English

Noun

suppletion ‎(usually uncountable, plural suppletions)

1. The supplying of something lacking.
2. (grammar) The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g. using “to be able” as the infinitive of “can”, or “better” as the comparative of “good”.
3. (grammar) More loosely, use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related words which may not share the same lexical category, such as father/paternal or cow/bovine.

Usage notes

Strictly speaking, suppletion in linguistics refers only to inflection, such as good/better, which are both adjectives, and this is the most frequent use. It is also used in the looser sense of semantic relations without etymological relations (or with distant etymological relations) such as father/paternal, where these are noun/adjective.^[1][2] However, this latter use is significantly less common and may be considered incorrect.

Related terms

• supply

Translations

See also

• noncognate

References

1. ↑ Paul Georg Meyer (1997) Coming to know: studies in the lexical semantics and pragmatics of academic English, p. 130: "Although many linguists have referred to [collateral adjectives] (paternal, vernal) as 'suppletive' adjectives with respect to their base nouns (father, spring), the nature of ..."
2. ↑ Aspects of the theory of morphology, by Igor Melʹčuk, p. 461