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RomaineS(1982).

Socio-historical linguistics: its status and methodology.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Saussure F de (1916[1978]).

Course in general linguistics.

Ed. by Bally C & Sechehaye A transl. from French byBaskin W Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.Tieken-Boon van Ostade I, Nevalainen T & Caon L (eds.)(2000).

European Journal of English Studies

4: 3. SpecialIssue: Social network analysis and the history of English

Trudgill P (1974).

The social differentiation of English inNorwich.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Syncretism

M Baerman

, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK

Definition

The term

syncretism

refers to the situation wherea single inflectional form corresponds to multiplemorphosyntactic feature values. The Old Irish nounparadigm in

Table 1

illustrates some representativeinstances.Old Irish distinguishes five values for case (nomi-native, accusative, genitive, dative, vocative) andthree values for number (singular, dual, plural). Mul-tiplying out the logical possibilities yields a grid of 15 case-number distinctions (

NOM SG

ACC SG

, etc.).However, because of syncretism in the paradigm,there are only five distinct forms:

fer

firu

feraib

fir

,and

fiur

. There is syncretism of case (

ACC

VOC PL

firu

),of number (

PL DAT

feraib

), as well as forms whichcombine different case and number values (

fir

servesfor

GEN SG

and

NOM PL

fer

serves for

NOM

ACC

VOC SG

ACC

GEN

VOC DU

, and

GEN PL

).In practice, most observers require some language-internal evidence that a particular morphosyntacticdistinction is morphologically relevant in order toidentifysyncretism.Forexample,avaluewhichissyn-cretic in one morphosyntactic context may be distinctin another, as with nominative and accusative in OldIrish, which are syncretic in the singular and dualbut not in the plural. Or they may be syncretic in onelexeme but not in another; thus, nominative and ac-cusative are syncretic in the singular of

fer

, but dis-tinct for some other Old Irish nouns, e.g.,

tuath

‘nation.

NOM.SG

,’

tuaith

‘nation.

ACC.SG

.’The significance of syncretism lies in what it cantell us about the structure of morphosyntax and mor-phology. If one holds that identity of form is a reflec-tion of identity of function, then syncretism providesevidence for otherwise hidden aspects of featurestructure. For example, the fact that dual and pluralarecollapsedintheform

feraib

mightbeusedtoshowthe relevance of a number value ‘nonsingular,’ whichisinturnsubdividedintodualandplural.Ontheotherhand, some syncretic patterns involve the collapse of functionally incongruent values (e.g.,

GEN SG

and

NOMPL

fir

), and may be used to argue that morphologicalstructure is independent of morphosyntactic structure.

Development of the Notion

Theterm

syncretism

appliedtolanguagefirstturnsupin August Pott’s (1836)

Etymologische Forschungenauf dem Gebiete der Indo–Germanischen Sprachen

[Etymological investigations on Indo–Germanic lan-guages], where it is used in both a synchronic sense(as outlined above) anda diachronic sense, i.e.,whereoriginally distinct inflectional forms have fallen to-gether over time. In the course of the 19th century,syncretism was largely treated as a diachronic prob-lem, culminating in Delbru ¨ck’s (1907) study of casesyncretism in the Germanic languages. In the 20thcentury, the synchronic dimension came to the fore,starting with Jakobson (1936) and Hjelmslev (1935–1937), who developed the idea that syncretism couldbe used to explore the inner workings of morpho-syntactic features. Syncretism continues to play a sig-nificant role in the construction of contemporarymodelsofmorphology,suchasNetworkMorphology(Evans

et al

., 2001), Paradigm Function Morpholo-gy (Stump, 2001), and Distributed Morphology(Noyer, 1997).

Typology

Although syncretism might be seen as deviation, aviolation of a straightforward mapping of grammati-cal function onto morphological form, it is never-theless endemic in inflectional systems. It is probably fair to say that, if a language has inflectional

Table 1

Declension of Old Irish ‘man’

SG DU PL

NOM

fer fer fir

ACC

fer fer firu

GEN

fir fer fer

DAT

fiur feraib feraib

VOC

fir fer firu

Syncretism

363

morphology, it is likely to display syncretism. Themost commonly affected features, crosslinguistically,are case, person, gender, and number.Case syncretism most typically affects the corecases used to express subject and object. One patterninvolves collapse of core case distinctions, as in thenominative/accusative syncretism of Indo

–

Europeanneuters (compare the neuter form of the Latin adjec-tive

‘

good,

’

bonum

, which combines nominative andaccusative, with the masculine, which has a separateform for nominative,

bonus

, and for accusative,

bonum

). The same pattern may also occur in ergative

absolutive systems. For example, in the Daghesta-nianlanguageTsakhur(Kibrik,1999),pronounshaveabsolutive/ergative syncretism (e.g.,

‘

ERG

ABS

’

),while nouns maintain distinct forms for these twocases (e.g.,

baIcˇ ar

‘

idiot.

ABS

’

baIcˇ ar-e¯

‘

idiot.

ERG

’

).Cross-linguistically, there is often a correlation withanimacy: high animacy arguments favor maintenanceof a distinct object case form, while low animacyarguments favor a distinct agent case form. (Animacyhere is broadly construed, with number, word class,person, and specificity also playing a role.) Both thesetendencies are manifested in so-called split ergativelanguages. The other major pattern of case syncretisminvolves the collapse of one of the core cases (typicallyaccusative or ergative) with some noncore case, asin the well-known accusative/genitive of the Slaviclanguages (e.g., Russian

ee¨

‘

her.

ACC

GEN

’

vs.

zˇen-u

‘

wife-

ACC

’

zˇen-y

‘

wife-

GEN

’

) or the ergative of theChukotko

–

Kamchatkan language Koryak (Z ˇ ukova,1972), which is syncretic with the locative for nounswhich denote specific human individuals (

anjana-k

‘grandmother-

ERG

LOC

’ vs

anja-ta

‘a grandmother-

ERG

,’

anja-k

‘a grandmother-

LOC

’). Finally, case syncretismbetween non-core cases is also found (especially inIndo–European languages), but the patterns tend to belanguage-specific, in keeping with the varied repertoryof noncore cases cross-linguistically.Syncretism of person most often affects non-singular values, typically combining first and sec-ond or second and third person. For example, theChibchan language Ika (Frank, 1990) has 1

syncretism (e.g.,

a-tsˇuana

‘we/you.

saw’), while thePapuan (Trans-New Guineaphylum) languageAmele(Roberts, 1987) has 2

syncretism (e.g.,

feigan

‘you.

/they saw’). Where verbs mark both subjectand object, one often finds the collapse of subjectperson distinctions in the presence of certain objectvalues. For example, in the Papuan (Sepik–Ramufamily) language Yimas (Foley, 1986), second andthird person singular subject are distinct in intransi-tive verbs, but syncretic in transitive verbs with athird person object, e.g.,

nan-tay

cut

‘you.

/hesee(s) him’ versus

ma-wat

‘you.

want,’

na-wat

‘hewants.’Gender syncretism shows a decided tendency toaffect nonsingular values. For example, in Laal, anunclassified language of Chad (

Table 2

), masculineandneuteraresyncreticintheplural;intheIroquoianlanguage Seneca (

Table 3

), feminine and neuter aresyncretic in the plural; and in the Nilotic languageTurkana(

Table 4

),masculineandneuteraresyncreticin the dual and plural (the alternative forms are for[

RESTRICTIVE

], a feature akin to definiteness).Number syncretism shows a decided tendency tounite nonsingular values. For example, in theAustralian language Bininj Gunwok (Gunwinyguanfamily; Evans, 2003), pronominal prefixes regularlydistinguish three number values, while free pronounsdistinguish only two: compare the subject prefixes

ngi

- ‘2

,’

nguni

- ‘2

,’

ngurri

- ‘2

’ with the freepronouns

ngudda

‘2

’ and

wudda

‘2

.’It should be noted, however, that purely language-specific patterns of syncretism are also common.In part, these can be traced to the morphologizationof originally accidental patterns of homophony. Forexample, Kuryłowicz (1949) attributes the syncre-tism of second and third person singular in the OldScandinavian present tense indicative verb conjuga-tion to the analogical extension of a pattern thatoriginally appeared in one class of verbs as the resultof regular sound change.

Formal Issues

To describe syncretism in a morphological analysis,two approaches are possible, underspecification andstipulation.With underspecification, the morphological expo-nent is undefined for some feature, and so is com-patible with multiple values of that feature. Consider

Table 3

Third person gender–number prefixes in Seneca(Chafe, 1997: 563)

SG DU PL

MASC

ha- hni- hati-, h n-

FEM

ye- kni- wati-, w n-

NEUT

ka-, w-, y- kni- wati-, w n-

Table 2

Third person possessive pronoun in Laal (Boyeldieu,1982: 14)

SG PL

MASC

a¯

e `:rı ´

FEM

o `:g

e `:rı ´

NEUT

a `:na ´

ua `:na ´

364

Syncretism

gender syncretism, as illustrated in

Table 2

Table 3

,and

Table 4

.We might treat gender as a compo-site of two subfeatures, [

HUMAN

] and [

MASC

],where masculine

[

HUMAN

MASC

], feminine

[

HUMAN

MASC

], and neuter

[

HUMAN

MASC

].The masculine/feminine syncretism seen in Laal couldthus be described by saying that the form

e`:r

ı´

isunderspecified for [

MASC

]. In this use of under-specification, syncretism is a direct mirror of thenatural class represented by [

HUMAN

]. Alternatively,underspecification can be used to generate

‘

elsewhere

’

forms. For example, the masculine/neuter syncretismof Turkana might be described by saying that theprefixes

- and

- are underspecified for both[

HUMAN

] and [

MASC

], while the prefixes

- and

- are fully specified as [

HUMAN

MASC

]. In thisapproach,

- and

- are simply default pluralprefixes used to fill out the undefined portions of theparadigm; the fact that they combine specifically thevalues masculine and neuter is of no significance.With underspecification, syncretic patterns are notdirectly defined by morphology, but are rather a byproduct of natural classes of morphosyntactic values.In a model of grammar where morphology playsonly a limited role, this is a desirable outcome. How-ever, there is some evidence that the complexity of syncretic patterns may be too great to rely solely onunderspecification, suggesting that at least sometypes of syncretism are best described through mor-phological stipulation. The main challenges posed tounderspecification come from two phenomena.First,there are instances ofsyncretismfor which noplausible natural class of morphosyntactic valuescould be assumed. For example, in the Cushitic lan-guageDhaasanac(Tosco,2001),theperson

–

number

–

gender paradigm of verbs displays a maximum of two forms, one for 1

INCL PL

//3

SG MASC

andone for 2

SG FEM

. This opposition is mor-phologically systematic, as is shown by the variety of ways in which it is manifested (consonant or vowelalternation, suffixation, prefixation), dependingon tense-mood and on the lexeme itself, e.g.,

lee

leeti

‘

fall down.

PERF

’

sieti

‘

walk.

PERF

’

uufumi

uufeeni

‘

cough.

PERF

’

yes

ces

‘

kill.

PERF

’

Each form combines disparate morphosyntactic va-lues, which cannot be reduced to any obvious naturalclass. While it might be possible to treat one of theseas an

‘

elsewhere

’

form, the combination of valuesfound in the other form must still be accounted for.Second, some examples show evidence of an inter-nal asymmetry, that is, the syncretic form looks as if it is really the exponent of one of the componentvalues. In some of these cases, underspecification isinsufficient as a descriptive mechanism. Consider thesingular paradigm of second declension Latin nounsin

Table 5

. Masculines have a distinct nominative in-

and accusative in -

while neuters have nomina-tive/accusative syncretism, typically with the ending-

, though some nouns have -

. Thus, the syncret-ic nominative/accusative of neuters looks like theaccusative (-

) for some nouns and like the nomina-tive (-

) for others. The distribution of forms acrossthe three paradigm types does not lend itself toanalysis in terms of underspecification, since -

and -

would need sometimes to be underspecifiedfor the distinction between accusative and nomina-tive, and sometimes be specified distinctly as accusa-tive or nominative.Such examples appear to require morphologicaldevices in addition to underspecification. The firstsuggeststheneedforstipulatedclassesofmorphologi-calvalues, i.e., there is an overt rule which states thatcertain distinct values are grouped together (

‘

mor-phomes

’

in the sense of Aronoff, 1994). The secondexample suggests the need for rules of referral, whichstate that the form for one value is the same as theform for another value, e.g., that the accusative takesthe form of the nominative in nouns of the

virus

type.The existence of such stipulated morphologicaldevices does not invalidate the notion of underspeci-fication,butrathersupplementsit,andprovidessomeevidence for the autonomy of morphology.

Baerman - Syncretism

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