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ShaNap Posted 13 years ago
Grammar

Be-was/were-been

Is it correct to claim that been is an inflectional morpheme (of the past tense) or perhaps contains an inflectional morpheme as a past participle? Same Q for go-went and other similar words.

Thanks
  

Top answer

I don't know how linguists incorporate irregular verb forms into the inflectional morpheme scheme, since such morphemes are supposedly only suffixes. A case can certainly be made for 'be-en' (on the model of 'eat-en') though I am unaware of its actual etymology. )

— Mister Micawber

  • I don't know how linguists incorporate irregular verb forms into the inflectional morpheme scheme, since such morphemes are supposedly only suffixes.
  • A case can certainly be made for 'be-en' (on the model of 'eat-en') though I am unaware of its actual etymology.
  • )
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2 Answers
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I don't know how linguists incorporate irregular verb forms into the inflectional morpheme scheme, since such morphemes are supposedly only suffixes. A case can certainly be made for 'be-en' (on the model of 'eat-en') though I am unaware of its actual etymology. However, I don't know how they treat 'were' and 'went', for instance, but the reasonable solution would be to call the whole word an in
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Thanks. I need to think about it.
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