Suppletion: Toward a Logical Analysis of the Concept

Mel’čuk, Igor

doi:10.1075/sl.18.2.03mel

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 18:2 (1994) ► pp.339–410

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download PDF

Suppletion

Toward a Logical Analysis of the Concept

Igor Mel’čuk | Université de Montréal

Published online: 1 January 1994

https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.18.2.03mel

A rigorous definition of 'suppletion' is proposed, based on prototypical cases and the following pivotal idea of the current notion: two linguistic signs are in relation of suppletion if the semantic difference between them is maximally regular (i.e., it is grammatical inflectional or derivational) while their formal difference is maximally irregular (i.e., it is not covered by any alternation). The paper offers a concise survey of major types of suppletion: derivational vs. inflectional suppletion; radical vs. affixal suppletion; suppletion of morphs vs. of megamorphs vs. of idioms; a few dozen examples are quoted. After an analysis of five difficult cases, suppletion is considered along the diachronic axis. As a conclusion, a related concept is introduced and delineated with respect to suppletion: pseudo-suppletion.

Cited by (39)

Cited by 39 other publications

Order by:

Xavier Bach, Louise Esher & Sascha Gaglia

2025. Comparative and Dialectal Approaches to Analogy,

Noori, Abdullah & Mohammad Hamid Asir

2024. The Morphological Tapestry: A Linguistic Exploration. Journal of Language and Linguistics in Society :45 ► pp. 10 ff.

Corver, Norbert & Yuta Tatsumi

2023. Number Names. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Hippisley, Andrew

2023. Suppletion. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Rolle, Nicholas

2023. Inward and Outward Allomorph Selection. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Bach, Xavier

2022. Overlapping suppletion and periphrasis: On HAVE, BE, and GO in Gallo-Romance. Word Structure 15:2 ► pp. 115 ff.

Gouskova, Maria & Jonathan David Bobaljik

2022. The lexical core of a complex functional affix: Russian baby diminutive -onok. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 40:4 ► pp. 1075 ff.

Kaplan, Jennifer Marisa

2022. Pluri-Grammars for Pluri-Genders: Competing Gender Systems in the Nominal Morphology of Non-Binary French. Languages 7:4 ► pp. 266 ff.

Rolle, Nicholas & Lee Bickmore

2022. Outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy vs. first-last tone harmony in Cilungu. Morphology 32:2 ► pp. 197 ff.

Roncero, Kristian

2022. A very unpredictable ‘person’: A corpus-based approach to suppletion in West Polesian. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26:1 ► pp. 116 ff.

Sande, Hannah

2022. Is grammatical tone item-based or process-based?. Phonology 39:3 ► pp. 399 ff.

Hinzen, Wolfram & Txuss Martin

2021. De se or not de se: a question of grammar. Language Sciences 85 ► pp. 101343 ff.

Uchihara, Hiroto & Ambrocio Gutiérrez

2021. Teotitlán Zapotec: An ‘activizing’ language. Linguistic Typology 25:2 ► pp. 257 ff.

Mattiola, Simone

2020. Pluractionality: A cross‐linguistic perspective. Language and Linguistics Compass 14:3

Bonami, Olivier & Jana Strnadová

2019. Paradigm structure and predictability in derivational morphology. Morphology 29:2 ► pp. 167 ff.

Despić, Miloje

2019. (Non-)Intersective adjectives and root suppletion. The Linguistic Review 36:3 ► pp. 507 ff.

Ellsäßer, Sophie

2019. Content, form and realizations of Upper German case marking. In Morphological Variation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 207], ► pp. 135 ff.

Hill, Eugen

2019. Inflectional Suppletion and Heteroclite Inflection from a Diachronic Perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society 117:3 ► pp. 372 ff.

Juge, Matthew L.

2019. The Sense That Suppletion Makes: Towards a Semantic Typology on Diachronic Principles. Transactions of the Philological Society 117:3 ► pp. 390 ff.

Plank, Frans & Nigel Vincent

2019. Suppletion: Questions for History and Theory. Transactions of the Philological Society 117:3 ► pp. 319 ff.

Pomino, Natascha & Eva‐Maria Remberger

2019. Verbal Suppletion in Romance Synchrony and Diachrony: The Perspective of Distributed Morphology. Transactions of the Philological Society 117:3 ► pp. 471 ff.

Smith, Peter W., Beata Moskal, Ting Xu, Jungmin Kang & Jonathan David Bobaljik

2019. Case and number suppletion in pronouns. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37:3 ► pp. 1029 ff.

Moskal, Beata

2018. Excluding exclusively the exclusive: Suppletion patterns in clusivity. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1

Ripamonti, Fabio

2018. Normatività e trasgressione nella distribuzione paradigmatica del suppletivismo verbale romanzo. Études romanes de Brno :1 ► pp. 79 ff.

Beck, David

2017. The Typology of Morphological Processes: Form and Function. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, ► pp. 325 ff.

Nurmio, Silva

2017. The development and typology of number suppletion in adjectives. Diachronica 34:2 ► pp. 127 ff.

Operstein, Natalie

2017. Suppletion in Zapotec. Linguistics 55:4

Operstein, Natalie

2018. Toward a typological profile of Lingua Franca: A view from the lexicon and word formation 1. Language Sciences 66 ► pp. 60 ff.

Stolz, Thomas, Nataliya Levkovych & Aina Urdze

2017. Spatial interrogatives. In Space in Diachrony [Studies in Language Companion Series, 188], ► pp. 207 ff.

Bobaljik, Jonathan David

2015. Suppletion: Some Theoretical Implications. Annual Review of Linguistics 1:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Fábregas, Antonio

2014. Notes on exponents. A review of Jochen Trommer (ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence. Morphology 24:1 ► pp. 71 ff.

NAGANO, AKIKO & MASAHARU SHIMADA

2014. Morphological theory and orthography:Kanjias a representation of lexemes. Journal of Linguistics 50:2 ► pp. 323 ff.

Petré, Peter

2013. On the Distribution and Merger ofIsandBiðin Old and Middle English. Transactions of the Philological Society 111:3 ► pp. 301 ff.

Aronoff, Mark

2012. Morphological stems: what William of Ockham really said. Word Structure 5:1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Bacanlı, Eyüp

2011. Inflectional suppletion in Turkic languages. Folia Linguistica Historica 45:Historica vol. 32 ► pp. 1 ff.

Corbett, Greville G.

2010. Canonical derivational morphology. Word Structure 3:2 ► pp. 141 ff.

Corbett, Greville G.

2011. Higher order exceptionality in inflectional morphology. In Expecting the Unexpected: Exceptions in Grammar, ► pp. 107 ff.

Chiari, Isabella

2007. Redundancy Elimination: The Case of Artificial Languages. Journal of Universal Language 8:2 ► pp. 7 ff.

[no author supplied]

2019. Typology of Pluractional Constructions in the Languages of the World [Typological Studies in Language, 125],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.