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 cognates. 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
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" 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.
Suppletion exists in many languages around the world. 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 (, , , and ; , , , ).Andrew Hippisley, Marina Chumakina, Greville G. Corbett and Dunstan Brown. Suppletion: Frequency, Categories and Distribution of Stems. University of Surrey.
Similarly, in Modern Standard Arabic, the verb ('come') usually uses the form for its imperative, and the plural of ('woman') is .
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
To go 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):However, some unstandardized languages are chosen in non-standard dialects instead based on their uniqueness. This table below excludes periphrastic tenses.
Language Imperative Present Subjunctive Future Preterite Infinitive French , 1 1 4 2 4 4 Romansh(Sursilvan) 1 6 6 — — 2 Sardinian(Logudorese) 1 3 , 3 — — 3 Italian , , 1 , 1 1 3 3 3 Occitan(Languedocien) 1 1 3 3 3 3 Catalan 1 1 1 3 3 3 Spanish tú1 1 1 2 5 2 vos3 Portuguese tu 1 1 1 2 5 2 vós2
The sources of these forms, numbered in the table, are six different Latin verbs: ‘to go, proceed’,Vadere is cognate with English wade (PIE root *weh₂dʰ-). ‘to go’ ‘to go around’,Late Lat. *ambitāre is a frequentative form of classical ambio ‘to go around’. also the source for Spanish and Portuguese ‘to walk’ ‘to walk’, or perhaps another Latin root, a Celtic root, or a Germanic root or suppletive perfective of ‘to be’.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. ‘to go along’.
Many of the Romance languages use forms from different verbs in the present tense; for example, French has ‘I go’ from , but ‘we go’ from . Galician-Portuguese has a similar example: from ‘to go’ and from ‘we go’; the former is somewhat disused in modern Portuguese but very alive in modern Galician. Even , from second-person plural of , is the only form for ‘you (plural) go’ both in Galician and Portuguese (Spanish , from ).
Sometimes, the conjugations differ between dialects. For instance, the Limba Sarda Comuna standard of Sardinian supported a fully regular conjugation of , 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 ‘to go’ has a variety of suppletive forms such as ‘I shall go’ and ‘we went’. Irish ‘to go’ also has suppletive forms: ‘going’ and ‘will go’.
In Estonian, the inflected forms of the verb ‘to go’ were originally those of a verb cognate with the Finnish ‘to leave’, except for the passive and infinitive.
Good and bad 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. + good, better, best Language Adjective Etymology Comparative Superlative Etymology Germanic languages EnglishgoodProto-Germanic: Wiktionary, Proto-Germanic root
cognate to betterbestProto-Germanic:
cognate to OE "remedy" cognate to "fortunate" Danish German Faroese Icelandic Dutch Norwegian Bokmål Norwegian Nynorskgodbetrebest Swedish Romance languages French from Old Latin: cognate to "reverence" Portuguese Spanish Catalan Italian Celtic languages Scottish Gaelic Proto-Celtic: from Proto-Indo-European: "ripen", "mature" Proto-Celtic from Proto-Indo-European: "peak" Irish Breton , (1) (1) Welsh Proto-Celtic: "good", "well" (1) (2) Slavic languages Polish Proto-Slavic: Proto-Indo-European , "behoof", "boot", "good" Czech Slovak Ukrainian Serbo-Croatian Proto-Slavic: "bigger" Slovene Russian probably from Proto-Slavic: Max Vasmer, Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch Old Russian , neut. Old Church Slavonic: "more suitable, appropriate" Indo-Iranian languages Persian probably cognate of Proto-Slavic (above). Not a satisfactory etymology for ; but see comparative and superlative forms in comparison to Germanic or or From Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hwásuš "good". Not a cognate of the Germanic forms above. Non-Indo-European languagesGeorgianკარგი, k'argi [kʼaɾgi].possibly an Iranian borrowing via Old Armenian (karg, “order”).უკეთესი, uk'etesi [uk'e̞tʰe̞si].საუკეთესო, sauk'eteso [sauk'e̞tʰe̞so̞].From Proto-Georgian-Zan *ḳet- “to add, mix”.
The comparison of "good" is also suppletive in → → and → → .
+ bad, worse, worst Language Adjective Etymology Comparative Superlative Etymology Germanic languages English bad Uncertain, possibly from OE ("effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast"), related to OE ("to defile") < Proto-Germanic ("constrain, cause to stay")In OE was more common, compare Proto-Germanic , Gothic (bad), German (evil / bad), English evil worse worst From Proto-Germanic *wirsizô, *wirsistaz. Old Norse From Proto-Germanic *wanh-. Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Bokmål , Norwegian Nynorskvondverreverst(e) Swedish Danish Romance languages French , cognate to Sanskrit "he falls" Portuguese Spanish Catalan Italian Celtic languages Scottish Gaelic Proto-Celtic ("bad") < (possibly) PIE ("to deceive") Proto-Celtic < PIE ("to change") Irish Welsh Proto-Celtic ("worst") Slavic languages Polish Proto-Slavic compare Polish (to disgust, scandalise) Czech Slovak Ukrainian archaic Serbo-Croatian Russian () probably Proto-Slavic () () Old Church Slavonic , Proto-Slavic ("bad", "small")
Similarly to the Italian noted above, the English adverb form of "good" is the unrelated word "well", from Old English , cognate to "to wish".
Great and small Celtic languages:
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ 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”)) |} {| class="wikitable" |- |+ 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: {| class="wikitable" |- |+ 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) |} {| class="wikitable" |- |+ 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 Albanian In Albanian there are 14 irregular verbs divided into suppletive and non-suppletive: {| class="wikitable" |- ! Verb !Meaning!! Present !! Preterite !! Imperfect |- ! !!to be
! !!to have
! !!to eat
! !!to come
! !!to give
! !!to see
! !!to fall, strike
! !!to bring
! !! to stay
Ancient Greek
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 In Bulgarian, the word ("man", "human being") is suppletive. The strict plural form, , 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 . The counter form (the special form for masculine nouns, used after numerals) is suppletive as well: (with the accent on the first syllable). For example, ("two, three people"); this form has no singular either. (A related but different noun is the plural , singular ("soul"), both with accent on the last syllable.)
English 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").