Weak suppletion
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In linguistics, weak suppletion is a term used to describe an inflection that is not perfectly regular for the language being discussed, but which retains at the very least considerable phonological material from the original word.
Most irregular verbs in European languages are examples of weak suppletion. An example can be seen in the German verbs sprechen (to speak), fahren (to travel), schrieben (to write) and ziehen (to pull):
| Verb | Second person singular | Third person singular | Imperfect | Past participle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| sprechen | sprichst | spricht | sprach | gesprochen |
| fahren | fährst | fährt | fuhr | gefahreen |
| schreiben | schreibst | schreibt | schrieb | geschrieben |
| ziehen | ziehst | zieht | zog | gezogen |
Note here that although these are not regular verbs because their endings are different and there are vowel changes, unlike true suppletive verbs such as English "to be" and "to go", all forms are drawn from the same root.
Another example of weak suppletion can be found in the ordinal number "third" in English and German:
| Language | Cardinal | Ordinal |
|---|---|---|
| English | three | third (regular would be "threeth") |
| German | drei | dritte (regular would be "dreite") |
Notice how this contrasts with the completely unrelated pairs
- "one" and "first"
- "two" and "second"
Weak suppletion occurs also in non-European languages. The Japanese copula with its forms da, honorific desu (regular would be "damasu") and past tense deshita (regular would be "damasuta") can be seen as a case in point.
In linguistic studies, cases of weak suppletion are not usually considered as important as cases of strong suppletion and indeed tend to be ignored when the phenomenon of suppletion and its evolution is discussed. This may be because, whereas true suppletive verbs invariably come from several historical roots, verbs or other roots that are weakly suppletive generally are not unique and come from a single root in a manner akin to regular stems in that language.
