In (1), the reason why the verb perform

has an -s suffix is that the subject

of the verb (the noun phrase denotingmenunjukkan the person doing the
performing)
is singular (this pianist), not plural
(these pianists).
It is easy for a native speaker to check
that (4) and (5)
feel wrong:
Examples (4) and (5) are unacceptable because they violate
a grammatical rule of English concerning agreement between a verb and
its subject: the -s suffix on the verb is obligatory(-WAJIB) when the subject
is
a singular noun phrase (that is, one for which he, she or it could be
substituted),
and forbidden when the subject is a plural noun phrase (one for
which they could be substituted). The -s on the verb in (1) does not make
any independent contribution to the meaning of the sentence, one might
say; it simply reflects the fact that the subject of the sentence is singular
rather than plural.
In (2), the aspect of the grammatical context that is relevant to the
suffix -ed on performed is the fact that the verb told is in the past tense
(that
is, it refers to a past event, namely an earlier conversation with Mary).
Marys actual words in this earlier conversation were probably This
pianist performs , not This pianist performed . Why then is the
word performs replaced by performed in the report of her words at (2)?
The
answer is that English grammar incorporates a rule about what is called
sequence of tenses: if a verb of saying or thinking is in the past tense (as
told is here), then a verb in any sentence reported as having been said or
thought is likely to be shifted backwards in tense, so to speak: performs is
replaced by performed, performed in turn is replaced by had performed,
and
will perform is replaced by would perform. Again, the -ed on performed
does
not make any independent contribution to the meaning of the sentence
for example, it does not (as one might expect) indicate that the series
of concerts has stopped since the conversation with Mary took place.
Instead, it is merely( berarti) a grammatical consequence of the fact that
the verb
of saying is in the past tense (told) rather than the present (tells).
In (3), on the other hand, there is no grammatical factor that requires
the presence of -ance on performance. The most one can say is that, in
the
context where performance occurs, one expects to find a noun rather than
a verb such as perform as illustrated by the unacceptability of (6):

We can describe the difference between

performance on the one hand and
performs and performed on the other by
saying that the latter pair are
grammatically conditioned variant forms
of the verb perform, whereas
performance is not a variant form of the
verb, but rather a noun derived from it.

However, there is nothing in this context

that forces us to choose the
noun performance in particular, or even
another noun with the suffix -ance.
Any noun (or at least any noun with an
appropriate meaning) will do,
as in sentence 7 and 8:
But if one compares
(1) with (9), alongside the unacceptable examples (4) and (5), one can
see that perform itself deserves to be called a grammatically conditioned
variant too:
The fact that the verb appears with no suffix in (9), where the subject
these pianists is plural, is just as much a matter of grammar as the fact
that
the verb appears with -s in (1), where the subject is singular. But it is
awkward and confusing to describe perform in (9) as a form of itself !

We need a new term for the more abstract kind of word of

which the word
forms performs, performed and perform are all inflectional
variants. Let us
call this more abstract kind of word a lexeme.

We can now say that performs,

performed and perform
are all inflected forms of the
lexeme PERFORM, and we can
describe the
grammatical function of
performed by calling it the past
tense form of the
verb PERFORM.

two words can be pronounced the

same but spelled differently in
English, and vice versa; in most
domains of linguistic research,
spoken language is more
important than written.) It follows
that the same word form can belong
to two quite different lexemes, as
does rows in (10) and (11):

In (10), rows is the plural of the noun

ROW meaning line of people or
things, while in (11) it is one of the
present tense forms of the verb ROW
meaning propel with oars (more
precisely, it is the form used with
subjects that can be replaced by he, she
or it : so-called third person singular
subjects). Let us use the term grammatical word for designations
like the plural of the noun ROW, the third person singular present tense
of the verb ROW, and the past tense of the verb PERFORM . It will be
seen
that one lexeme may be represented by more than one word form, and
one word form may represent more than one lexeme; what links a word
form with a lexeme in a given context is the grammatical word that the
word form expresses there.

That qualification unless otherwise

specified is crucial, however. Any
native speaker of English, after a
moments thought, should be able to
think of at least two or three nouns that
form their plural in some other
way than by adding -s: for example,
CHILD has the plural form children,
TOOTH has the plural teeth, and MAN has
the plural men. The complete
list of such nouns in English is not long, but it includes some that are
extremely common. What this means for the dictionary entries for
CHILD , TOOTH, MAN And the others is that, although nothing has to be
said
either about the fact that these nouns possess a plural form or about what
it means, something does have to be said about how the plural is formed.

This is because, although there may

be
disagreement about whether to treat
these plural suffixes as allomorphs
of one morpheme, everyone agrees
that they are distinct suffixes.

The answer is yes, but seldom (at least in

English). Consider the
lexeme GO. Because it is a verb, we expect it
to have a past tense form,
and this expectation is not disappointed.
Surprisingly, however, what
functions as the past tense form, namely went, is phonologically quite
dissimilar to the verbs other forms go, goes, going and gone. Should we
say,
then, that go and went are allomorphs of one morpheme? Most linguists
would say no; rather, they would treat this as showing that one lexeme
may be represented by two (or more) quite distinct root morphemes
(not allomorphs). The term given to this phenomenon is suppletion; go
and went are said to be distinct roots (and hence distinct morphemes),
standing in a suppletive relationship as representatives, in different
grammatical contexts, of one lexeme. This view of suppletion, as a
relationship between roots rather than between allomorphs, is consistent
with the concrete view of allomorphy outlined just now in relation to
the plural suffixes.

Thus, to the lexeme CAT there corresponds

a singular form cat, consisting
of just one morpheme, and a plural form
cats, consisting of a root cat
and the suffix -s.

There are also some countable nouns that

express their plural with no suffix at all(teeth,
men) where there is a change in the vowel of
the root there are also some whose plurals
display not even a vowel change: for example,
sheep, fish, deer, trout.

The answer is: according to the syntactic

context.
Lets look at the next slide.

In (12) we can tell that deer is singular (more

strictly, it represents the
grammatical word singular of the lexeme
DEER) because it is accompanied
by the indefinite article a, which only ever
accompanies singular nouns (e.g. a cat, not *a
cats), and because the form of BE found in
(12),agreeing in singular number with the subject
a deer, is was, not were. In(13), for parallel
reasons, we can tell that deer is plural: the
numeral two accompanies only plural nouns (two cats, not *two cat), and
the form of BE
in (13) is the plural were. There are a few nouns such as SCISSORS and
PANTS which exist only in an -s-plural form, and which appear onlyin plural
syntactic contexts, even though they denote single countable entities, as
is shown by the contrast between (14) and (15): (14) a. Those scissors
belong in the top drawer.
b. Your pants have a hole in the seat.
(15) a. *That scissors belongs in the top drawer.
b. *Your pants has a hole in the seat.
This idiosyncratic lack of a morphological singular form (except in
compounds such as scissor factory) creates a problem in contexts where
the syntax seems to require such a form, as when the noun is preceded by
the indefinite article a or an. We can say neither *a scissor nor *a scissors,

and likewise neither *a pant nor *a pants. However, for these lexemes,
there is a conventional circumlocution or periphrastic form: pair of
pants and pair of scissors (as in That pair of scissors belongs in the top
drawer).
if I see a cat or some cats in the garden, I
cannot report what I have
seen without making it clear whether there
was just one cat, as in (16) or
more than one cat, as in (17). A formulation
that is deliberately vague on
that issue, such as (18). The best we can do
to express the intended content of (18) is use a circumlocution like one or
more cats or at least one cat. (19) and (20) make it plain whether one or
more than one pair of scissors is being talked about. On the other hand,
(14a) is vague in just the way that (17) was meant to be; it can be
interpreted as synonymous with either
(19) or (20).

Examples (21), (22) and (23) may seem

compatible with saying that -s is
an affix that attaches to nouns, but (23)
should give us pause (after all, it
is the man, not the door, that owns the
bicycle!), and (24) and (25) show
conclusively that what -s attaches to is a whole noun phrase (that man
you
met (yesterday)), including whatever modifiers it may contain following
the noun at its head (man, in this instance). So -s belongs in the study of
syntax, not morphology. Its only morphological peculiarity is that, when
the word immediately before it is a noun with the plural suffix -s, the two
fuse, both in pronunciation and spelling, written -s : e.g. these pianists
performances, not *these pianistss performances.

We have already encountered the

distinction between this and these, as
in this pianist and these pianists. These
are the singular and plural forms of
the determiner lexeme THIS, Other
determiners include THE, A(N) and
SOME, but only one other determiner
exhibits a singularplural contrast:
THAT, with singular and plural forms that
and those. The determiners THAT and THIS demonstrate that number
contrasts can have a grammatical
effect inside noun phrase as well as between subject noun phrases and
their accompanying verbs.

In many languages, the distinction

that English expresses by word
order in John loves Mary and Mary
loves John is expressed by inflectional
means on the words corresponding to
Mary and John. In English, the
same technique is used for one small
closed class of lexemes, namely
personal pronouns. If one replaces John and Mary with the appropriate
pronouns in these two examples, the example in (26) and (27):
He and him are sometimes said to contrast in case, he belonging to the
nominative case and him belonging to the accusative case. This kind
of
inflection has only a marginal role in English, being limited to pronouns;
but, if we treat (say) HE as a lexeme, we must recognise it as having two
forms: he and him.

The contrast between present at (28a)

and past at (28b) is a contrast of
tense. The other dimensions of
contrast manifested in (28a) are
person
(third person versus the rest) and
number (singular versus plural, just
as
for nouns and pronouns). However,
because only one word form (gives)
exhibits these contrasts, they play a much smaller inflectional role
in modern English verbs than in Old
English verbs.

When two grammatical words that

are distinct for some lexemes are
systematically identical for others, as
here, these forms are said to be
syncretised, or to exhibit
syncretism. The same syncretism
also occurs
with some irregular verbs, such as DIG and STING (past = perfect
participle
dug, stung) and all those that use the suffix -t, such as BEND, FEEL AND
TEACH
(bent, felt, taught). In all, 150 or so verbs are irregular in that they do not
use the -ed suffix. I will not list them all here, however, because the study
of these irregularities belongs to grammar rather than to wordformation.
Other verbs or verb-like words whose behaviour belongs to grammar

rather than word-formation are the auxiliaries, such as BE and HAVE, and
modals, such as CAN, MUST, MAY. But they deserve mention here because
their various forms distinguish an unusually small or large range of
grammatical words. Instead of the usual verbal maximum of five forms,
modals distinguish only two (e.g. can, could) or even just one (e.g. must),
while BE distinguishes eight (am, is, are,
was, were, being, been, be).
The grammatical words that green,
greener and greenest express are
the positive, comparative and superlative
of GREEN, contrasting on the
dimension of comparison. Other
adjectives with similar forms are: (next
slide)

All these exhibit a regular pattern of

suffixation with -er and -est, except
for better and best, which are suppletive.
The justification for saying that
comparative and superlative forms of
adjectives belong to inflectional rather
than to derivational morphology
is that there are some grammatical contexts in which comparative or
superlative adjectives are unavoidable.