Bloomfield defines a word as a minimum free form, a free form that does not consist of lesser free forms, and sorts words by the free forms they contain: man and re-ceive are primary, boy-ish and door-knob secondary. By the definition poor John is a phrase, and so is the compound door-knob, which Bloomfield tells from a phrase by its single high stress. A suppletive alternant bears no resemblance to the other alternants of its form, and Bloomfield finds them for underlying forms, bet- of good and went of go, and for bound forms, the plural -en of ox-en: the roots good and go vary while kind and ox do not, and the plural varies while the comparative does not.
Implementation notes
The words of the suppletion examples are spelled out by Vocabulary Insertion, a root and the head
of its secondary derivation each by its own items, into an inflectional paradigm of stems and
inflectional material (Morphology.InflectionalParadigm). Suppletion of an underlying form is
variance of a lexeme's stems across its cells, and suppletion of a bound form variance of a cell's
inflectional material across lexemes. An exponent is a list of morphs, the zero alternant the
empty one.
TODO
Bloomfield tells phonetic modification, as in child : children and feel : felt, from suppletion by whether the language shows parallel modifications; a Vocabulary Item for each modified form would count it as suppletive.
References
- Bloomfield 1933, Language
Words and phrases
The free forms man, re-ceive, boy, boy-ish, door, knob, door-knob, poor, John and poor John.
The definition is too large to print here; read it in the source.
Used by primary_secondary, phrases
man and re-ceive are primary words, containing no free form, while boy-ish and door-knob are secondary (§13.3).
Built from , , , , , , ,
poor John consists of two lesser free forms and is a phrase (§11.5); so is door-knob, which "resembles a two-word phrase" and is a compound word by its stress (§11.6). re-ceive, a primary word, is a minimum free form.
Built from , , , , , ,
Suppletion
The English root good.
- good = Morphology.Morph.root "good"
The English root go.
- go = Morphology.Morph.root "go"
went, the suppletive alternant of go.
- went = Morphology.Morph.root "went"
Used by derived_words, go_went
-en, the suppletive alternant of the plural suffix.
- en = Morphology.Morph.suff "en"
Used by derived_words
The lexemes of the examples, the regular card and land beside ox and go.
Derives DecidableEq, Fintype.
Used by Lexeme.derived, Terminal, rootSite, headSite, headExponent, parts, english, word, english_realize_eq, derived_words
Used in Haspelmath2025b
The cells of the examples, the plain form and the comparative, the plural and the past.
Derives DecidableEq, Fintype.
Used by Lexeme.derived, Cell.head?, rootSite, headExponent, parts, english, word
Used in Haspelmath2025b
The cell of a lexeme's secondary derivative.
- Lexeme.kind.derived = Cell.cmpr
- Lexeme.good.derived = Cell.cmpr
- Lexeme.ox.derived = Cell.pl
- Lexeme.card.derived = Cell.pl
- Lexeme.go.derived = Cell.past
- Lexeme.land.derived = Cell.past
Built from ,
Used by english_realize_eq, derived_words
Used in Haspelmath2025b
The terminals of a word, a root and the head of its secondary derivation.
Derives DecidableEq.
Built from
Used by Cell.head?, vocabulary, rootSite, headSite
The head a cell adds to the root, none in the plain form.
- Cell.plain.head? = none
- Cell.cmpr.head? = some Terminal.cmpr
- Cell.pl.head? = some Terminal.pl
- Cell.past.head? = some Terminal.past
Built from ,
Used by rootSite, headExponent
The Vocabulary Items condition each suppletive alternant on its neighbour, bet- and went on the comparative and the past to their right, the plural -en and the zero past on √OX and √GO to their left, and set an elsewhere item beside it.
The definition is too large to print here; read it in the source.
Built from
Used by headExponent, word
The head t beside the root of l.
- headSite l t = { focus := {t}, leftCtx := [{Terminal.root l}] }
Built from ,
Used by headExponent
The exponent of the head of l's cell c, the empty list where the cell adds no head.
- headExponent l c = match c.head? with | none => some [] | some t => DistributedMorphology.subsetPrinciple vocabulary (headSite l t)
Built from , , , ,
Used by word
The pairs of a root's exponent and the inflectional material beside it, in the plain form and in each lexeme's derivative.
The definition is too large to print here; read it in the source.
Built from ,
Used by english
The inflectional paradigm of the examples, each word a stem followed by its inflectional material.
- english = { parts := parts, compose := fun (x1 x2 : List Morphology.Morph) => x1 ++ x2 }
Built from , ,
Used by english_realize_eq, suppletion, go_went, not_isCanonical
Used in Haspelmath2025b
The word of l in the cell c, the root's exponent followed by the head's.
- word l c = (DistributedMorphology.subsetPrinciple vocabulary (rootSite l c)).getD [] ++ (headExponent l c).getD []
Built from , , , ,
Used by english_realize_eq, derived_words
Used in Haspelmath2025b
(l : Lexeme) :
english.realization.realize l Cell.plain = {word l Cell.plain} ∧ english.realization.realize l l.derived = {word l l.derived}
Built from , , ,
Built from , , , , , , , , ,
good and go have the suppletive alternants bet- and went of the underlying form, while kind and ox keep theirs, and the plural has the suppletive alternant -en after ox, while the comparative keeps -er (§13.7).
Built from
Built from ,
Built from