Suppletion in Verb Paradigms: Bits And Pieces of the Puzzle (Typological Studies in Language)

This book 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 work is based on a broad sample of 193 languages, and examines this long neglected phenomenon from a typological perspective. In addition to identifying types of suppletion which occur cross-linguistically, the study brings to light areal patterns of the occurrence of suppletive forms in verb paradigms. Several hypotheses as regards the diachronic development of suppletive forms are presented as well. The author 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. TSL 67 Suppletion in Verb Paradigms 2 Editorial page 3 Title page 4 LCC data 5 Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations and presentation conventions 12 Introduction 16 1. Previous studies on suppletion 20 2. Method 52 3. Some theoretical issuesand a general overview of the data 70 4. Tense–aspect suppletion I 82 5. Tense–aspect suppletion II 116 6. Suppletive imperatives 154 7. Verbal number and suppletion 168 Concluding remarks 194 Appendix 1 198 Appendix 2 204 Appendix 3 216 References 234 Index of languages 250 Index of authors 252 Index of subjects 254 The series Typological Studies in Language 256 *,Publisher:,John,Benjamins,Publishing,Co,*,Number,Of,Pages:,234,*,Publication,Date:,2006-08-31,*,ISBN-10,/,ASIN:,9027229791,*,ISBN-13,/,EAN:,9789027229793 This book 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 work is based on a broad sample of 193 languages, and examines this long neglected phenomenon from a typological perspective. In addition to identifying types of suppletion which occur cross-linguistically, the study brings to light areal patterns of the occurrence of suppletive forms in verb paradigms. Several hypotheses as regards the diachronic development of suppletive forms are presented as well. The author also seeks