A DIACHRONIC VIEW ON SUPPLETION DIACHRONICAL RESEARCH REGARDING THE LEXICAL COMPETITION BETWEEN РЕБЕНОК AND ДИТЯ. Aantal woorden: 26 402 Claudia Vanhove Studentennummer: 01304460 Promotor: Prof. dr. Dieter Stern Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de richting Oost-Europese talen en culturen. Academiejaar: 2016 - 2017 Preface The following thesis is devoted to my six month Erasmus stay in Prague. It is in this wonderful city that I first came in contact with the notion of suppletion. Without the possibility to attend classes for free I would never have met Prof. Dr. Ronald Kim, who is specialized in the field and introduced me to the wonderful world of linguistics. Therefore I thank him and the system itself for allowing students to go out of their comfort zone and discover new fields whenever they feel like it. Prof. Dr. Kim’s classes stimulated me to write my bachelor paper on the notion of suppletion and consequently I was inspired to write my master thesis on the same subject. After two years of in dept research I feel like I finally start understanding the difficulties that go along with this concept. In addition I would like to thank prof. Dr. Stern for helping me with this subject during all this time. Without his help and positive attitude I might not have been able to go through with my research. In addition I thank my parents for believing in my capabilities and my friends for reading several parts of the paper in order to make me feel more at ease. I Verklaring ivm auteursrecht De auteur en de promotor(en) geven de toelating deze studie als geheel voor consultatie beschikbaar te stellen voor persoonlijk gebruik. Elk ander gebruik valt onder de beperkingen van het auteursrecht, in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de verplichting de bron uitdrukkelijk te vermelden bij het aanhalen van gegevens uit deze studie. Het auteursrecht betreffende de gegevens vermeld in deze studie berust bij de promotor(en). Het auteursrecht beperkt zich tot de wijze waarop de auteur de problematiek van het onderwerp heeft benaderd en neergeschreven. De auteur respecteert daarbij het oorspronkelijke auteursrecht van de individueel geciteerde studies en eventueel bijhorende documentatie, zoals tabellen en figuren. II Content table Introduction.................................................................................................................................5 1. Defining suppletion.................................................................................................................8 1.1 Inflectional versus derivational morphology.............................................................. 10 1.2 The gradient character of suppletion...........................................................................11 1.3 Conclusion of synchronic research............................................................................. 12 2. Suppletion: A diachronic process......................................................................................... 13 2.1 Inflicting language change..........................................................................................14 2.1.1 Incursion.......................................................................................................... 14 3. Etymology of the lexemes.................................................................................................... 16 3.1 Ребенок.......................................................................................................................17 3.1.1 Робъ/рабъ > *orb-.......................................................................................... 17 3.1.2 Robja/robjatko/robenok > robę > робъ/рабъ...................................................18 3.1.3 Rebenok > robenok..........................................................................................19 3.1.4 Rebenok – rebjata............................................................................................ 19 3.2 Дети............................................................................................................................ 19 3.2.1 Dětę, dětь < *dětent- < *dhojtent-................................................................... 20 3.2.2 Ditja < dětę, dětь..............................................................................................20 3.2.3 Ditja – deti........................................................................................................21 3.3. Conclusion................................................................................................................. 21 4. An evolutionary time-line.....................................................................................................21 4.1 Stages of lexical development of the suppletive word pair........................................ 22 4.1.1 Stage one..........................................................................................................23 4.1.2 Stage two..........................................................................................................24 4.1.3 Stage three........................................................................................................26 5 An argument of semantics..................................................................................................... 28 III 5.1 Semantic change................................................................................................................. 29 5.2 Semantic shift rab > rebenok...................................................................................... 30 5.2.1 From slave to child...........................................................................................30 5.3 Semantic shift rebenok > rebjata.................................................................................32 5.4 Ditja.............................................................................................................................33 6 Types of meaning...................................................................................................................33 6.1 Language: Its Structure and Use (1989)..................................................................... 34 6.2 Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981).................................................................. 37 7 Affective meaning..................................................................................................................40 7.1 What is affect?............................................................................................................ 40 7.1.1 Affective/evaluative morphology.................................................................... 43 7.2 Measuring affective meaning......................................................................................44 7.2.1 The Semantic Differential................................................................................45 7.2.2 Feeltrace...........................................................................................................47 7.2.3 conclusion........................................................................................................ 48 8 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 49 9 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................... 53 IV Introduction In the field of linguistic research suppletion might be one of those subject that is the most ill- defined. Its general nature could only be referred to as skittish and therefore it is no surprise that the difficulty going along with defining its premises results in a discrepancy in the research. With this I tend to refer to the major amounts of research that treat the notion of suppletion mainly as a synchronic concept and by discussing its main properties try to define it as accurately as possible. Yet it is necessary to state that these definitions are lacking in grasping the notion entirely and defining all its premises. One the main definitions that is used among researchers is the one provided by Mel’čuk (1994, 409), which states that suppletion entails the unusual occurrence of a relation between lexemes that is grammatically completely regular, yet phonologically completely irregular. Even though he discusses his definition of suppletion quite elaborately in his Suppletion: Towards a logical analysis of the concept (1994) - which is by far the most frequently quoted work regarding suppletion - it is still possible to contradict some of the statements that Mel’čuk makes. In order to discuss a linguistic phenomenon like suppletion in all its glory it is necessary to define such a notion correctly first. In order to do so I will start from Mel’čuks work and discuss some of the issues that arise when taking a closer look at the definition that he provides. Additionally I urge to improve upon the definition by using a different work method. Instead of researching the notion of suppletion synchronically, I will do so diachronically. The linguistic field shows a logical preference for defining a concept before researching it. Even though this might seem the most logical and straight forward method it is clear that some major issues could be encountered while doing so. This has, for example, led up to linguistic research regarding suppletion to dwindle around some theoretical questions for almost a century instead of focusing on more specific