Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs -- 2 The single English Past morpheme -ed / -en -- 3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity -- 4 Polyfunctional -ing: Can any other language match it? -- 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look -- 6 English passive structures and the passive participle -- 7 The empirical basis of theoretical advance -- References -- Index of cited authors -- Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees -- Index of English lexical entries