CC BY
55CHARACTERISTICS OF INFLECTION AND ITS AFFIXES
Mamedova M.A.
Mamedova Madina Ashuraliyevna - Teacher, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE, BUKHARA ENGINEERING-TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, BUKHARA, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract: this article is about characteristics of inflection which combines words and affixes to produce alternative grammatical forms of words. Ifs importance of suffixes so that they tend to lend themselves to paradigms which apply to the language as a whole. Keywords: grammatical process, lexical item, plural morpheme, derivation, syntactic structure, inflectional affixes, monosyllabic, paradigm.
Inflection is a general grammatical process which combines words and affixes to produce alternative grammatical forms of words. For example, the plural morpheme is an inflectional morpheme. This implies that the plural form roses, for instance, does not represent a lexical item fundamentally different from the singular form rose, it is simply an inflectional variant of the same word. Similarly, the addition of the comparative inflection (er) to the adjective cold gives colder, which is not a different lexical item, but an inflectional variant of the same word.
On the other hand, derivation is a lexical process which actually forms a new word out of an existing one by the addition of a derivational affix. For instance, the suffixes -ation and -ure may be added to the verbs resign and depart respectively to derive the nouns resignation and departure, which are different words. Similarly, the suffixes -dom and -ful may be added to the adjective free and the noun hope respectively to derive the noun freedom and the adjective hopeful, which again are different words [2].
The above definitions and examples show that the distinction between inflection and derivation is mainly morphological. While the application of inflection leads to the formation of alternative grammatical forms of the same word, that of derivation creates new vocabulary items. This is the basic difference between inflection and derivation. However, each process does have additional characteristics which we shall now examine.
Inflectional affixes may be described as 'relational markers' that fit words for use in syntax. This means that once the inflection or relational marker is added to a stem, that stem does not change classes, but its distribution is then limited in the syntactic structure. For example, the addition of the possessive suffix fits the inflected noun for use in syntax as noun modifier (i.e. like an adjective). The noun with the possessive marker can only be used as a modifier of another noun, never as a head or main element in a given structure. Thus, John + possessive becomes John's as in John's book.[2] However, the word class of the noun has not changed. Note that although John's does function like an adjective, it is still not an adjective: it cannot take the affixes (-er) 'comparative' and j-est) 'superlative' which are characteristic of many monosyllabic members of that class.
Similarly, when the plural inflection is added to dog to form dogs, both dog and dogs are nouns and the addition of the plural inflection does not change the grammatical class of the word, but they do not have the same distribution in syntactic structures. Hence, we say "The dog is barking", but "The dogs are barking". To give another example, suffixing the past participle morpheme to the verb speak gives us spoken, which is still a verb; but both verbs cannot always occur in the same linguistic context. For instance, if we have the structure 'John could have spoken' we cannot replace the inflected verb form spoken by the corresponding uninflected form speak.
One of the most important characteristics of inflectional suffixes is that they tend to lend themselves to paradigms which apply to the language as a whole. The paradigm of a major word class consists of a single stem of that class with the inflectional suffixes which the
stem may take. The paradigm may be used as a suitable way of defining the word class in the sense that if a word belongs to that class it must take at least some of the suffixes characteristic of that set as opposed to suffixes characterizing other paradigms. However, to belong to a class, a word need not take every inflectional suffix in the paradigm. Inflectional suffixes of nouns, adjectives, and verbs may be tabulated and illustrated as follows [1]: Nouns show the following inflectional contrasts: Base form stem + plural stem + possessive stem + plural + possessive0
child children child's childrens'
student students student's students'
Adjectives (that are gradable and mono- or di-syllabic) show the following inflectional contrasts:
Base form stem + comparative stem + superlative
cold colder coldest
happy happier happiest
Verbs (except the verb be and modals) show the following inflectional contrasts:
Base form stem + 3rd stem + past
stem + past
stem +
person singular
tense
participle
present participle
sing work
sings works
sang worked
sung worked
singing working
Note that in some verbs, including all those formed regularly with -ed, the five-part paradigm has four parts only, because the past tense and the past participle inflections are identical in form. However, the past tense and the past participle inflections may be recognized as different morphemes which happen to have identical shape in such cases (they are homonyms).
To sum up, it is necessary to underline that, we have focused our attention on inflection and its characteristics. We've looked through the Inflectional suffixes of nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
References
1. Cook W. "Introduction to Tagmemic Analysis", Holt Reinhart and Winston, 1969. 122-3 p.
2. Jackson H. "Discovering Grammar". Pergamon Press, 1985. 34 p.
