1. Ms. Rasha Ali
Inflection

2. What is inflection?
Inflection refers to word formation that doesn’t change category and doesn’t create new lexemes, but rather changes the form of lexemes so they fit into different grammatical contexts.

3. Types of inflection Number Person Tense & aspect Voice
Gender & noun class
Mood & modality
Case

4. 1. number
Cat, mouse
Singular
Cats, mice
Plural
Number in English

5. Eskimo language
qayak=2 beavers
qayaq=beaver

6. 2. person
amare= to love
Latin
amo
1st=
singular
amat
3rd=
amas
2nd=

7. amare= to love
Latin
amamus
1st=
Plural
amant
3rd=
amatis
2nd=

8. 3. Gender & noun class, P.90-91 A- Grammatical gender German Masculine
French
Masculine
rat
mouse
Feminine
German
Masculine
table
Feminine
wall
Neuter
desk

9. Sound: nouns end with aa = fiminine
B- Suffixes gender
German
Feminine: ung, keit, heit, schaft
Neuter: chen, lein
Hausa
Sound: nouns end with aa = fiminine

10. C- Agreement nouns gender (articles)
French
Le = masculine
La = feminine
German
der = masculine
die = feminie
das = neuter

11. D- Different classes Human = non-human Animate = inanimate Animate = spirit + animals

12. 4. Case
Case is another grammar category that may affects nouns or noun phrases. Nouns deployed in sentences as: Subject, location, time, instrument, d-object, id-object, object of preposition.

13. In Latin nouns inflected in one of 5 cases: 1. Nominative subject
2. Genitive possessor
3. Dative indirect object
4. Accusative direct object
5. Ablative object of preposition (with, from)
For examples read page 93

14. 5. Tense & aspect
Tense and aspect connect to verbs. They have to do with time but in different ways. Tenses: Present S = E Past E before S Future S before E S = time of speaking E = event

15. In English Past + -ed inflectional Future will + (v) no inflectional = peri-phrastic Periphrastic marking = the use of separate word to form a tense. Read examples in page 94

16. The way in which the event occurs In time.
Aspect
The way in which the event occurs In time.
Different forms of aspect
Imperfective
Perfective
On-going event
Complete event
Look at event from inside
Look from the outside -
Internal structure not relevant
e.g. I was eating the apple.
e.g. I ate the apple.

17. This form focuses on particular points in an event.
Completive
Continuative
Inceptive
Focuses on the end of an event
Focuses on the middle of an event
Focuses on the beginning of an event
That roof had been leaking.
Simba is reading the book.
He began to beat it.

18. Quantificational is another form of aspect
Quantificational is another form of aspect. It concerns the number of times an action is done or an event happens or how frequently an action is done.
Semelfactive
The action is done once
Iterative
The action is done repeatedly
Habitual
The action is usually done

19. 6. voice
In English Active: the cat chased the mouse. Passive: the mouse was chased. The passive is marked by the (aux+v3)
Agent=S
patient
Patient=S

20. In Latin The passive is marked by inflectional suffixes
In Latin The passive is marked by inflectional suffixes. For examples Active singular = amo Passive singular = amor

21. 7. Mood & modality
To do with range of distinctions that include signaling the kind of speech act. Speech act: things we can do with words, e.g. making a statement, asking a question …etc. Languages have three moods 1. Declarative = statement 2. Interrogative = question 3. Imperative = command

22. But Tonkawa language has eight moods
Declarative = I married.
Assertive = He lies!
Exclamatory = The meat is all gone!
Interrogative = How are you?
Intentive = I shall catch him.
Imperative = Sit down!
Potential = I might see him.
Exhorative = Let him burned up.

23. Another distinction in mood/modality Realis = the speaker means to signal that the event is actual. Irrealis = signals something that can be imagined or thought. In English there’s no special inflection that signals mood. Subjunctive mood in English (sentences expressing something contrary to fact) if I were an aardvark, I’d eat insects.

24. Inflection in english
1. What we have As we mentioned before that English is poor of inflections. Some inflections in English:
Noun
Cat - mouse
Singular
Cats - mice
Plural (s)
Pronoun
I, she, it
Singular
We, they
Plural
Verb
She walks
3rd person
Was chaced
Passive

25. Why english has little inflection
For two reasons 1. The stress system in English (old/modern). 2. Language contact in the Northern parts of Britain. Read for more details page 103

26. How about old english
Old English has a bit more inflection than now. Old English has three genders: And a system of four cases:
Masculine
Feminine
Neuter
Nominative
Accusative
Dative
Genitive

27. Verb inflection was also more complex in Old English
Verb inflection was also more complex in Old English. Verbs were inflected for person & number, and were different for present tense and past tense in both indicative & subjunctive. There were strong verbs: internal stem change. And weak verbs: inflected by using suffixes.

28. Inflection and productivity
As we explained in previous chapters that some word formation rules are more productive than others. Affixes are used to form new lexemes, some of them are dead/nearly so, others are productive/fully productive.

29. Inherent vs. contextual inflection
Contextual inflection is inflection that determined by the syntactic construction. Inherent inflection is inflection that doesn’t depend on syntactic context. So nouns are inherent inflection while adjectives are contextual one.

30. Inflection vs. derivation revisited
Sometimes changes category
Never changes category
Often adds lexical meaning
Adds grammatical meaning
Produces new lexeme
Is important to syntax
Can range from unproductive to fully productive
Is usually fully productive
If the word has both then the derivational affixes almost always occur inside the inflectional one.

31. How to morphological analysis
Analyzing the inflectional system of an unfamiliar language is not very different from analyzing the sort of derivational data in English (chapter 3).
1. You need to scan the given data.
2. Compare between them (similarities/differences)
3. Find the root and the derived words.
4. Find different categories (number,person,object,subject…etc)
Read more pages 110, 111, 112

32. Answer exercise (1) page 113. Thank you 