Definitions For Suppletion

Noun

SUPPLETION (plural - or s) The supplying of something lacking. (linguistics, grammar) The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g. using “to be able” as the infinitive of “can”, or “better” as the comparative of “good”, or “went” as the simple past of “go”. (grammar) More loosely, the use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related words which may not share the same lexical category, such as father/paternal or cow/bovine.

Usage notes

Strictly speaking, , suppletion in linguistics refers only to inflection, such as good/better, which are both adjectives, and this is the most frequent use. It is also used in the looser sense of semantic relations without etymological relations (or with distant etymological relations) such as father/paternal, where these are noun/adjective.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 ..."Aspects of the theory of morphology, by Igor Melʹčuk, However, this latter use is significantly less common and may be considered incorrect.

Related terms

supply

Translations

Russian: пополне́ние, n, восполне́ние, n Belarusian: суплетыві́зм, m Chinese: : Mandarin: 異干互補, sc=Hani}}, 异干互补 (yìgànhùbǔ, sc=Hani), 異干法, sc=Hani, 异干法 (yìgànfǎ, sc=Hani), 補充法, sc=Hani, {{t, cmn, 补充法 (bǔchōngfǎ, sc=Hani) Dutch: suppletie, f Finnish: suppleetio, suppletivismi French: supplétion, f, supplétisme, m German: Suppletion, f, Suppletivismus, m Hungarian: szuppletivizmus, alakkiegészülés, tőalakpótlás, tőcsere, tőváltás Italian: suppletivismo, m Japanese: 補充形 (ほじゅうけい, hojūkei, sc=Jpan) Kyrgyz: супплетивизм Latvian: supletīvisms, m Lithuanian: supletyvizmas, m Norwegian: : Bokmål: suppletivisme, m : Nynorsk: suppletivisme, m Polish: supletywizm, m Portuguese: supletismo, m Romanian: supletivism, n Russian: супплетиви́зм, m, супплети́вность, f Serbo-Croatian: : Cyrillic: суплетивизам, m : Roman: supletivizam, m Spanish: supletismo, m Tamil: மாற்றுச்சொல் Ukrainian: суплетивізм, m

See also

noncognate

References

Etymology

From {{der, en, de, Suppletivwesen}}, from Latin supplere ("to supply"), perfect stem , supplet-, + {{af, en, -ion}}.