page_title: Syncretism (linguistics)
section_title: Ingvaeonic languages
hierarchical_section_title: Syncretism (linguistics) / Ingvaeonic languages
caption_attribution_description: English: Location of the dialect isogloss Einheitsplurallinie in The Netherlands and Germany Nederlands: Verloop van de Eenheids-pluralislijn in Nederland en Duitsland
context_page_description: 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 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.
context_section_description: In the Ingvaeonic languages, a subgroup of the West Germanic languages, an important case of syncretism developed in the inflection of verbs, where the forms for the three plural persons became identical. Old English has wē habbaþ, ġē habbaþ and hīe habbaþ (we, you, they have) and Old Saxon has wī hebbiad, gī hebbiad and sia hebbiad, all with the same verb form. 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. In the modern languages, this distinction remains an important isogloss separating Low German from Dutch and the High German languages.
caption: Dialects to the north of the line have one plural form, dialects to the south have two.
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