ENGLISH

MORPHOLOG
Y
Suppletion
&
Exceptions
Defenition of
Suppletion
 "Bad - worse is a case
of suppletion. Worse is clearly
semantically related to bad in
exactly the same way as, for
example, larger is related
to large, but there is no
morphological relationship
between the two words, i.e. there
is no phonetic similarity between
them."

• "Suppletion is said to take place when the

syntax requires a form of a lexeme that is not
morphologically predictable. In English, the
paradigm for the verb be is characterized by
suppletion. Am, are, is, was, were, and be have
completely different phonological shapes, and
they are not predictable on the basis of the
paradigms of other English verbs. We also find
suppletion with pronouns. Compare I and me or
she and her. Suppletion is most likely to be
found in the paradigms of high-frequency words

Be and Go
The Old English verb for 'be,' like
its Modern English counterpart,
combined forms of what were
originally four different verbs (seen
in the present-day forms be, am,
are, was). Paradigms that thus
combine historically unrelated
forms are called suppletive.
"Another suppletive verb
is gan 'go,' whose preterit eode was
doubtless from the same Indo-
European root as the Latin
verb eo 'go.' Modern English has
lost the eode preterit but has found
a new suppletive form
for go in went, the irregular preterit
of wend (compare send-sent)
Good, Better, Best
"The forms good, better and best,
which belong to the adjective good ..
show suppletion since the
relationship between the morphs
 representing the root morpheme is
phonologically arbitrary. It would
plainly make no sense to claim that
there is a single underlying
representation in the dictionary from
which go and went or good and better
 are derived. The best we can do is to
content ourselves with listing these
allomorphs together under the same
entry in the dictionary
 e
x
The following table illustrates stem suppletion:

Morphological Regular, Suppletive stem

process nonsuppletive stem

Addition of past walk—walked go—went

tense suffix

Addition of big—bigger— biggest good—better—best

comparative or
superlative suffix
 e
x
The following table illustrates affix suppletion:

Morphological process Regular, nonsuppletive Suppletive affix

affix

Addition of plural cat—cats cherub—cherubim ox

suffix —oxen
Defenition of
Exceptions

PART 2
When a new word enter the language,
the regular inflectional rules generally
apply.
The exceptional to this maybe a
word" borrowed " from a foreign
language.
Shortened form---> an abbreviated
form of a polysyllabic
EXAMPLE :
auto---> automonbile
PART 1
When a noun is used in a compound
where its meaning lost.
Compound noun's plural is not always
simply adding -s / -es in the end of
vocabulary.
If the rightmost word of a compound
takes an irregular form, the entire
compound generally follows suit.
EXAMPLE :
mother-in-law---> mothers-in-law
flatfoot---> flatfoots
 PART 3
hit-hit-hit

EXAMPLE :
She hit the ball yesterday.
The sheep are in the meadow.

ring-rang-rung
new word / shortened form---> -s , -es
the verb is inflectional form--->
compound noun---> -s, -es or
inflectional form
the verb is uninflectional form---> -d,
-ed
EXAMPLE :
flatfoots or mothers-in-law or
footmen
hit or rang
When a verb is derived from a noun,
even though it is pronounced the same
as an irregular verb, the rules apply to
it.
EXAMPLE :
The police ringed the bank with armed
men.
Thank you