different between supplementation vs suppletion

English

Etymology

supplement +? -ation

Noun

supplementation (countable and uncountable, plural supplementations)

1. The act of supplementing
2. Something added as a supplement

Derived terms

• supplementational

English

Etymology

From German Suppletivwesen, from Latin supplere (“to supply”), perfect stem supplet-, + -ion.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s??pli???n/

Noun

suppletion (usually uncountable, plural suppletions)

1. The supplying of something lacking.
2. (linguistics, grammar) The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g. using “to be able” as the infinitive of “can”, or “better” as the comparative of “good”, or “went” as the simple past of “go”.
3. (grammar) More loosely, the use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related words which may not share the same lexical category, such as father/paternal or cow/bovine.

Usage notes

Strictly speaking, suppletion in linguistics refers only to inflection, such as good/better, which are both adjectives, and this is the most frequent use. It is also used in the looser sense of semantic relations without etymological relations (or with distant etymological relations) such as father/paternal, where these are noun/adjective. However, this latter use is significantly less common and may be considered incorrect. The term suppletion is particularly used to contrast these phenomena with phonologically conditioned irregularities like man/men, where both parts are derived by sound changes from an originally regular paradigm.

Related terms

• supply
• suppletive
• supplement
• supplementary

Translations

See also

• noncognate

References