huvudvarianter

Huvudvarianter is a term in morphology used to describe the principal variants of a word’s stem that are treated as the core forms in a grammatical paradigm. The term is predominantly found in Swedish linguistics but the concept exists in many language descriptions, where it is used to organize inflectional patterns and historical sound changes.

A huvudvariant, or head variant, is the primary stem form from which other inflected or derived forms are generated. Languages with stem alternations or with multiple productive stems may classify certain forms as huvudvarianter to capture the regular part of the paradigm. In lexicography and grammars, the lemma or headword may be accompanied by one or more huvudvarianter that represent the central or most productive stem shapes.

Relation to other terms: Huvudvarianter are distinguished from allomorphs, conditioned variants, or irregular forms. Allomorphs are forms of the same lemma that arise due to phonological context, syntax, or semantics but are not treated as separate huvudvarianter. The explicit listing of huvudvarianter helps explain regularities across the paradigm.

Example: In a hypothetical language with two regular stems for a verb, stem A is used in present tense forms and stem B in past tense forms; the two stems would be described as huvudvarianter for that verb. Similarly, a noun with two productive stem forms across different pluralization contexts might have two huvudvarianter, with other forms derived via suffixation.

See also: Lemma, stem, allomorph, paradigm, inflection.