INFLECTIONS
Grammar is the set of rules of any languages to construct any sentence in that language. In other words,
the grammar of English would enable us to construct a correct sentence such as “once upon a time three
ugly frogs turned into handsome princes”. The rules of grammar essentially deal with two aspects of
language construction. They deal with the principles of stringing words together to form larger units of
construction such as phrases, clauses and sentences. This is syntax. In addition to the syntactic rules, there
is another set of rules which tell us how to adapt words according to the grammatical context in which they
occur. “frog” ad “price” are both in the plural form and this is indicated in writing by adding “s” to the
spelling. Endings such as the plural marking on frog and price and the past tense ending on turn are known
as inflections. Grammar is subdivided into syntax and inflections. Because inflections are part of the
internal structure of a word, they can also be classified as a branch of morphology. (inflectional
morphology).
One of the most important things about inflections is that they are not used to create a new word or
lexeme. Inflections are used then to give us more grammatical information about words. They can be used t
indicate singular or plural, what is sometimes known as number, and to indicate tense. We considered how
every word has some kind of abstract existence which can be realised in either speech or writing. This
abstract form is a lexeme. When considering inflections, it can also be helpful to use the notion of a stem. A
stem is what remains of a word when any inflections are removed from it. In other words, inflections are
added to the stem of a word. For example turned is made up of the stem turn and the inflection –ed.
NOUN INFLECTIONS
Nouns can be inflected to show plurality and also to indicate possession. Once interesting feature of
common nouns is that they do not all have a plural form. For example the noun hochey does not have a
plural form. There is quite a considerable number of nouns (abstract and concrete) which have no plural
form. Because these nouns cannot be made plural and therefore their referents cannot be counted, they
are known as non-count nouns. By contrast, nouns which have a plural form are count nouns. There are
also some nouns which don’t fit comfortably into either of these categories.
1. A second group of nouns which are neither clearly count nor non-count nouns, is the group of
aggregate nouns. These are nouns which refer to entities made up of several parts. Some of these,
like trousers and scissors, have no singular form, as goods and dregs.
2. There are also some aggregate nouns which look singular but take a plural form of the verb. (police)
Aggregate nouns such as these should not be confused with collective nouns. Collective is a semantic term
which refer to groups but grammatically they are count nouns since they have both singular and plural
forms. (family)
Some nouns have both a count form and a non-count one. This depends on the particular meaning of the
noun. For example, when we talk of wine in the generic sense of a drink made from grapes then wine is a
non-count noun. But when we talk of different varieties of wine, then wine is count noun. When they take
the plural form, count nouns have either a regular or an irregular ending. The regular plural ending is the –s
plural, but in writing, some nouns add not “s” word finally but “es”. This is driven by the fact that when
they are pronounced in the plural, they actually add an extra syllable. A vowel has been added to make the
plural form pronounceable and distinct from the singular form. In speech we sometime ass the sound s to
