Wikiwordbōc:Inflection Templates
English is not a highly inflected language, and depends more on word order to indicate function. With the exception of pronouns, English words have relatively few forms. The patterns of some common inflections are outlined below.
Inflection of Verbs
[adiht]- The pattern of inflection for regular verbs is shown in the following table.
| form | usual ending |
| 3rd person singular | s |
| past tense | ed |
| past participle | ed |
| present participle | ing |
- Note: English has a large number of irregular verbs that do not fit the pattern.
- See Wiktionary Appendix:Irregular Verbs for a list of some of these.
Nouns: plurals and possessives
[adiht]- Plurals
- Nouns generally have only two forms, singular and plural.
- The plural usually ends in "s".
| form | usual ending |
| plural | s |
- Most nouns form their plural by adding an "s". Nouns ending in the sibilant sounds represented by the IPA characters /dʒ/, /s/, /ʃ/, /tʃ/ and /ʒ/ (for example, "midge", "miss", "mash", "match" and "mirage", respectively) form their plurals by adding "es" unless they already end in an "e", in which case they add an "s". Most words ending in -y form their plural by turning it into -ies.
- Many English words, especially those that are long-standing, have irregular plurals, often formed by changing a vowel. For example, the plural of goose is geese; the plural of mouse is mice; and the plural of man is men. Other irregular plurals are formed in other ways.
- Possessive
- The possessive case of nouns is indicated by attaching an apostrophe followed by an "s" to the end of a singular noun or a plural noun not ending in an "s", or by adding an apostrophe to a plural noun ending in "s". In US usage, if a singular noun already ends in "s", just an apostrophe is added.
- Biblical given names ending in "s" may form their possessive by adding either an apostrophe with or an apostrophe followed by an "s".
- As a rule of thumb, if an "s" is added to the noun when pronouncing the possessive, add an "s" when writing the possessive. For example, in "the cat's whiskers", the possessive is pronounced like "cat" with an "s" added, so the possessive is written using an apostrophe followed by an "s". In "the cats' claws", no "s" is added to "cats" when pronouncing the possessive, so only an apostrophe is added.
- The same rule may be applied to names. Write "James's" if you pronounce it as "Jameses"; write "James'" if you pronounce it as "James".
| possessive | added to the end of the noun |
| of a singular noun, a plural noun not ending in an "s", or, in US usage, a noun, singular or plural, that doesn't end in "s" | 's |
| of a plural noun ending in "s", or, in US usage, a noun, singular or plural that ends in "s" | ' |
Forms of Pronouns
[adiht]- Unlike most nouns in English, which have only singular and plural forms, many pronouns have several forms.
- The personal pronoun has different forms depending on number (singular or plural), case (subject, object, possessive, etc.), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd person) and, in the 3rd person singular, also for gender.
Personal pronouns:
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pronoun |
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itself / themself |
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adjective |
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pronoun |
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- The most recently developed standard pronoun is the distinctly neuter one, it, it, itself, its, and its, which did not exist in Old English.
- Archaic forms of the personal pronoun include thou, thee, thyself, thy, and thine, for the second person singular. Thou was used as the French word tu or the German word du. It disappeared as English society became mercantilist, leaving many feudal ties behind.
- Another such archaic pronoun lost about the same time that you replaced thou in the singular is ye, which was used for the plural second person pronoun. (This word, though, is not to be confused with the misprint for the as in "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe".) Modern colloquial forms that replace the second person plural pronoun include "you all", "y'all", "yous", "youse", "youse guys" and "you guys". These plural forms of "you" are often heard in informal speech.
- Archaic and obscure forms of the possessive adjective used before words that begin with a vowel or many words beginning with an "h", are mine (as used as the first word in the lyrics to a song of the nineteenth century, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") and thine. These were used where the indefinite article "an" is used instead of "a".
Inflection of Adjectives
[adiht]- Eall tógeíecendlicu habbaþ wiþmetenlice and oferstígendlice híwan.
- wiþmetenlic
- end in -er, as in higher.
- oferstígendlic
- end in -est, as in highest.
- wiþmetenlic