Re: PLUG: SpecGram Current Issue

On 3.3.2007 Dirk Elzinga wrote:
 > > I enjoyed it too, but I was wondering about the
 > > distinction between suppletion and use of separate
 > > lexemes. Are we to believe that English <am> and <were>
 > > "belong" to the same lexeme even though they have
 > > distinct roots?
 >
 > Yes. A lexeme is the set of all inflectionally
 > related forms.

It is a little hard to stomach if you are historically
minded, as there were two distinct verbs _beon_ and _wesan_
in Old English, forms of which have mixed to form a
suppletive paradigm in modern English. To be sure to my
Swedish Sprachgefühl _var_ is the past tense of _är_ --
*bhuH not being preserved in Swedish --, but has the concept
of 'suppletion' no place in your concept of 'lexeme', and
how does 'lexeme' relate to 'root' or 'stem'?

I'm well aware that one can be overly historically minded as
well as overly ahistorically minded. IMHO past language
stages are no more, but neither are there to my mind any
stable synchronic stages, as language as all other human
activity essentially *is* change in time. But then I have
had several heavy doses of Buddhist philosophy! :-)
--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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