[Lingtyp] What is the opposite of syncretism?

[Cat Butz]

Thanks again to everyone who contributed! If one thing has become clear, 
it's that there is no generally established term for this in linguistics 
right now, so probably so far there hasn't been much of a need for it. 
For all intents and purposes, I think that "affix suppletion" or should 
get the job done in being understandable for everyone.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.
---
Cat Butz (she)
HHU Düsseldorf
General Linguistics


Am 2023-08-17 07:54, schrieb Martin Haspelmath:
> I'd say that the "opposite" of syncretism is suppletion:
> 
> syncretism: expression of inflectional meanings A, B, C by a single
> form F in different situations
> 
> suppletion: expression of a single inflectional meaning M by forms A,
> B, C in different situations
> 
> 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.
> 
> But the term "suppletion" is most commonly used for roots (e.g.
> _go/wen(-t)_, _one/firs(-t)_), and many people would prefer
> "allomorphy" (though this latter term is also used for phonological
> variants of the same form rather than different forms).
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Martin
> Cat Butz wrote:
> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> 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?
> 
> Alexandre François wrote:
> 
>> In the domain of the lexicon, I've been calling the former
>> configuration “colexification” (similar to syncretism);  and the
>> opposite, “dislexification”  (cf. the contrast _con-junct _/_
>> dis-junct_, etc).
>> Martin Haspelmath has recently [1] proposed to extend this sort of
>> contrast to grammatical morphemes, using “cogrammification”
>> (including cases of _morphological syncretism_), and
>> “coexpression” in general.  For the opposite, one could propose
>> “disgrammification” and “disexpression”, but I don't see
>> those terms in Martin's handout [2].  Otherwise, the standard terms,
>> I guess, are simply “formal distinction” or “formal
>> contrast”. (Maybe other people on the list will think of different
>> terms.)
> 
> --
> Martin Haspelmath
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6
> D-04103 Leipzig
> https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://twitter.com/haspelmath/status/1688937593403060224
> [2] https://zenodo.org/record/8223665
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