Syncretism

Having inventoried a variety of ways in which inflection is expressed cross-linguistically, we now turn to syncretism. We speak of syncretism when a single inflected form corresponds to more than one set of morphosyntactic features (this definition is paraphrased from Spencer 1991: 45). Syncretism is common cross-linguistically, and it raises a number of questions relevant to morphological theory. In keeping with the non-theoretical approach, we limit ourselves to presenting a few examples of sycretism from Stump (2001), and, for further discussion, we refer the reader to that work (pp. 212–41).

The first examples that we present come from Bulgarian (Stump 2001: 39, 213). In the Bulgarian imperfect and aorist paradigms, the second person singular and third person singular forms are identical. (The aorist is a past tense.) We show this in (19) for the verbs krad ‘steal’ and igráj ‘play’ (these are the citation forms of the lexemes):

In (19), -š is a preterite suffix and -e is 3sg agreement. We see here that a single inflectional form such as kráde may express more than one set of morphosyntactic features: 2sg aorist or 3sg aorist.

Romanian also displays widespread syncretism. For many verbs, the first-person singular in the present indicative paradigm is identical to the third person plural form. We show this in (20). Both 1sg and 3pl forms are in boldface (data from Stump 2001: 213–14):

In (20), the infinitives are put in small caps because they are used as the citation forms of the lexeme. The numbers (2, 3, 4) under the glosses are the numbers of the conjugations these three verbs fall into. Syncretism in the present indicative does not take place in Romanian verbs of the first conjugation.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

مجموعة مشاتل الكفيل ترفد مشاتلها بأكثر من 28 طنًّا من النباتات

شعبة التوجيه الديني النسوي تُحيي ذكرى شهادة الإمام الصادق (عليه السلام)

قسم الشؤون الدينية يحيي ذكرى شهادة الإمام الصادق (عليه السلام)

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يصدر العدد 17 من سلسلة السيرة للرسائل والأطاريح الجامعية

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

الكمية اليومية المثلى من القهوة لصحة نفسية أفضل

معدل ضربات القلب المثالي لحرق الدهون وتحسين القدرة البدنية

هواية تعزز صحة ونشاط الدماغ بشكل ملحوظ

كيف يمكن للصيام أن يطيل العمر؟!

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

وسائد الفرامل: علامات تلفها وأسبابها وكيف تحمي سيارتك

لماذا منطقة الخليج في الشرق الاوسط غنية بالنفط والغاز؟

روسيا.. ابتكار هلام يزيد إنبات البذور

كارثة بيئية في العراق.. نفوق 1000 طن من الأسماك ؟!

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Inflection Summary

Typology

Suppletion

Reduplication

Root-and-pattern morphology

Apophony

Affixation and stem alternations

Inventory of Inflectional Morphology Types

The formal similarity between inflection and derivation

Differences between inflection and derivation

Inflection vs. Derivation

Inflectional categories