative Form
Plural Form
Past Participle
Possessive
ed Peter cooked Chinese food.
ing Sally is singing aloud.
er Paco is taller than Luis.
est The chocolate cake is the sweetest dessert in lima
s They have seven English books.
en We have written some exercises.
s Pattys books are on the table.
1.3 Importance of inflectional morphemes

Inflectional affixes produce a new word from of an existing

lexeme a word i.e. they do not create a new entry in one's

mental lexicon. For example, the noun "students" can be

produced by adding the plural -s, a inflectional suffix, to the

base "student". The plural -s indicates that more than one

student is concerned, but it does neither change the

grammatical category of the word nor does it produce a new

lexeme. Additionally, to number inflectional affixes give

grammatical information in terms of tense, case and gender.

Inflectional morphemes are affixes which carry grammatical

meaning (for example, the plural -s in cats or progressive -ing in

sailing). They do not change the part of speech or meaning of

the word; they function to ensure that the word is in the

appropriate form so the sentence is grammatically correct.

 CHAPTER II

THEORIES ABOUT INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

2.1 Language typology and syntactic description

Introduction Cross-linguistic variation in the forms and

categories of inflectional morphology is so great that inflection

cannot be defined by simply generalizing over attested

inflectional systems or paradigms. Rather, we define it as those

categories of morphology that are SENSITIVE TO THE

GRAMMATICAL ENVIRONMENT in which they are expressed.

Inflection differs from derivation in that derivation is a lexical

matter in which choices are independent of the grammatical

environment. The relevant grammatical environment can be

either syntactic or morphological. The syntactic environment is

relevant, for example, when morphological choices are

determined by agreement.
Many languages require determiners and adjectives to

assimilate in form to the head noun in an NP.

Paradigms Inflectional systems are typically organized into

PARADIGMS of variable size, ranging from e.g. the two-member

third person singular vs. plural paradigm of English verb

agreement (goes vs. go) to large case paradigms. Plank

(1991:16) notes that very large case inventories are found only

in languages with separative exponence and do not occur in

languages with chiefly cumulative exponence. The organization

of inflectional forms into paradigms brings with it a series of

properties not typically found in other parts of morphology:

inflectional classes, syncretism, defectivity, suppletion,

deponence, and eidemic resonance.

2.2 Typological Distinctions in Word-Formation

In English morphology, an inflectional morpheme is a suffix

that's added to a word to assign a particular grammatical

property to that word.

Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that

indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. Unlike

derivational morphemes, inflectional morphemes do not change

the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word.

Inflectional morphemes show grammatical relationships.

Inflectional morphemes dont change the meanings of words.

Inflectional morphemes have grammatical meaning only.

Inflectional morphemes can combine with nearly all members of

a single part of speech.

An inflection is a change that signals the grammatical function

of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns (e.g., noun

plurals, verb tenses).

2.3 Inflection vs. Derivation

Derivational morphology results in the creation of a new word

with a new meaning. In contrast, inflectional morphology

involves an obligatory grammatical specification characteristic

of a particular word class, as, for instance, marking of syntactic

function of a nominal in a phrase or a clause.

Inflectional categories are those which involve agreement within

a phrase or on clausal level, gender and number agreement,

case, and verbal categories such as aspect and tense.

Inflectional categories are typically highly regular and

predictable, in both form and meaning.

 CONCLUSION

Summarizing, we have learned about new topics, differences and correct uses of
Inflectional morphemes in English, in order to organize all this information in a
few points we suggest these conclusions.

Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate

tense, number, possession, or comparison.
Inflection differs from derivation in that derivation is a lexical matter in
which choices are independent of the grammatical environment
Inflectional morphemes can combine with nearly all members of a single
part of speech.
Derivational morphology results in the creation of a new word with a
new meaning. In contrast, inflectional morphology involves an
obligatory grammatical specification characteristic of a particular word
class
Inflectional categories are typically highly regular and predictable, in
both form and meaning.

We notice that inflectional morphemes never change the meaning of the word, it
only has grammatical influence despite this, derivational morphemes change the
meaning of the word, so we have to be careful and recognize this differences to
improve our knowledge of grammar and morphology.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

An Introduction to Linguistics (2007:3), (2nd Edition): Prentice

Hall of India, New Delhi

An Introduction to Language and Linguistics (2006:61),

(1stEdition): Cambridge University Press

Typological Distinctions in Word-Formation - Alexandra Y.

Aikhenvald

Language typology and syntactic description - Balthasar Bickel &

Johanna Nichols

Introducing morphology - Rochelle Lieber