The containment hypothesis is a theory under the framework of Distributed Morphology advanced by Bobaljik (2012) to account for the restrictions on the patterns of suppletion seen in language. It states:""The representation of the superlative properly contains that of the comparative (in all languages that have a morphological superlative).""Bobaljik argues that if a language has a superlative form, it must build off the comparative form. In other words, the superlative form and the bare adjective cannot be built off the same root to the exclusion of the comparative (a so-called *ABA pattern), because the comparative is necessarily "contained" within the superlative form. Thus, languages allow: