What is suppletion?

Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs.

• The following table illustrates stem suppletion:

  Morphological process	Regular, nonsuppletive stem	Suppletive stem
  Addition of past tense suffix	walk—walked	go—went
  Addition of comparative or superlative suffix	big—bigger— biggest	good—better—best

• The following table illustrates affix suppletion:

  Morphological process	Regular, nonsuppletive affix	Suppletive affix
  Addition of plural suffix	cat—cats	cherub—cherubim ox —oxen

Here are some kinds of suppletion:

• Stem suppletion
• Affix suppletion

• What is modification?

Context for this page:

• Concept module: suppletion
• In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): S
• In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
• In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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