Suppletives in non-verb inflections

[Emily]

i know that verbs can have suppletive forms in conjugations (e.g. go, goes, gone, went), but are there languages that have suppletive forms in nominal/adjectival declension? i mean i guess off the top of my head "person, people" technically counts, but i mean more in the sense of like the accusative form is a completely different word from the nominative or w/e. does this ever happen irl?

[Pabappa]

Old Irish had some that were pretty opaque. Etymologically identical ... so not true suppletion .... but who among us would make the connection between mná and bean? In fact I think this one even survives to the present day. Latin had Juppiter, which adds a suffix in the nominative but in no other case.

Singular/plural suppletion may be what's most common, however. The word for "child" is suppletive in many languages, I think both in the sense of young person and in the sense of descendant (and also when a language, like English, uses the same word by default for both). I suspect "person"~"people" style appositions are very common as well. After all, both of those words are loans from French, right? So French has presumably at least something similar going on, and I think Spanish usually uses a singular la gente for most senses of "people" ... though again there's the distinction between people in the sense of many individual persons and people in the sense of a cohesive group.

[dhok]

Suppletion in adjective degree is very, very common, unsurprisingly.

There are a handful of African languages that use stem suppletion to mark plurals, though I can't remember any names off the top of my head.

It kind of depends on what you mean by suppletion, because sometimes suppletion is just regular inflection rendered opaque by sound change. E.g. the PIE word *gʷénh₂ 'woman' had a genitive singular *gʷnéh₂s...fast forward five thousand years and you have bean/mná in modern Irish.

[Travis B.]

Suppletion in adjective degree is very, very common, unsurprisingly.

As in English - good, better, best or bad, worse, worst.

[Linguoboy]

Old Irish had some that were pretty opaque. Etymologically identical ... so not true suppletion .... but who among us would make the connection between mná and bean? In fact I think this one even survives to the present day.

These are present-day forms. The Old Irish nominative was ben.

Suppletive comparatives aren't that unusual. English has good/better/best and bad/worse/worst, Irish has maith/fearr and olc/measa. Irish also has distinct prefixed forms, e.g. dea-bhean "good woman" (alongside bean mhaith), which were formerly more common than they are today.

Parallel to person/people, many Slavic languages have reflexes of *čelověkъ and *ľudьje, e.g. Polish człowiek/ludzie. Bulgarian goes one better than replaces *ľudьje with a borrowing from Greek, хора.

[Ryusenshi]

Of course, suppletive names for gender variation is extremely common (male/female, horse/mare, jimmy/sook).

In Latin, some pronouns like is or hic have highly irregular declensions, to the point that some forms have nothing in common (nom masc sg is and acc fem sg eam). But this is the result of sound changes, not true suppletion.

I suspect "person"~"people" style appositions are very common as well. After all, both of those words are loans from French, right? So French has presumably at least something similar going on

Not in modern French. Personne has a perfectly regular plural: j'ai invité une personne / dix personnes (I invited one person / ten people). So does peuple: it's a singular mass noun when it means "people in general": le peuple s'énerve (people are getting angry); and a normal count noun when it means "a community": un peuple d'Amazonie / des peuples d'Amazonie (an Amazonian people / several Amazonian peoples).

There is also les gens, but it's a plural-only word rather than a suppletive form. The singular form la gent is archaic and only used in a poetic register — usually as a cliché: la gent ailée, the winged folk (i.e. birds) or la gent féminine, womankind.

Un œil / des yeux is very irregular, but once again it is the result of sound changes.

[Linguoboy]

Ooh, I knew there was another Slavic one: in Russian, лет, the genitive plural of лето "summer" is used as the genitive plural of год "year" after numerals.

I thought there'd be more Celtic ones, but the only real example of noun suppletion I can think of (as opposed to just morphological irregularity due to phonetic change) is Breton ki "dog", pl. chas. (The etymological plural is kon, cf. Welsh ci, pl. cŵn.)

[Richard W]

Latin nemo 'no-one' has suppletive genitive and ablative singular nullius and nullo, but the regular forms do occur.

The PIE demonstrative adjective in t- had a suppletive nominative singular masculine and feminine in s-, though I suppose that might be due to phonetic evolution. IE pronouns tend to be suppletive, most notably I/me, and English has 2 or 3 stems for she/her/they.

Numerals can be rather suppletive. English 'eleven; and 'twelve' are formed quite differently to 'thirteen' onwards. As ordinals, 'first' is suppletive is many languages, and 'second' is also suppletive in English. Thai has two words for the unit 'one' in compound words, nueng and et. French has the anomalous 'quatre vingts' for '80'. Russian has the isolated сорок '40'.

[zompist]

Early Modern English had the s/pl cow, kine, which however was regular in Germanic.

[Kuchigakatai]

Latin distinguishes alter 'the other one (in a pair)' from alius 'another one (from three or more choices)' for the most part, but alius lacks the genitive singular and dative singular forms, so it grabs them from alter (gen.sg. alterius, dat.sg. alteri). Note that it perfectly has the plural equivalents (gen.pl. aliorum/aliarum, dat.pl. aliis).

Standard Arabic normally uses suppletion for the construct (i.e. possessed) state form of imra'a 'woman', using zawjat (zawja by itself is 'wife', the feminine form of zawj 'husband'; it's also normal to use possessed rajul 'man' for 'husband'). The regular construct form, imra'at, is very occasionally used though.

[Linguoboy]

Early Modern English had the s/pl cow, kine, which however was regular in Germanic.

The Celtic languages claims that the plural of Breton buoc'h "cow" is suppletive saout, but Wiktionary glosses the latter as "livestock" and gives the plural of buoc'h as buoc’hed (or "collective" buoc’henned). I'm not sure if what we have here is a parallel to English "cow"/"cattle", suppletion followed by recent regularisation, or what.

[Kuchigakatai]

The Celtic languages claims that the plural of Breton buoc'h "cow" is suppletive saout, but Wiktionary glosses the latter as "livestock" and gives the plural of buoc'h as buoc’hed (or "collective" buoc’henned). I'm not sure if what we have here is a parallel to English "cow"/"cattle", suppletion followed by recent regularisation, or what.

Yet another possibility is what Arabic has for some nouns (mostly animals commonly seen in groups, and grains), where the collective is the normal plural of a noun, unless you want to focus on the individuality of each member of the group (as in the use of "persons" in English legalese).

baqara 'a cow' (singulative)
baqaraat 'individual cows' (plurative)
baqar 'cows as a group' (collective)
'abqaar 'various kinds of cows, many cows' (plural of collective)

And in normal usage, the collective baqar is the unmarked plural of baqara.

(Arabic doesn't have suppletion in these, but I'm just mentioning this because it's relevant to your post, although this may not describe Breton or older English either.)

[Richard W]

Early Modern English had the s/pl cow, kine, which however was regular in Germanic.

Are you saying that English innovated an irregularity, or something else? Either way, this isn't suppletion.

[Linguoboy]

The Celtic languages claims that the plural of Breton buoc'h "cow" is suppletive saout, but Wiktionary glosses the latter as "livestock" and gives the plural of buoc'h as buoc’hed (or "collective" buoc’henned). I'm not sure if what we have here is a parallel to English "cow"/"cattle", suppletion followed by recent regularisation, or what.

Yet another possibility is what Arabic has for some nouns (mostly animals commonly seen in groups, and grains), where the collective is the normal plural of a noun, unless you want to focus on the individuality of each member of the group (as in the use of "persons" in English legalese).

This is pretty common in Brythonic. Buoc’henned, for instance, combines a singulative ending (-enn) with the usual plural used for animals (-ed). You don't typically see singulative endings with animals this large, however. For instance, buzhugenn is the singulative of buzhug "earthworms" but a cat is a kazh and a weasel is a kaerell.

[akam chinjir]

For more than you probably want about suppletive superlatives, there's Bobaljik, Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. A couple of take-aways: superlative suppletion is vanishingly rare outside of "a Greater European area"; and if either the comparative or the superlative form of an adjective is suppletive (wrt the positive form), then both are (in languages that have both adjective forms).

[Emily]

Old Irish had some that were pretty opaque. Etymologically identical ... so not true suppletion .... but who among us would make the connection between mná and bean? In fact I think this one even survives to the present day.

It kind of depends on what you mean by suppletion, because sometimes suppletion is just regular inflection rendered opaque by sound change. E.g. the PIE word *gʷénh₂ 'woman' had a genitive singular *gʷnéh₂s...fast forward five thousand years and you have bean/mná in modern Irish.

Of course, suppletive names for gender variation is extremely common (male/female, horse/mare, jimmy/sook).

Early Modern English had the s/pl cow, kine, which however was regular in Germanic.

these aren't quite what i was asking about, i meant more substituting an etymologically separate word for part of an inflection table or w/e. what i'm gathering from the responses is that, for the most part, it's singular/plural substitution, and (in the "greater european area" at least) comparative/superlative substitution?

Ooh, I knew there was another Slavic one: in Russian, лет, the genitive plural of лето "summer" is used as the genitive plural of год "year" after numerals.

huh! i wonder how that came about. does it stay "year" (instead of "summer") in the genitive singular? and the regular genitive plural is used if there isn't a numeral in front of it?

[Emily]

For more than you probably want about suppletive superlatives, there's Bobaljik, Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. A couple of take-aways: superlative suppletion is vanishingly rare outside of "a Greater European area"; and if either the comparative or the superlative form of an adjective is suppletive (wrt the positive form), then both are (in languages that have both adjective forms).

[missals]

Various Norwegian dialects have suppletion in the lexical item meaning 'small/little' - depending on the dialect, there is singular-plural suppletion, gender suppletion, indefinite-definite suppletion, and/or suppletive superlatives, with a form cognate to little occupying some slots, and a form cognate to small occupying other slots.

[Emily]

interesting! do you know of any examples?

[Ryusenshi]

Early Modern English had the s/pl cow, kine, which however was regular in Germanic.

Are you saying that English innovated an irregularity, or something else? Either way, this isn't suppletion.

The pair seems irregular but is (mostly) the result of regular sound changes. (looks at Wiktionary) Old English had singular cū, plural cȳ /kuː, kyː/ via regular umlauting. In Middle English, the plural seemed to have gathered a second plural marker -n at some point (-en is still a common plural marker in German, and survives in a handful of English words like children, oxen), plus /yː/ merged with /iː/ so we had singular cou /kuː/, plural kyne /kiːn/). Later and the Great Vowel Shift happened, yielding /kaʊ, kaɪn/. The same vowel alternation appears in mouse/mice, louse/lice.