Suppletion
Template:Short description Template:More citations needed In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". For example, go:went is a suppletive paradigm, because go and went are not etymologically related, whereas mouse:mice is irregular but not suppletive, since the two words come from the same Old English ancestor.
The term "suppletion" implies that a gap in the paradigm was filled by a form "supplied" by a different paradigm. Instances of suppletion are overwhelmingly restricted to the most commonly used lexical items in a language.
Irregularity and suppletion
[edit]An irregular paradigm is one in which the derived forms of a word cannot be deduced by simple rules from the base form. For example, someone who knows only a little English can deduce that the plural of girl is girls but cannot deduce that the plural of man is men. Language learners are often most aware of irregular verbs, but any part of speech with inflections can be irregular.
For most synchronic purposes—first-language acquisition studies, psycholinguistics, language-teaching theory—it suffices to note that these forms are irregular. However, historical linguistics seeks to explain how they came to be so and distinguishes different kinds of irregularity according to their origins.
Most irregular paradigms (like man:men) can be explained by phonological developments that affected one form of a word but not another (in this case, Germanic umlaut). In such cases, the historical antecedents of the current forms once constituted a regular paradigm.
Historical linguistics uses the term "suppletion"<ref> Template:OED </ref> to distinguish irregularities like person:people or cow:cattle that cannot be so explained because the parts of the paradigm have not evolved out of a single form.
Hermann Osthoff coined the term "suppletion" in German in an 1899 study of the phenomenon in Indo-European languages.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Bobaljik2012">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Suppletion exists in many languages around the world.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> These languages are from various language families: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Semitic, Romance, etc.
For example, in Georgian, the paradigm for the verb "to come" is composed of four different roots (Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang; Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang).<ref>Andrew Hippisley, Marina Chumakina, Greville G. Corbett and Dunstan Brown. Suppletion: Frequency, Categories and Distribution of Stems. University of Surrey.[1]</ref>
Similarly, in Modern Standard Arabic, the verb Template:Transliteration ('come') usually uses the form Template:Transliteration for its imperative, and the plural of Template:Transliteration ('woman') is Template:Transliteration.
Some of the more archaic Indo-European languages are particularly known for suppletion. Ancient Greek, for example, has some twenty verbs with suppletive paradigms, many with three separate roots.
Example words
[edit]To go
[edit]In English, the past tense of the verb go is went, which comes from the past tense of the verb wend, archaic in this sense. (The modern past tense of wend is wended.) See Go (verb).
The Romance languages have a variety of suppletive forms in conjugating the verb "to go", as these first-person singular forms illustrate (second-person singular forms in imperative):<ref>However, some unstandardized languages are chosen in non-standard dialects instead based on their uniqueness. This table below excludes periphrastic tenses.</ref>
The sources of these forms, numbered in the table, are six different Latin verbs:
- Template:Lang ‘to go, proceed’,<ref>Vadere is cognate with English wade (PIE root *weh₂dʰ-).</ref>
- Template:Lang ‘to go’
- Template:Lang ‘to go around’,<ref>Late Lat. *ambitāre is a frequentative form of classical ambio ‘to go around’.</ref> also the source for Spanish and Portuguese Template:Lang ‘to walk’
- Template:Lang ‘to walk’, or perhaps another Latin root, a Celtic root, or a Germanic root Template:Lang or Template:Lang<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
- Template:Lang suppletive perfective of Template:Lang ‘to be’.<ref>The preterites of "to be" and "to go" are identical in Spanish and Portuguese. Compare the English construction "Have you been to France?" which has no simple present form.</ref>
- Template:Lang ‘to go along’.
Many of the Romance languages use forms from different verbs in the present tense; for example, French has Template:Lang ‘I go’ from Template:Lang, but Template:Lang ‘we go’ from Template:Lang. Galician-Portuguese has a similar example: Template:Lang from Template:Lang ‘to go’ and Template:Lang from Template:Lang ‘we go’; the former is somewhat disused in modern Portuguese but very alive in modern Galician. Even Template:Lang, from Template:Lang second-person plural of Template:Lang, is the only form for ‘you (plural) go’ both in Galician and Portuguese (Spanish Template:Lang, from Template:Lang).
Sometimes, the conjugations differ between dialects. For instance, the Limba Sarda Comuna standard of Sardinian supported a fully regular conjugation of Template:Lang, but other dialects like Logudorese do not (see also Sardinian conjugation). In Romansh, Rumantsch Grischun substitutes present and subjunctive forms of ir with vom and giaja (both are from Latin vādere and īre, respectively) in the place of mon and mondi in Sursilvan.
Similarly, the Welsh verb Template:Lang ‘to go’ has a variety of suppletive forms such as Template:Lang ‘I shall go’ and Template:Lang ‘we went’. Irish Template:Lang ‘to go’ also has suppletive forms: Template:Lang ‘going’ and Template:Lang ‘will go’.
In Estonian, the inflected forms of the verb Template:Lang ‘to go’ were originally those of a verb cognate with the Finnish Template:Lang ‘to leave’, except for the passive and infinitive.
Good and bad
[edit]In Germanic, Romance (except Romanian), Celtic, Slavic (except Bulgarian and Macedonian), and Indo-Iranian languages, the comparative and superlative of the adjective "good" is suppletive; in many of these languages the adjective "bad" is also suppletive.
Template:Notelist The comparison of "good" is also suppletive in Template:Langx → Template:Lang → Template:Lang and Template:Langx → Template:Lang → Template:Lang.
Template:Notelist Similarly to the Italian noted above, the English adverb form of "good" is the unrelated word "well", from Old English Template:Lang, cognate to Template:Lang "to wish".
Great and small
[edit]Celtic languages:
small, smaller, smallest Language Adjective Comparative / superlative Irish beag
(Old Irish bec < Proto-Celtic *bikkos)níos lú / is lú
(< Old Irish laigiu < Proto-Celtic *lagyūs < PIE *h₁lengʷʰ- ("lightweight"))Welsh bach
(< Brythonic *bɨx
< Proto-Celtic *bikkos)llai / lleiaf
(< PIE *h₁lengʷʰ- (“lightweight”))
great, greater, greatest Language Adjective Comparative / superlative Irish mór
(< Proto-Celtic *māros < PIE *moh₁ros)níos mó / is mó
< Proto-Celtic *māyos < PIE *meh₁-)Welsh mawr
(< Proto-Celtic *māros < PIE *moh₁ros)mwy / mwyaf
< Proto-Celtic *māyos < PIE *meh₁-)
In many Slavic languages, great and small are suppletive:
small, smaller, smallest Language Adjective Comparative / superlative Polish mały mniejszy / najmniejszy Czech malý menší / nejmenší Slovak malý menší / najmenší Slovene majhen manjši / najmanjši Ukrainian малий, маленький менший / найменший Russian маленький (malen'kiy) меньший / наименьший (men'she / naimen'shiy)
great, greater, greatest Language Adjective Comparative / superlative Polish duży większy / największy Czech velký větší / největší Slovak veľký väčší / najväčší Slovene velik večji / največji Ukrainian великий більший / найбільший
Examples in languages
[edit]Albanian
[edit]In Albanian there are 14 irregular verbs divided into suppletive and non-suppletive:
Verb Meaning Present Preterite Imperfect Template:Lang to be Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to have Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to eat Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to come Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to give Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to see Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to fall, strike Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to bring Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang to stay Template:Lang Template:Lang Template:Lang
Ancient Greek
[edit]Template:Main Ancient Greek had a large number of suppletive verbs. A few examples, listed by principal parts:
- erkhomai, eîmi/eleusomai, ēlthon, elēlutha, —, — "go, come".
- legō, eraō (erô) / leksō, eipon / eleksa, eirēka, eirēmai / lelegmai, elekhthēn / errhēthēn "say, speak".
- horaō, opsomai, eidon, heorāka / heōrāka, heōrāmai / ōmmai, ōphthēn "see".
- pherō, oisō, ēnegka / ēnegkon, enēnokha, enēnegmai, ēnekhthēn "carry".
- pōleō, apodōsomai, apedomēn, peprāka, peprāmai, eprāthēn "sell".
Bulgarian
[edit]In Bulgarian, the word Template:Langx ("man", "human being") is suppletive. The strict plural form, Template:Langx, is used only in Biblical context (like "brethren" as the archaic or symbolic plural of "brother" in English). In modern usage it has been replaced by the Greek loan Template:Langx. The counter form (the special form for masculine nouns, used after numerals) is suppletive as well: Template:Langx (with the accent on the first syllable). For example, Template:Langx ("two, three people"); this form has no singular either. (A related but different noun is the plural Template:Langx, singular Template:Langx ("soul"), both with accent on the last syllable.)
English
[edit]In English, the complicated irregular verb to be has forms from several different roots:
- be, been, being—from Old English bēon ("to be, become"), from Proto-Germanic *beuną ("to be, exist, come to be, become"), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰúHt (“to grow, become, come into being, appear”), from the root *bʰuH- ("to become, grow, appear").
- am, is, are—from Middle English am, em, is, aren, from Old English eam, eom, is, earun, earon, from Proto-Germanic *immi, *izmi, *isti, *arun, all forms of the verb *wesaną ("to be; dwell"), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésmi ("I am, I exist"), from the root *h₁es- ("to be").
- was, were—from Old English wæs, wǣre, from Proto-Germanic *was, *wēz, from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂wes- ("to dwell, reside")
This verb is suppletive in most Indo-European languages, as well as in some non-Indo-European languages such as Finnish.
An incomplete suppletion exists in English with the plural of person (from the Latin Template:Lang). The regular plural persons occurs mainly in legalistic use. More commonly, the singular of the unrelated noun people (from Latin Template:Lang) is used as the plural; for example, "two people were living on a one-person salary" (note the plural verb). In its original sense of "populace, ethnic group", people is itself a singular noun with regular plural peoples.
Hungarian
[edit]- The verb "to be": Template:Lang ("there is"), Template:Lang, Template:Lang ("I am", "you are"), Template:Lang ("to be"), Template:Lang ("will be"), Template:Lang, Template:Lang ("there is not", "there is neither", replacing Template:Lang + Template:Lang and Template:Lang + Template:Lang respectively).
- The verb Template:Lang ("come") has the imperative Template:Lang (the regular Template:Lang is dated).
- The numeral Template:Lang ("many/a lot") has the comparative Template:Lang and the superlative Template:Lang.
- The adverb Template:Lang ("a little") has the comparative Template:Lang and the superlative Template:Lang.
- Many inflected forms of personal pronouns are formed by using the suffix as the base: Template:Lang ("to me") from Template:Lang (dative suffix) and Template:Lang (first person singular possessive suffix). Even among these, the superessive form ("on") uses the root Template:Lang instead of the suffix Template:Lang.
- The numerals Template:Lang, Template:Lang ("one", "two") have the ordinal forms Template:Lang, Template:Lang ("first", "second"). However they are regular in compounds: Template:Lang, Template:Lang ("eleventh", "twelfth").
Irish
[edit]Several irregular Irish verbs are suppletive:
- abair (to say): derived from Old Irish as·beir, from Proto-Indo-European roots *h₁eǵʰs- ("out") and *bʰer- ("bear, carry"). However, the verbal noun rá is derived from Old Irish rád, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *reh₂dʰ- ("perform successfully").
- bí (to be): derived from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- ("grow, become, come into being, appear"). However, the present tense form tá is derived from Old Irish at·tá, from Proto-Celtic *ad-tāyeti, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- ("stand").
- beir (to catch): derived from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- ("bear, carry"). However, the past tense form rug is derived from Old Irish rouic, which is from Proto-Celtic *ɸro-ōnkeyo-, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European roots *pro- ("forth, forward") and *h₂neḱ- ("reach").
- feic (to see): derived from Old Irish aicci, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷey- ("observe"). However, the past tense form chonaic is derived from Old Irish ad·condairc, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *derḱ₂- ("see").
- téigh (to go): derived from Old Irish téit, from Proto-Indo-European *stéygʰeti- ("to be walking, to be climbing"). However, the future form rachaidh is derived from Old Irish regae, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁r̥gʰ- ("go, move"), while the verbal noun dul is from *h₁ludʰét ("arrive").
There are several suppletive comparative and superlative forms in Irish; in addition to the ones listed above, there is:
- fada, "long"; comparative níos faide or níos sia — fada is from Old Irish fota, from Proto-Indo-European *wasdʰos (“long, wide”); compare Latin vāstus (“wide”), while sia is from Old Irish sír ("long, long-lasting"), from Proto-Celtic *sīros (“long”); compare Welsh/Breton hir.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Japanese
[edit]In modern Japanese, the copulae だ, である and です take な to create "attributive forms" of adjectival nouns<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (hence the English moniker, "na-adjectives"):
| Irrealis 未然形 |
Adverbial 連用形 |
Conclusive 終止形 |
Attributive 連体形 |
Hypothetical 仮定形 |
Imperative 命令形 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| だろ -daro | だっ -daQ で -de に -ni |
だ -da | な -na | なら -nara |
The "conclusive" and "attributive" forms, だ and な, were constructed similarly, from a combination of a particle and an inflection form of the old verb あり (ari, "to exist").
- で + あり ("conclusive") → であり → であ → だ<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- に + ある ("attributive") → なる → なん → な<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
(Note: で itself was also a contraction of earlier にて.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>)
In modern Japanese, である ("conclusive") simply retains the older appearance of だ, while です is a different verb that can be used as a suppleted form of だ. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed for the etymology of です, one of which is a contraction of であります:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- で + あり ("adverbial") + ます → であります → です
The basic construction of the negative form of a Japanese verb is the "irrealis" form followed by ない, which would result in such hypothetical constructions as *だらない and *であらない. However, these constructions are not used in modern Japanese, and the construction ではない is used instead.<ref name=handbook>Template:Cite book</ref> This is because *あらない, the hypothetically regular negative form of ある, is not used either, and is simply replaced with ない.
- あら ("irrealis") + ない → ない
- であら ("irrealis") + ない → ではない
- だら ("irrealis") + ない → ではない → じゃない
While the auxiliary ない causes suppletion, other auxiliaries such as ん and ありません do not necessarily.
- あら ("irrealis") + ん → あらん
- あり ("adverbial") + ませ + ん → ありません
- であり ("adverbial") + ませ + ん → でありません
For です, its historical "irrealis" form, でせ has not been attested to create a negative form (only でせう → でしょう has been attested, and there were and are no *でせん and *でせない).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Thus, it has to borrow でありません as its negative form instead.<ref name=handbook/>
To express a potential meaning, as in "can do", most verbs use the "irrealis" form followed by れる or られる. する, notably has no such construction, and has to use a different verb for this meaning, できる.
Latin
[edit]Template:MainLatin has several suppletive verbs. A few examples, listed by principal parts:
- sum, esse, fuī, futūrus - "be".
- ferō, ferre, tulī or tetulī, lātus - "carry, bear".
- fīō, fierī, factus sum (suppletive and semi-deponent) - "become, be made, happen"
Polish
[edit]In some Slavic languages, a few verbs have imperfective and perfective forms arising from different roots. For example, in Polish:
| Verb | Imperfective | Perfective |
|---|---|---|
| to take | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to say | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to see | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to watch | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to put | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to find | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to go in/to go out (on foot) | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| to ride in/to ride out (by car) | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Note that Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang are prefixes and are not part of the root
In Polish, the plural form of Template:Lang ("year") is Template:Lang which comes from the plural of Template:Lang ("summer"). A similar suppletion occurs in Template:Langx ("year") > Template:Langx (genitive of "years").
Romanian
[edit]The Romanian verb Template:Lang ("to be") is suppletive and irregular, with the infinitive coming from Latin fieri, but conjugated forms from forms of already suppletive Latin sum. For example, Template:Lang ("I am"), Template:Lang ("you are"), Template:Lang ("I have been"), Template:Lang ("I used to be"), Template:Lang ("I was"); while the subjunctive, also used to form the future in Template:Lang ("I will be/am going to be"), is linked to the infinitive.
Russian
[edit]In Russian, the word Template:Langx ("man, human being") is suppletive. The strict plural form, Template:Langx, is used only in Orthodox Church contexts, with numerals (e. g. Template:Langx "five people") and in humorous context. It may have originally been the unattested Template:Langx. In any case, in modern usage, it has been replaced by Template:Langx, the singular form of which is known in Russian only as a component of compound words (such as Template:Langx). This suppletion also exists in Polish (Template:Lang > Template:Lang), Czech (Template:Lang > Template:Lang), Serbo-Croatian (Template:Lang > Template:Lang),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Slovene (Template:Lang > Template:Lang), and Macedonian (Template:Lang (Template:Transliteration) > Template:Lang (Template:Transliteration)).
Generalizations
[edit]Strictly speaking, suppletion occurs when different inflections of a lexeme (i.e., with the same lexical category) have etymologically unrelated stems. The term is also used in looser senses, albeit less formally.
Semantic relations
[edit]The term "suppletion" is also used in the looser sense when there is a semantic link between words but not an etymological one; unlike the strict inflectional sense, these may be in different lexical categories, such as noun/verb.<ref>Paul Georg Meyer (1997) Coming to know: studies in the lexical semantics and pragmatics of academic English, p. 130: "Although many linguists have referred to [collateral adjectives] (paternal, vernal) as 'suppletive' adjectives with respect to their base nouns (father, spring), the nature of ..."</ref><ref>Aspects of the theory of morphology, by Igor Mel’čuk, p. 461</ref>
English noun/adjective pairs such as father/paternal or cow/bovine are also referred to as collateral adjectives. In this sense of the term, father/fatherly is non-suppletive. Fatherly is derived from father, while father/paternal is suppletive. Likewise cow/cowish is non-suppletive, while cow/bovine is suppletive.
In these cases, father/pater- and cow/bov- are cognate via Proto-Indo-European, but 'paternal' and 'bovine' are borrowings into English (via Old French and Latin). The pairs are distantly etymologically related, but the words are not from a single Modern English stem.
Weak suppletion
[edit]The term "weak suppletion" is sometimes used in contemporary synchronic morphology in reference to sets of stems whose alternations cannot be accounted for by synchronically productive phonological rules. For example, the two forms child/children are etymologically from the same source, but the alternation does not reflect any regular morphological process in modern English: this makes the pair appear to be suppletive, even though the forms go back to the same root.
In that understanding, English has abundant examples of weak suppletion in its verbal inflection: e.g. bring/brought, take/took, see/saw, etc. Even though the forms are etymologically related in each pair, no productive morphological rule can derive one form from the other in synchrony. Alternations just have to be learned by speakers — in much the same way as truly suppletive pairs such as go/went.
Such cases, which were traditionally simply labelled "irregular", are sometimes described with the term "weak suppletion", so as to restrict the term "suppletion" to etymologically unrelated stems.
See also
[edit]- Collateral adjective—denominal adjectives based on a suppletive root, such as arm ~ brachial
- Irregular verb
References
[edit]<references />
External links
[edit]Template:Wiktionary Template:Wiktionary Template:Wiktionary
- Surrey Suppletion Database – examples of suppletion in different languages