The morphological properties of each lexical category cannot be overridden; verbs cannot have
plural marking, nor can adjectives have tense marking. It turns out, however, that these morphological
criteria are also only of limited value. In addition to nouns like information and furniture
that we presented in Chapter 1, there are many nouns such as love and pain that do not have
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a plural form. There are adjectives (such as absent and circular) that do not have comparative
-er or superlative -est forms, due to their meanings. The morphological (form-based) criterion,
though reliable in many cases, are not necessary and sufficient conditions for determining the
type of lexical categories.