Suggested Answers for Check Questions

At the beginning of the chapter the implicit assumption about what the Inflection head hosts was that it manifests Tense and Agreement. There is evidence that it only contains agreement. Tense and infinitival to are separate from it. One piece of evidence that Tense can be seen as a separate entity is provided by the observation that modals, which are truly Inflectional elements, can inflect for tense in English. Tense is proposed to head its own vP taking another vP as a complement. When there is ‑ed present, there is a phonologically null agreement morpheme in I. In present tense the form of the tense morpheme is realised as ‑s when the agreement is third person singular and as a zero morpheme when the agreement is something else.Thus, what is left for the I head is agreement manifested either as a modal or as ‑s or as a phonologically empty morpheme.