Irregular Morphology and Athematic Verbs in Italo-Romance

Abstract

The article deals with irregularities in the morphological make-up of Italian verbal forms, focusing on perfect and past participle forms. It aims to account for root-based contextual allomorphy in the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993). Building upon the generalisation that morphological irregularities result whenever the thematic vowel is absent, the article provides a synchronic account and a diachronic analysis by means of a restricted set of morphophonological rules, thus challenging both the traditional view, according to which morphological irregularities follow from stress positioning, and paradigm-based accounts.

What Is Suppletion? On *Goedand onWentin Modern English

“…The fact that * goed is impossible both as a past tense form and as a past participle is a single fact . The verb go belongs to the class of English verbs that is incompatible with theme vowel ‐e‐ (in a way that is in part reminiscent of Calabrese on Italian). Put another way, go belongs to the class of English verbs that does not allow a theme vowel to be merged just above it.…”

“…As seen from these examples, Italian has three visibly different theme vowels. More directly relevant to English is a fact discussed in detail for Italian by Calabrese () (cf. also Dell on French), namely that in certain environments, with certain verbs, the theme vowel is not pronounced.…”

Verbal Suppletion in Romance Synchrony and Diachrony: The Perspective of Distributed Morphology

“…12) mentions that this pattern, Maiden's N‐pattern, seems to be quite ‘robust', in Romance. See also Calabrese (: fn. 12) for a further explanation in the sense of (un‐)markedness: ‘The issue, however, is accounting for the distribution of the allomorphs in the N‐pattern paradigms and for the fact that regular stem allomorphs occur in the first and second plural and the irregular ones in the other persons.…”

“… As for the confusing use of the notion ‘markedness', see also the following quote by Calabrese (: 88): ‘It is to notice that the alternations we observe in the [Italian] perfect forms are part of one of the most characteristic general patterns governing Italo‐Romance verbal morphosyntax: the tendency to avoid idiosyncratic, “marked”, exponency in the 1pl and 2pl. Exponents in these two persons tend to be syncretic, to disappear (= be defective), or to display regular morphological behavior.…”

“… See also Maiden's morphomic patterns (e.g. Maiden ); also Calabrese (: fn. 12) mentions that this pattern, Maiden's N‐pattern, seems to be quite ‘robust', in Romance.…”