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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.
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Suppletion in Verb Paradigms Typological Studies in Language (TSL) A companion series to the journal Studies in Language General Editor Michael Noonan Assistant Editors Spike Gildea, Suzanne Kemmer Editorial Board Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Bernard Comrie (Leipzig) R. M. W. Dixon (Melbourne) Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) John Haiman (St Paul) Bernd Heine (Köln) Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Andrej Kibrik (Moscow) Ronald Langacker (San Diego) Charles Li (Santa Barbara) Edith Moravcsik (Milwaukee) Andrew Pawley (Canberra) Doris Payne (Eugene, OR) Frans Plank (Konstanz) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago) Dan Slobin (Berkeley) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara) Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, covering specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages and language typologies. The orientation of the volumes will be substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigating universals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, leaning toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse data. Volume 67 Suppletion in Verb Paradigms: Bits and pieces of the puzzle by Ljuba N. Veselinova Suppletion in Verb Paradigms Bits and pieces of the puzzle Ljuba N. Veselinova Stockholm University, Sweden John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia 8 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ljuba N. Veselinova Suppletion in verb paradigms : bits and pieces of the puzzle / Ljuba N. Veselinova. p. cm. (Typological Studies in Language, issn 0167–7373 ; v. 67) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Verb. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Suppletion. I. Title. II. Series. P281.V477 2006 415’.6--dc22 isbn 90 272 2979 1 (Hb; alk. paper) 2006042985 © 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations and presentation conventions ix xi Introduction 1. Preliminaries xi 2. Organization of this book xiii xv chapter 1 Previous studies on suppletion 1. Historical notes 1 2. Suppletion in contemporary linguistic theory (Chomsky and beyond) 4 2.1 Defining the co