The pre-conditions for suppletion

Abstract

Suppletion is a phenomenon which is unique to morphology. It represents extreme non-iconicity in the relation between form and function. Here we deal with what we call proper suppletion, i.e. where one paradigm has resulted from the interaction of two previous paradigms. Our aim is to establish what the conditions are that give rise to this (partial) merger of paradigms. We provide a detailed account of the development of an adjective in the Mainland Scandinavian languages which unexpectedly shows suppletion with respect to number (and in some cases definiteness). We conclude that development of suppletion is driven by semantic properties, and that frequency is in fact a derived property. Furthermore we argue that there must be an asymmetry between the participants, with one element being dominant.

Two suppletive adjectives in Megleno-Romanian

“…This phenomenon is all the more remarkable because, on all otherwise available evidence, in the Romance languages suppletion involving the historical conflation of historically unrelated etyma (as in the present case) is wholly alien to the inflexional paradigms of nouns or adjectives. While unique of its kind in Romance, this suppletion finds a striking parallel in Mainland Scandinavian languages, recently the object of a penetrating theoretical analysis by Börjars and Vincent (2011). Their conclusions bear, in part, on earlier work by Maiden (e.g., 2004), in which it was suggested that suppletion arises when two originally distinct lexemes become synonymous, or at any rate cease to be clearly distinct to speakers; an assumed universal tendency to avoid synonymy leads to the loss of one of the coexisting lexemes, and sometimes this can happen in such a way that one lexeme prevails in one subpart of the inflexional paradigm, whilst the other prevails elsewhere.…”

“…and specifically in respect of the adjective meaning 'little' . 25 The facts are described and analysed in detail by Börjars and Vincent (2011). Briefly, the modern Danish and Swedish 26 lexemes meaning 'small' show a continuant of old Scandinavian lítil 'small' in the singular, but of the unrelated, but semantically very close, smár, in the plural.…”

Verbal Number in Lo–Toga and Hiw: The Emergence of a Lexical Paradigm

“…In many respects, it would be tempting to conclude that what were once separate lexemes have now merged into a single lexical unit. As mentioned in section 5.5, this is what typically happens with actual suppletion (Rudes ; Börjars & Vincent ): to take a well‐known example, the three distinct Latin verbs īre , vadere , and ambulāre , eventually merged into a single verb in Old French, surviving merely as allomorphs within the word's tense system (resp. j'irai, je vais, j'allais …).…”

Verbal Suppletion in Romance Synchrony and Diachrony: The Perspective of Distributed Morphology

“…There are many reasons given in the literature for the initial trigger for suppletion: lack of phonetic substance (especially of monosyllabic, often also unaccented or clitic, forms), lack of a stem consonant (or lack of a stem at all), frequency of the respective item, morphological irregularity, homophony with other forms, growing functionality/increasing semantic vagueness of the item at issue, avoidance of synonymy, etc. In what follows we will give a short overview on some of these motivations mentioned in the literature (see also Börjars & Vincent ).…”

“…For many morphological theories, suppletion is a case of exceptional behaviour that is difficult to account for. Börjars & Vincent (: 240) write that ‘[t]he existence of suppletion is not predicted by any morpho‐syntactic theory'. For the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) instead, suppletion is one of the ‘show cases' for the reasonability and elegance of its approach to morphological realisations that are, besides their common semantic content, maximally distinct from each other.…”