High frequency as a morphomic coherence inhibitor: evidence from the evolution of some Catalan verbs
-
Manuel Badal
Abstract
During the Middle Ages, a new verb class was formed within the Catalan 2nd conjugation, characterized by the presence of a velar augment (/g/ or /sk/) in the L-pattern (first-person present indicative and present subjunctive) and PYTA (preterite, old conditional and imperfect subjunctive). In this paper, we study three verbs that avoided, totally or partially, the analogical velarization undergone by most 2nd conjugation verbs: haver ‘to have’, ser ‘to be’, and voler ‘to want’. Based on a corpus of Catalan works ranging from the 13th to the 19th century, we test the extent to which the L- and PYTA-patterns of these three verbs are psychologically real for speakers. The results confirm what some authors have already observed for other languages, pointing out that the high frequency of these specific verbs or the need for phonological congruence could inhibit the morphomic pattern or even block analogical levelling.
Note
This research, funded by the Ministerio de Universidades (MS21–121) and by the European Union (NextGenerationEU), is part of the project PID2020-113971GB-C21 (<https://stel.ub.edu/gevad>), funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033).Acknowledgment: I thank Professor Lluís de Yzaguirre for his help with the verb form extraction using a LATEL (Laboratori de Tecnologies Lingüístiques) application from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. I am also grateful for the comments and suggestions of Éva Buchi, Jesús Jiménez, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Manuel Pérez Saldanya and Clàudia Pons-Moll.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Linguistic change in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a corpus linguistic comparison of language contact phenomena in Romance languages
- The French linguistic varieties of Gypsies and Travellers: an original diastratic variation perspective
- Koineización en el occitano de Navarra y Aragón
- The preterite of Spanish andar: An “unbiased” history of non-standard vs. standard forms
- Marcación media en español: afección, control y sujetos no canónicos
- Principales rasgos gramaticales del español de Costa Rica
- High frequency as a morphomic coherence inhibitor: evidence from the evolution of some Catalan verbs
- Due testimoni parziali delle Historiae adversus paganos di Paolo Orosio secondo il volgarizzamento di Bono Giamboni
- Miszellen
- Une ancienne dénomination du puits absorbant figée dans la microtoponymie de la Haute-Saône : les Anduits (Lavigney, Malvillers et Melin)
- Dt. Proviant: ein Pseudo-Italianismus
- Nachruf
- Johannes Kramer(25. Oktober 1946–19. Dezember 2023)
- Besprechungen
- Michael Schreiber, Kontrastive Linguistik. Französisch – Italienisch – Spanisch – Deutsch. Eine Einführung (Grundlagen der Romanistik, 32), Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2023, 193 S.
- Feliu, Francesc (ed.), Desired language. Languages as objects of national ideology, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, Benjamins, 2023, VI + 294 p.
- Alain Corbellari, Oton de Grandson (Histoire littéraire de la France 47), Leuven, Peeters, 2021, 214 p.
- Nouveau glossaire nautique d’Augustin Jal . Dictionnaire des termes de la marine à voile. Révision de l’édition de 1848, 2 vol., Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2022, I-CII + 1–1162 + 1163–2343 S.
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