Deponency

The term (extended) deponency has recently been used for a mismatch between the expected and actual function of a morphological form or paradigm.

This extended sense is based on the term deponent, which refers to passive or middle forms of verbs with active meaning.

Examples

In Hebrew, feminine forms of numerals mark masculine agreement and vice versa. In Serbo-Croatian, the plural of the word ‘child’ (and some other words designating the young of animals) has the form of a singular. In Lezgian, the future tense marker -da has a present tense meaning with a few verbs.

Origin

The term deponency was coined by Greville G. Corbett in the 1990s (see deponency project), on the basis of the term deponent familiar from the grammar of the classical languages.{ref}}