History of the English Language

Inflectional Simplicity

 Questions

1- When the Indo-European family of languages happened?

It happened when the oldest, classical languages, -Sanskrit, Greek and Latin-
have inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb and to some extent pronoun
that are no longer found in modern languages such a Russian or French or
German.

2- What does inflection refer to?

Inflection refers to a process of word formation in which items are added to
the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings.

3- Which includes the inflection 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.

4- What are the different inflection entities that we can use?

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.

5- In what words can we never use inflection?

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.

6- What are the rules of regular verbs in the inflection conjunction?

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).

7- What are the verbs that do not follow the inflection conjunction rules?
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.

8- How have the inflections in the nouns been reduced?

 Inflection of nouns have been reduced to a single letter sign for the plural and a
punctuation mark to form the possessive case.

9- What does simplify inflected adjectives and verbs?

The elaborate Germanic inflection of the adjective has been completely
eliminated except for the simple indication of the comparative and the
superlative degrees. The verb has been simplified by the loss of practically all
the personal endings, the almost complete abandonment of any distinction
between the singular and the plural, and the gradual discard of the subjunctive
mood.

10- What do Hans H. Hock and Brian D. Joseph say about it?
They say “the speakers of languages such as English are quite happy without all
those case endings, while speakers of modern ‘case-rich’ language such as
Finnish or Turkish are just as happy with them.”