Abstract
This article presents a sample-based typological account of suppletion in nouns and adjectives. The distribution of the grammatical categories involved in the suppletive forms is presented along with the lexical meanings most commonly found to be suppletive. It is demonstrated that nominal suppletion is not a rare phenomenon and most commonly involves the feature number followed by possession. The noun ‘child’ is the most common suppletive noun. In general, nouns referring to humans are more likely to be suppletive than others. The investigation shows that adjectival suppletion is less common than nominal suppletion and affects frequent adjectives with general meanings of the types value and size.
© 2013 Akademie Verlag GmbH, Markgrafenstr. 12-14, 10969 Berlin.