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<p>I'd say that the "opposite" of syncretism is suppletion:</p>
<p>syncretism: expression of inflectional meanings A, B, C by a
single form F in different situations</p>
<p>suppletion: expression of a single inflectional meaning M by
forms A, B, C in different situations</p>
<p>It seems that this is what Cat Butz described for Dalkalaen
("plural being marked differently in all four persons"): different
suppletive plural markers depending on the context.</p>
<p>But the term "suppletion" is most commonly used for roots (e.g. <i>go/wen(-t)</i>,
<i>one/firs(-t)</i>), and many people would prefer "allomorphy"
(though this latter term is also used for phonological variants of
the same form rather than different forms).</p>
<p>In a different sense of "opposite", one could say that the
opposite of syncretism (= grammatical coexpression) is simply
"non-syncretism" (= grammatical disexpression, or
disgrammification), cf. Alexandre François's earlier comment.</p>
<p>In any event, "syncretism" is a weird term – it was originally
limited to diachronic change in inflectional paradigms, and while
it is deeply entrenched in discussions of inflection, it's
prtobably best not to use it more generally.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Martin<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Cat Butz wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:60d57d6a-defc-847a-0d00-c7c59ac761bf@uni-erfurt.de">
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Hello everyone, <br>
<br>
I'm presenting a pronoun paradigm of Dalkalaen this week at the
Affixes symposium in Turku. It exhibits both some very weird
syncretism (same marking of 1EX and 2nd person) and the opposite
of that (e.g. plural being marked differently in all four
persons). What do we call that? Just differential marking? <br>
</blockquote>
<p>Alexandre François wrote:<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:60d57d6a-defc-847a-0d00-c7c59ac761bf@uni-erfurt.de">
<div>In the domain of the lexicon, I've been calling the former
configuration “colexification” (similar to syncretism); and the
opposite, “dislexification” (cf. the contrast <i>con-junct </i>/<i>
dis-junct</i>, etc). </div>
<div>Martin Haspelmath has <a
href="https://twitter.com/haspelmath/status/1688937593403060224">recently</a>
proposed to extend this sort of contrast to grammatical
morphemes, using “cogrammification” (including cases of <i>morphological
syncretism</i>), and “coexpression” in general. For the
opposite, one could propose “disgrammification” and
“disexpression”, but I don't see those terms in Martin's <a
href="https://zenodo.org/record/8223665">handout</a>.
Otherwise, the standard terms, I guess, are simply “formal
distinction” or “formal contrast”. (Maybe other people on the
list will think of different terms.)</div>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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