This paper addresses the question of how certain kinds of overlapping syncretisms in inflectional paradigms can be accounted for that Baerman et al. (2005) refer to as convergent/divergent bidirectional syncretisms (based on earlier work by Stump (2001)). Bidirectional syncretism strongly resists accounts in terms of standard rules of exponence (or similar devices) that correlate inflection mar...

Background Medical syncretism involves activities conducted by healers who are mixing or blending different treatment strategy and explanatory models, is prevalent in the modern world. In medical pluralism, the pattern demonstrates that biomedicine exerts dominance over alternative medical system. The rigid clinical practice guidelines derived from the current best evidence of systematic review...

This paper explores an understudied and poorly understood phenomenon of morphological syncretism in which a morpheme otherwise used to mark the head of a possessive NP appears on words naming property concept (PC) states (states named by adjectives in languages with that lexical category; Dixon, Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in Semantics and Syntax, 1982) in predicative a...

Bilateral health system development in Tonga is implicated in a misrepresentation of ‘traditional’ healing that has serious implications for the provision of health care. It has strengthened the tendency to homogenise and stereotype a diverse body of healers in counter distinction with biomedicine. The diversity of and syncretism in non-biomedical local healing practice is little appreciated in...