Definition and Examples of Inflections in English Grammar

Inflection refers to  a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings. The word inflection comes from the Latin inflectere, meaning to bend. Inflections in English grammar include the genitive s; the plural -s; the third-person singular -s; the past tense -d, -ed, or -t; the negative particle nt; -ing forms of verbs; the comparative -er; and the superlative -est. While inflections take a variety of forms, they are most often prefixes or suffixes. They are used to express different grammatical categories. For example, the inflection  -s  at the end of dogs shows that the noun is plural. The same  inflection  -s  at the end of  runs  shows that the subject is in the third-person singular (s/he runs). The inflection -ed is often used to indicate the past tense, changing walk to walked and listen to listened. In this way, inflections are used to show grammatical categories such as  tense,  person, and number. Inflections can also be used to indicate a words part of speech. The prefix en-, for example, transforms the noun gulf into the verb engulf. The suffix -er transforms the verb read into the noun reader. In The Frameworks of English, Kim Ballard writes, When considering inflections, it can...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. So  frogs  is made up of the stem frog  and the inflection  -s, while  turned  is made up of the stem  turn  and the inflection  -ed. Inflection Rules English words follow different rules for inflection based on their part of speech and grammatical category. The most common rules are listed below. Part of Speech Grammatical Category Inflection Examples Noun Number -s, -es Flower → FlowersGlass → Glasses Noun, Pronoun Case (Genitive) -'s, -', -s Paul → Paul'sFrancis → Francis'It → Its Pronoun Case (Reflexive) -self, -selves Him → HimselfThem → Themselves Verb Aspect (Progressive) -ing Run → Running Verb Aspect (Perfect) -en, -ed Fall → (Has) fallenFinish → (Has) finished Verb Tense (Past) -ed Open → Opened Verb Tense (Present) -s Open → Opens Adjective Degree of Comparison (Comparative) -er Smart → Smarter Adjective Degree of Comparison (Superlative) -est Smart → Smartest Not all English words follow the rules in this table. Some are inflected using sound changes known as vowel alternations, the most common of which are ablauts and umlauts. The word teach, for example, is marked as past tense by changing its vowel sound, producing the word  taught (rather than teached). Likewise, the word goose is pluralized by changing its vowel sound to produce the word geese. Other irregular plurals include words like oxen, children, and teeth. Some words, such as must and ought, are never inflected at all, no matter the context in which they appear. These words are considered invariant. Many animal nouns share the same singular and plural forms, including bison, deer, moose, salmon, sheep, shrimp, and squid. Conjugation The inflection of English verbs is also known as conjugation. Regular verbs follow the rules listed above and consist of three parts: the base verb (present tense), the base verb plus -ed (simple past tense), and the base verb plus -ed (past participle). For example, following these rules, the verb look (as in, I look around the room) becomes, in both the simple past tense and the past participle, looked (I looked around the room, I have looked around the room). While most verbs follow these conjugation rules, there are over 200 words in the English language that do not. These irregular verbs include be, begin, bid, bleed, catch, deal, drive, eat, feel, find, forget, go, grow, hang, have, hide, leave, lose, meet, pay, prove, ride, ring, seek, send, shall, shine, show, sing, spin, steal, take, tear, wear, and win. Since these words do not follow the rules for most English verbs, their unique conjugations must be learned on their own. ​Sources S. Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996.R. Carter and M. McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, 2006.Kim Ballard, The Frameworks of English: Introducing Language Structures, 3rd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.A. C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 1978.Simon Horobin,  How English Became English. Oxford University Press, 2016.