Irregular Morphology and Athematic Verbs in Italo-Romance

Abstract

As discussed by Kiparsky (1968), historical changes in grammatical structures provide the best “window” on the actual composition of these structure in so far as we expect that the components of the structures play a role in the changes. The morphological changes we observe in the historical development of the Perfect and past Participle forms in Italo-Romance are most adequately accounted when analyzed in terms of the following components: (i) Morphemes such as roots, thematic vowels, and Tense; (ii) Vocabulary Items, rules that add phonological material to morphemes; MP Rules, morphosyntactically conditioned phonological rules, These components are also crucial to account for the allomorphy of these forms synchronically. Both in the diachrony and in the synchrony of Italo-Romance we observe a correlation between presence vs. absence of regular morphology and presence vs. absence of thematic vowels. This correlation can be easily accounted for if the morphemes are organized in syntactic structures governed by locality principles.