A paradox?
-
Martin Maiden
Abstract
A major morphological innovation in the Latin-Romance transition was the appearance of alternations in the root of the verb. This study examines the complex morphological evolution of the alternants which arose from proto-Romance palatalization and became characteristic of the present subjunctive together with the first person singular (and in some places also the third person plural) present indicative. I offer a brief historical-comparative sketch of these phenomena, and focus on an initially paradoxical situation. The alternant is predominantly aligned with the category ‘present subjunctive’. But what Romance speakers almost never do is to favour and protect that alignment by keeping the alternant in all and only the present subjunctive cells of the paradigm. In cases of analogical change, on the one hand the 1sg (and 3pl) present indicative almost always also participate in modifications affecting the present subjunctive, and on the other the alignment is frequently ‘broken’ by the elimination of the alternant from the 1pl and 2pl present subjunctive. I shall show that we are dealing rather with ‘autonomously morphological’ structures, which can actually override ‘common sense’ expectations that speakers should favour transparent relations between morphological form and grammatical meaning. What counts for speakers, I shall claim, is above all simply the predictability of alternation patterns within inflectional paradigms, whose basis may often be recurrent, but autonomously morphological, patterns.
Abstract
A major morphological innovation in the Latin-Romance transition was the appearance of alternations in the root of the verb. This study examines the complex morphological evolution of the alternants which arose from proto-Romance palatalization and became characteristic of the present subjunctive together with the first person singular (and in some places also the third person plural) present indicative. I offer a brief historical-comparative sketch of these phenomena, and focus on an initially paradoxical situation. The alternant is predominantly aligned with the category ‘present subjunctive’. But what Romance speakers almost never do is to favour and protect that alignment by keeping the alternant in all and only the present subjunctive cells of the paradigm. In cases of analogical change, on the one hand the 1sg (and 3pl) present indicative almost always also participate in modifications affecting the present subjunctive, and on the other the alignment is frequently ‘broken’ by the elimination of the alternant from the 1pl and 2pl present subjunctive. I shall show that we are dealing rather with ‘autonomously morphological’ structures, which can actually override ‘common sense’ expectations that speakers should favour transparent relations between morphological form and grammatical meaning. What counts for speakers, I shall claim, is above all simply the predictability of alternation patterns within inflectional paradigms, whose basis may often be recurrent, but autonomously morphological, patterns.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Morphological theories, the Autonomy of Morphology, and Romance data 1
- A paradox? 27
- Verb morphology gone astray 55
- The Friulian subject clitics 83
- Romance clitic pronouns in lexical paradigms 119
- Hiatus resolution between function and lexical words in French and Italian 141
- Occitan plurals 179
- Partial or complete lack of plural agreement 201
- Noun inflectional classes in Maceratese 231
- Participles and nominal aspect 271
- Modifying suffixes in Italian and the Autonomy of Morphology 295
- SE -verbs, SE -forms or SE -constructions? SE and its transitional stages between morphology and syntax 319
- The lexicalist hypothesis and the semantics of event nominalization suffixes 347
- Italian brand names – morphological categorisation and the Autonomy of Morphology 369
- Author index 385
- Index of subjects and languages 389
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Morphological theories, the Autonomy of Morphology, and Romance data 1
- A paradox? 27
- Verb morphology gone astray 55
- The Friulian subject clitics 83
- Romance clitic pronouns in lexical paradigms 119
- Hiatus resolution between function and lexical words in French and Italian 141
- Occitan plurals 179
- Partial or complete lack of plural agreement 201
- Noun inflectional classes in Maceratese 231
- Participles and nominal aspect 271
- Modifying suffixes in Italian and the Autonomy of Morphology 295
- SE -verbs, SE -forms or SE -constructions? SE and its transitional stages between morphology and syntax 319
- The lexicalist hypothesis and the semantics of event nominalization suffixes 347
- Italian brand names – morphological categorisation and the Autonomy of Morphology 369
- Author index 385
- Index of subjects and languages 389
