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Inflection of Verbs

Verbs can be inflected to indicate tense, person, number, and mood. They can also show voice through verb phrases. Verbs are classified as regular or irregular depending on how their past tense and past participle forms are constructed. Regular verbs follow predictable patterns like adding "-ed" while irregular verbs have unpredictable forms that must be memorized. Nouns are also inflected for number, typically through predictable suffixes like "-s" for regular plurals, but some take irregular plural forms or change vowel sounds instead of using suffixes.

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381 views3 pages

Inflection of Verbs

Verbs can be inflected to indicate tense, person, number, and mood. They can also show voice through verb phrases. Verbs are classified as regular or irregular depending on how their past tense and past participle forms are constructed. Regular verbs follow predictable patterns like adding "-ed" while irregular verbs have unpredictable forms that must be memorized. Nouns are also inflected for number, typically through predictable suffixes like "-s" for regular plurals, but some take irregular plural forms or change vowel sounds instead of using suffixes.

Uploaded by

Danielle Lachica
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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INFLECTION OF VERBS

Verbs have inflections of tense, person, number and mood. They also have the distinction
of voice which is expressed by the help of verb phrases.
The distinction between regular and irregular verb is examined, paying special attention
to the various ways in which irregular and regular verbs may be classified.

What is Inflection?
Inflection is a change of form a noun, adjective, verb etc. undergoes to distinguish its
case, gender, mood, number, voice etc. Inflection occurs when the word is used to express
various meanings.
Note: When words are inflected, letters are added to the base form of words.

Inflection differs from derivation in that it does both change part of the speech.

Verb- is a word that names an action or a state being.

Verbs are subdivided into two groups; The regular verbs and irregular verbs, on the basis of
how their past tense and past principles are formed.

Regular Verbs- most verbs are irregular verbs. Regular verbs are those whose past tense and
past participle are formed by adding a “–d” or an “–ed” to the end of the verb.

“To roll” is a good example of a regular verb: roll, rolled, rolled.

Sometimes the last consonant must be doubled before adding the –ed ending.
For example:
PRESENT PAST PAST PRINCIPLE
plan planned planned
Irregular Verbs- There’s no formula to predict how an irregular verb will form its past tense
and past participle forms. There are over 200 irregular verbs in English. Although they do not
follow a formula, there are some fairly common irregular forms. Some of these forms are;

PRESENT PAST PAST PARTICIPLE

swim swam swum


speak spoke spoken
wear wore worn
eat ate eaten
go went gone

INFLECTION OF WORDS AS TO NUMBER (NOUNS)


Nouns are inflected to show singular and plural nouns change to show number- singular or
plural.
A singular noun includes just one noun. A plural noun includes more than of that noun.
Sometimes, adding “-s” creates the inflection to make a plural noun.

Examples of singular/plural with “-s’ Examples of singular/plural with “-es”


 goat/goats  fox/foxes
 table/tables  wish/wishes
 tree/trees  potato/potatoes
 girl/girls  bus/buses

Sometimes, the ending is dropped to add “-ies” to make a plural noun. This occurs when
the last letter of the base singular form is a “y”

Examples of singular/plural with “-ies”


 city/cities
 berry/berries
 fairy/fairies
 daisy/daisies
Sometimes, the inflection is irregular to make a plural noun.

Examples for singular/plural irregular plurals:


 sheep/sheep
 mouse/mice
 moose/moose
 criterion/criteria
 analysis/analyses

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