Syncretism (linguistics)

In linguistics, syncretism exists when functionally distinct occurrences of a single lexeme, morph or phone are identical in form.

The term arose in historical linguistics, referring to the convergence of morphological forms within inflectional paradigms.

[1] However, syncretism is also used to describe any situation where multiple syntactical features share the same inflectional marker, without implying a distinction ever existed.

Syncretism is a type of homophony that occurs within a specific paradigm in which the syntax would require separate forms.

Baerman et al. call these two sources of syncretism "blind phonological change" and "morphosyntactic readjustment".

Some scholars, according to Baerman et al., purport that blind phonological change should only be considered to yield homophony, not syncretism.

This distinction between the two sources of syncretism is important in theory, but is harder to maintain de facto.

[5] In the chart above a model of simple syncretism is shown in the singular and plural forms of the second person subject pronoun in English.

There is another example in the chart of simple syncretism in the masculine and feminine third person plural subject pronouns, both realized as they.

The chart below shows a model of nested syncretism, in which more than one cell in the paradigm of subjunctive verb conjugation in Brazilian Portuguese is realized as the same form, "seja."

Stump, in his 2001 book Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure,[6] identifies four distinct types of syncretism.

In Indo-European languages that have the neutral gender, the nominative and accusative forms of neuter words tend to be the same.

[7] In English, syncretism led to the loss of case marking and the stabilization of word order.

Such "unified plural" languages contrasted with the more southern Old Dutch and Old High German, which still had three distinct forms for each, e.g. OHG wīr habem, īr habet, siu habent.