heteroclisis

English

Noun

heteroclisis

1. (grammar) The presence of two or more classes of inflection in the inflectional paradigm of a noun, verb, etc

Usage notes

• The Anatolian languages had numerous examples of neuter nouns that have their normal nominative/accusative shapes ending in -r while the other cases have -n instead. This heteroclisis is a very old pattern in Indo-European but nowhere else is it preserved so commonly as in Anatolian languages.
• An example from Italian is the alternation of inflection and gender in nouns such as braccio. Most nouns in -o are masculine and form plurals in -i, while most nouns ending in -a are feminine and form plurals in -e. Braccio has two plurals, a feminine plural in braccia and a masculine plural in bracci, and these two plurals apply to different meanings of the word.

The Italian verb andare, with forms such as andiamo as well as vado, is an example of suppletion. English examples are be, with inflected forms is and was, and go with past tense went.

Translations

grammar: two or more inflection classes in a paradigm

• Italian: eteroclisia f