Assessing coherence in the Spanish PYTA morphome

Abstract

This study explores the concept of morphomic coherence in Spanish PYTA (perfectos y tiempos afines, ‘perfects and related tenses’) verb forms and the notion of the morphome diachronically. The Spanish PYTA form comes from the Latin perfectum, and comprises the preterit, imperfect subjunctives, and future subjunctive. PYTA is marked by a loss of perfective function, and semantic cohesion, causing some to propose that it is morphomic in nature, or, purely morphological with no syntactic or semantic justification. One argument used in support of the notion of the morphome is the concept of “coherence” suggesting that diachronic changes affect all members of the morphome simultaneously. However, analyzing corpus data from the 13-17th century unveils uneven temporal development and inconsistent coherence within speakers. This questions the notion of coherence and provides insights into diachronic shifts in verb morphology. Such corpus results raise questions whether native speakers abstract morphomic patterns over time.