suppletion

[Olga Meerson]

Dear Elena (Arkhipova)

As I understand it, suppletion is about creating a full paradigm out of something "incorrect" that originates from violating a different, original one, one grammatically accepted and "correct": you start with using skol'ko vremia, instead of vremeni, and end up with trying to use all sorts of forms for a stem not having existed previously --*vreme. The same with ditia. When used "wrongly", it generates a consistency of sorts, beginning to be treated as a feminine noun (e.g.: instr.: ditej; dat. ditiu, etc.). This whole business, Elena, has nothing to do with what standard grammars and textbooks teach as grammar standards. Rather, is, like any sort of good linguistics, is an attempt to understand the logic of what people actually say -- which may easily be qualified as mistakes. Linguistics is about learning methods to madnesses, not to the alleged sanities of what grammarians insist on prescribing as "the correct language".  
I have tried to address not only the definition of the term (which I can only guess at, from the context of what Frank Gladney has said, not being a linguist myself but merely a philologist) but also the philosophical underpinnings of linguistics--what it is all about. Whatever it is, it is certainly not about the standard, correct, and prescribed forms of a language but rather about patterns for their violation empirically found in people's use of it (the language in question). Herein lies the difference between what Frank studies and what you, Elena, teach. You teach Russian as a bunch of rules for correct use. Frank -- like, say, Jakobson whom he cites -- studies Russian as a language EMPIRICALLY used and capable of forming whole paradigms out of various instances of "incorrect usage" -- not what language ought to be but what it is, in dialects and various "illegitimate" but empirically existing forms and versions.
Frank, I would love to have a clarification of what suppletion really means: everything I have said here is based on my surmises. based in turn on your entry. Perhaps you may enlighten me as to whether I am completely off the mark?
o.m.

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