LINGUIST List 14.1099

Mon Apr 14 2003

Diss: Typology: Veselinova "Suppletion in verb..."

Editor for this issue: Anita Yahui Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. ljuba, Typology: Veselinova "Suppletion in verb paradigms..."

Institution: Stockholm University
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2003

Author: Ljuba N Veselinova 

Dissertation Title: 
Suppletion in verb paradigms: bits and pieces of a puzzle


Linguistic Field: Typology, Morphology, General Linguistics

Dissertation Director 1: �sten Dahl


Dissertation Abstract: 

This study examines stem change in verb paradigms, as in English go
'go.PRESENT' vs. went 'go.PAST', a phenomenon referred to as
suppletion in current linguistic theory. The present work is based on
a broad sample of 193 languages, and shows that, contrary to the
widespread view, patterns of suppletion according to grammatical
category show systematicity in several respects.

Three of the most frequently encountered suppletion types are examined
in detail. They are tense-aspect suppletion, as in English above;
suppletion according to imperative mood as in Modern Greek erxome
'come.INDICATIVE' vs. Ela 'come.IMPERATIVE', and verbal number in Ainu
ek 'come.SINGULAR' vs. arki 'come.PLURAL'. These patterns of
suppletion can be correlated with particular geographical areas,
language families, and specific lexemic groups. Further on, a
correlation can be made with general lexicalization hierarchies as
well as with language-specific strategies for encoding semantic
domains such as identity, class inclusion and property assignment.

Historical data indicate that diachronically suppletive forms in
paradigms result from a variety of processes which have different
motivations. In a wider perspective, we can see that what may appear
idiosyncratic from the point of view of a particular language, is in
fact cross-linguistically recurrent and systematic, in terms of the
categories outlined here.

The present work also seeks to explore the methodological issues of
evaluating the frequency of linguistic features in large language
samples by introducing a method of weighting languages according to
their genetic relatedness. All figures obtained in this way are
compared to the proportions yielded by more familiar counting methods,
and the results and implications of the different procedures are
compared and discussed throughout.