Ancient Latin grammarians on suppletion
-
Lucie Pultrová
Abstract
The term “suppletion”, introduced by Osthoff (1899. Vom Suppletivwesen der indogermanischen Sprachen. Heidelberg: Universitätsbuchdruckerei Hörning), was traditionally used to refer to an inflectional paradigm containing forms based on two or more etymologically different stems. In the last decades, however, it has been argued that etymology does not contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon, and it should be strictly defined on synchronic terms: simply as the peak point on the formal irregularity scale, regardless of the actual origin of the irregularity. Under this approach, all forms reported by speakers as two potentially different lexical items are considered to be suppletive. To be able to determine what users of a living language consider to be a case of suppletion, it is possible to analyze data collected from speakers. The situation is considerably more difficult for dead languages, which however have played an important role in the debate and provided many of the canonical examples. As a closest equivalent to eliciting the required information from a native speaker, the informed but from the present-day perspective naïve expressions of linguistic introspection in the works of Late Latin Grammarians, namely their use of specific terms (defectivum, anomalum, inaequale) to refer to different degrees and lexical examples of irregularity, are highly valuable, as it also may reflect the difficulties confronted by non-native learners.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Charles University project Progres 4, Language in the shiftings of time, space, and culture. It was inspired by a previous work on the grant project “Diachronic Typology of Suppletion” (GAČR 14-10673S; 2014–2016), led by J. Bičovský, to whom I also owe a great deal of thanks in getting this article completed.
Cited editions
Flavius Sosipater Charisius. Artis grammaticae libri V. Edited by Karl Barwick & Friedmar Kühnert. Leipzig: Teubner, 1997 [1964].10.1515/9783110964783Search in Google Scholar
GL = Grammatici Latini. Edited by Heinrich Keil. Hildesheim, Zürich & New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007 (Nachdruck der Ausgabe Leipzig 1857).Search in Google Scholar
Marcus Terentius Varro. De lingua Latina quae supersunt. Edited by Georg Goetz & Fritz Schoell. Leipzig: Teubner, 1910.Search in Google Scholar
Marcus Terentius Varro. De lingua Latina. Introduction, text, translation and commentary by Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.Search in Google Scholar
References
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.9Search in Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 2007. Canonical typology, suppletion, and possible words. Language 83(1). 8–42.10.1353/lan.2007.0006Search in Google Scholar
de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages. Leiden & Boston: Brill.Search in Google Scholar
Ernout, Alfred & Antoine Meillet. 1932. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Paris: Klincksieck.Search in Google Scholar
Julia, Marie-Ange. 2019. Supplétisme à partir de locuteur: Le cas du latin agō/faciō/fiō. Transactions of the Philological Society 117(3). 415–433. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.9.Search in Google Scholar
LIV = Rix, Helmut (ed.). 20012. Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert.Search in Google Scholar
Meľčuk, Igor Alexandrovič. 2000. Suppletion. In Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds.), Morphologie/Morphology: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung/An international handbook on inflection and word-formation I, 510–522. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110111286.1.7.510Search in Google Scholar
Meľčuk, Igor Alexandrovič. 2008. Aspects of the theory of morphology. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Osthoff, Hermann. 1899. Vom Suppletivwesen der indogermanischen Sprachen. Heidelberg: Universitätsbuchdruckerei Hörning (= 1900, Heidelberg: Kommissionsverlag von Alfred Wolff).Search in Google Scholar
Plank, Frans & Nigel Vincent. 2019. Suppletion: Questions for history and theory. Transactions of the Philological Society 117(3). 319–337.10.1111/1467-968X.12176Search in Google Scholar
Pultrová, Lucie. 2019. Suppletion in the Latin perfect system. In Ronald I. Kim (ed.), Diachronic perspectives on suppletion (SHVS 13), 13–26. Hamburg: Baar Verlag.Search in Google Scholar
Walde, Alois & Johann Baptist Hofmann. 1938–1956. Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Winter.Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Romanization and Latinization of the Roman Empire in the light of data in the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age
- Los patronímicos en los grammatici Latini. La adaptación de una categoría importada
- Negative adjectival morphology in Latin.
- Does Prenestinian fe⋮faked actually exist?
- Ancient Latin grammarians on suppletion
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Romanization and Latinization of the Roman Empire in the light of data in the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age
- Los patronímicos en los grammatici Latini. La adaptación de una categoría importada
- Negative adjectival morphology in Latin.
- Does Prenestinian fe⋮faked actually exist?
- Ancient Latin grammarians on suppletion
