Inflected and uninflected languages

Many modern European languages are inflected. Inflected languages usually have the following characteristics

1 Nouns have endings which change depending on whether they are, for example, the subject or object of a verb

2 There are complex agreements between articles, adjectives and nouns to emphasize the fact that a noun is, for example, subject or object, masculine or feminine, singular or plural The more inflected a language is (for example, German or Greek), the more complex its system of endings ('inflexions')

3 Verbs 'conjugate', so that it is immediately obvious from the endings which 'person' (first, second, third) is referred to and whether the 'person' is singular or plural

English was an inflected language up to the Middle Ages, but the modern language retains very few inflexions Some survive, like the genitive case in e g lady's handbag where lady requires 's to show singular possession, or like the third person in the simple present tense (/ work ~ He/She/lt works) where the -s ending identifies the third person, or in the comparative and superlative forms of many adjectives {nice nicer nicest) There are only six words in the English language which have different subject and object forms I/me he/him she/her we/us they/them and who/whom This lack of inflexions in English tempts some people to observe (quite wrongly) that the language has 'hardly any grammar' It would be more accurate to say that English no longer has a grammar like that of Latin or German, but it has certainly evolved a grammar of its own, as this book testifies

In inflected languages we do not depend on the word order to understand which noun is the subject of a sentence and which is the object the endings tell us immediately In English, the order of words is essential to the meaning of a sentence We have to distinguish carefully between the subject-group and the verb-group (or predicate) The predicate is what is said about the subject, i e it is all the words in a sentence except the subject

Subject group verb group (predicate)

The dog bit the man

The man bit the dog

As these examples show, a change in word order brings with it a fundamental change in meaning, which would not be the case if the nouns had endings This means that English is far less flexible in its word order than many inflected languages

1 The sentence