In Inflections^x, Nouns^x

Pemmican wrote:The "-s" is the most common suffix left in English by now, it took over several functions: a) plural indicator: one apple - two apples b) 3rd ps sg inflection indicator: sing - he sings c) genitive ending: Jon's house In my opinion, the -s in b) will certainly disappear sometime,...

Vorpar, I'm afraid I hold a different view with respect to your answer to the first sentence, (1) I went on a writing course. In analysing words for their word classes, we consider not only their forms but also, most crucially, the functions that they perform in the sentences or contexts in...

Hello Japan I'm interested in the topic you raised. I am now living in Tokyo and on my way to work I can see an English-like phrase on the signboard of a jewelry store, that reads 'Well come!'. You may feel it's funny, but I don't think that use of 'well come' is not so rare in Japan. Actually...

korin said: >Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded leaving only 's' (plural nouns, 3rd person singular verbs, and saxon genitive) in modern English. English has become a rather analytic lg, where most of the syntactic...

The "-s" is the most common suffix left in English by now, it took over several functions: a) plural indicator: one apple - two apples b) 3rd ps sg inflection indicator: sing - he sings c) genitive ending: Jon's house In my opinion, the -s in b) will certainly disappear sometime, it was...

>I do not claim that the plural ending 's' will definitely disappear. However, looking at the direction the English language is heading, the disappearance would come as no surprise. >Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded...

I do not claim that the plural ending 's' will definitely disappear. However, looking at the direction the English language is heading, the disappearance would come as no surprise. Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded...

1) Derivation often changes the word's lexical category, but not always: great (adjective) => great+ly => greatly (adverb) dog (noun) => dog + house => doghouse (noun) 2) Inflection doesn't change the word's lexical category. It adds meaning: number, person, tense: Number: dog (singular noun)...

Hi Yoshi, He got all A's. The word A's functions as a plural noun. If we add the noun "grades", the result is ungrammatical: *He got all A's grades. (ungrammatical) There are two problems with the above sentence: 1) if A's is a noun, then there should be a conjunction joining it and the...

There is ... no basis at all for including dative among the inflectional categories of the English noun. And there is likewise no basis for including nominative or accusative (or objective) among the inflectional categories of the English noun. English nouns have no inflections whatever except...