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. In such cases, a former distinction has been 'syncretized'. The term syncretism is often used when a fairly regular pattern can be observed across a paradigm. Syncretism is a specific form of linguistic homophony. Homophony refers to any instance of two words or morphemes with the same pronunciation (form) but different meaning. Syncretism is a type of homophony that occurs within a specific paradigm in which the syntax would require separate forms. Accidental homophony does occur in paradigms, however, and linguist Sebastian Bank of the University of Leipzig makes the distinction between accidental homophony and syncretism in paradigms through natural classes. When a set of identical paradigmatic forms are connected by a feature in common, and a native speaker cannot tell the difference between the forms, this is said to be syncretism. Syncretism can arise through either phonological or morphological change. Baerman et al. call these two sources of syncretism "blind phonological change" and "morphosyntactic readjustment". In the case of phonological change, originally distinct forms change to be pronounced identically, so that their distinctness is lost. Such change can often be observed in the modern German verb paradigm: the infinitive nehmen 'to take' comes from Old High German neman, the first person plural declension nehmen comes from nemēm, and the third person plural nehmen comes from nemant. This is also an example of syncretism manifested in lexemes. 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. In the case of morphological change, one form stops being used and is replaced by the other.