Contents introduction chapter I

bag – bags; desk – desks
The examples above remind us the facts of the Arabic language. In this language lexical morphemes are usually consist of consonants. They are united with vocalic morphemes grammatical in character and occurring between consonants, e.g., Ktb

ktaab	a book
kutub	books
katab	he wrote
kaatib	clerk
kattab	he dictated.

In these examples consonants Ktb are lexical morphemes as well as English f...t, g...s, m...n and so on. But there are two different things here to be distinguished. Arabic is a Semitic synthetic language while English is an Indo-European analytical one. If a discontinuous lexical morpheme is characteristic to the system of Arabic, for English it is an exception. English forms its plural forms by - /e/ s. Some linguists consider the case as above as internal inflection inserted into a lexical one / -u- / and / - i : - / / as it is in Arabic / and others think of vowel change / u > i: /. To be consistent we'll regard nouns above as follows:

sing. Man - pl /man + s/ = men
The group of pluralia tantum is mostly composed on nouns which express things as objects consisting of two or more parts, e.g. trousers, scissors. Nouns like clothes, sweets must also be referred to pluralia tantum since they denote collective meaning. The - s, here is lexicalized and developed into an inseparable part of the stem. The suffix here is no longer a grammatical morpheme. In compound nouns both the 1^st and 2^nd components may be pluralized:
father-in-law / 1st /, suitcase / 2nd /, Manservant—menservants etc.