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Supplementation vs Suppletion - What's the difference?

supplementation | suppletion |

As nouns the difference between supplementation and suppletion

is that supplementation is the act of supplementing while suppletion is the supplying of something lacking.

supplementation

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • The act of supplementing
  • Something added as a supplement

    • suppletion

    English

    (wikipedia suppletion)

    Noun

    (-)
  • The supplying of something lacking.
  • (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”.
  • (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.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 ..."''Aspects of the theory of morphology, by David Beck, p. 461 However, this latter use is significantly less common and may be considered incorrect.

    Related terms

    * (l)

    See also

    * (l)

    References

    English words suffixed with -ion