Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

Synthetic Types 
The number of morphemes used for deriving word-forms in Modern 
English is very small (much smaller than either in German or in Russian, 
for instance. 
There is the ending 
-s (-es), 
with three variants of pronunciation and 
the endings 
-en 
and 
-ren, 
in one or two words each, viz. 
oxen, brethren 
(poet.), 
children.
There is the ending 
-'s
, with the same three variants of pronunciation as 
for the plural ending, used to form what is generally termed the genitive case of 
nouns. 
For adjectives, there are the endings 
-er 
and 
-est 
for the degrees of 
comparison. 
For verbs, there is the ending 
-s (-es) 
for the third person singular 
present indicative, with the same three variants of pronunciation noted above 
for nouns, the ending 
-d (-ed) 
for the past tense of certain verbs (with three 
variants of pronunciation, again), the ending 
-d (ed) 
for the second participle 
of certain verbs, the ending 
-n (-en) 
for the second participle of certain other 
verbs, and the ending 
-ing 
for the first participle and also for the gerund. 
Thus the total number of morphemes used to derive forms of words is 
eleven or twelve, which is much less than the number found in languages 
of a mainly synthetical structure. 
It should also be noted that most of these endings are mono-semantic, 
in the sense that they denote only one grammatical category and not two or 
three (or more) at a time, as is the case in synthetic languages. For 
example, the plural 
-s 
(or 
-es) 
denotes only the category of plural number, and 
has nothing to do with any other grammatical category, such as case.