Questions tagged [suppletion]

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2 votes
1 answer
160 views

Language for which there is no suppletion for : first-one, premier-un. And the Hebrew case

Are there languages for which the word "first" is built with the word "one" ? In many languages I know there exists a suppletion : English : first-one French : premier-un Latin : ...
  • 175
6 votes
1 answer
312 views

Suppletion of Spanish "matar" (to kill) by "morir" (to die) in the passive

When saying someone 'was killed' in Spanish in the passive voice, muerto, the past participle of morir ("to die") is used: «Selicho fue muerto a golpes por sus propios funcionarios» Galeano ...
  • 3,084
6 votes
1 answer
480 views

What causes suppletion?

Many forms of 'suppletion' in English can be explained through simple sound changes. Like how the plural -s is voiced if the noun ends in a voiced consonant. Or how our stem-changes (and in other ...
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7 votes
1 answer
598 views

Why are the plural and singular first person forms of the verb "go" so different in the Romance languages?

In many Romance languages, the first person plural and singular forms are completely different: French (aller): je vais, nous allons Italian (andare): io vado, noi andiamo Catalan (anar): jo vaig, ...
  • 335
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

What's the difference between suppletion and irregular inflection?

I've been using the two terms interchangeably. One of my assignments is asking me to identify cases of both suppletion and irregular inflection. I've been going over course notes/google to no avail--...
9 votes
2 answers
3k views

Are "go" and "went" part of the same lexeme?

Are “go” and “went” part of the same lexeme, i.e. the same set of inflected forms? Consider this brief Glottopedia entry. The entry defines its subject matter as follows: “A lexeme is usually ...
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Suppletion vs. missing verb forms

Japanese is famous for its very few irregular verbs, but there are some cases where verb-forms are missing and other verbs/adjectives are used instead. For example, (in standard Japanese) the verb ある ...
  • 1,564
11 votes
4 answers
647 views

Hierarchy of morphology, auxiliaries, and suppletion of verbal accidents?

I would like to make a hierarchy of verbal accidents that would have the following features. For any two accidents in the hierarchy, if a language marks only one of them by lexical suppletion, it ...