Form-meaning mismatch
In linguistics, a form-meaning mismatch is a natural mismatch between the grammatical form and its expected meaning. Such form-meaning mismatches happen everywhere in language. Nevertheless, there is often an expectation of a one-to-one relationship between meaning and form, and indeed, many traditional definitions are based on such an assumption. For example, Verbs come in three tenses: past, present, and future. The past is used to describe things that have already happened (e.g., earlier in the day, yesterday, last week, three years ago). The present tense is used to describe things that are happening right now, or things that are continuous. The future tense describes things that have yet to happen (e.g., later, tomorrow, next week, next year, three years from now). While this accurately captures the typical behaviour of these three tenses, it's not unusual for a futurate meaning to have a present tense form (I'll see you before I go) or a past tense form (If you could help, that would be great). Types of mismatch There are three types of mismatch. Many forms correspond to one function/meaning One form corresponds to many functions/meanings The meaning cannot be derived from the forms Examples Syncretism Syncretism is "the relation between