Vowel length in Friulian verbs: a case of mora affixation

Abstract

This paper deals with vowel length in Friulian, and shows that this is sometimes phonologically predictable and sometimes an instance of mora affixation in conjugation 1 verbs. Building on newly collected data on verbal morphology, we make the hypothesis that the Theme morpheme in conjugation 1 verbs in the dialect of Negrons has distinct allomorphs, among which a mora. This analysis of morphological length in Negrons Friulian shows that there is no need for a morphome-based analysis of the data. In our analysis, each morph, including length, spells out a morphosyntactic property.

Inflectional classes in Kipsigis

“…30 A somewhat similar claim has also been made for Sinhala; Letterman (1997) argues that the language has two conjugation classes, where one class is marked by a theme vowel, while the other has an empty slot that is filled by epenthetic material. Finally, Lampitelli et al (2021) argue that the thematic element of the first conjugation class in the Negrons dialect of Friulian has a moraic affix allomorph. These languages are unrelated, and it is probably not a coincidence that all of them feature a moraic morpheme with effects resembling those of a conjugation class.…”