diff --git a/spacy/en/__init__.py b/spacy/en/__init__.py
index 2ac839120..b19e49a36 100644
--- a/spacy/en/__init__.py
+++ b/spacy/en/__init__.py
@@ -21,3 +21,4 @@ class English(Language):
         tokenizer_exceptions = TOKENIZER_EXCEPTIONS
         tag_map = TAG_MAP
         stop_words = STOP_WORDS
+        lemma_rules = LEMMA_RULES
diff --git a/spacy/language.py b/spacy/language.py
index 222aadf16..2019c7d88 100644
--- a/spacy/language.py
+++ b/spacy/language.py
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ class BaseDefaults(object):
         if nlp is None or nlp.path is None:
             return Lemmatizer({}, {}, {})
         else:
-            return Lemmatizer.load(nlp.path)
+            return Lemmatizer.load(nlp.path, rules=self.lemma_rules)
 
     @classmethod
     def create_vocab(cls, nlp=None):
@@ -160,6 +160,8 @@ class BaseDefaults(object):
 
     stop_words = set()
 
+    lemma_rules = {}
+
     lex_attr_getters = {
         attrs.LOWER: lambda string: string.lower(),
         attrs.NORM: lambda string: string,
diff --git a/spacy/lemmatizer.py b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
index a79ecb009..960467a0b 100644
--- a/spacy/lemmatizer.py
+++ b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ from .symbols import POS, NOUN, VERB, ADJ, PUNCT
 
 class Lemmatizer(object):
     @classmethod
-    def load(cls, path):
+    def load(cls, path, rules=None):
         index = {}
         exc = {}
         for pos in ['adj', 'noun', 'verb']:
@@ -25,8 +25,11 @@ class Lemmatizer(object):
                     exc[pos] = read_exc(file_)
             else:
                 exc[pos] = {}
-        with (path / 'vocab' / 'lemma_rules.json').open('r', encoding='utf8') as file_:
-            rules = json.load(file_)
+        if rules is None and (path / 'vocab' / 'lemma_rules.json').exists():
+            with (path / 'vocab' / 'lemma_rules.json').open('r', encoding='utf8') as file_:
+                rules = json.load(file_)
+        elif rules is None:
+            rules = {}
         return cls(index, exc, rules)
 
     def __init__(self, index, exceptions, rules):
diff --git a/spacy/morphology.pyx b/spacy/morphology.pyx
index fbcbc2e66..fb6273753 100644
--- a/spacy/morphology.pyx
+++ b/spacy/morphology.pyx
@@ -140,6 +140,7 @@ cdef class Morphology:
         lemma = self.strings[lemma_string]
         return lemma
 
+
 IDS = {
     "Animacy_anim": Animacy_anim,
     "Animacy_inam": Animacy_inam,