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The intricate inflectional relationships underpinning morphological analogy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2022

LOUISE ESHER Open the ORCID record for LOUISE ESHER [Opens in a new window]
LOUISE ESHER*
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR 8135) Llacan: Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94801 Villejuif, louise.esher@cnrs.fr
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Abstract

In Gévaudan varieties of Occitan (Gallo-Romance), exceptionless syncretism between preterite and imperfect subjunctive forms arises in the first and second person plural (e.g. faguessiám [faɡeˈsjɔn] ‘do.pret/ipf.sbjv.1pl’, faguessiatz [faɡeˈsjat] ‘do.pret/ipf.sbjv.2pl’). Reconstructing the historical emergence of this syncretism pattern reveals that it is crucially dependent on multiple and diverse implicational relationships of form, inferred and productively exploited by speakers: in particular, inherited identity between preterite and imperfect subjunctive stems, and identity between imperfect indicative forms of èstre [ɛsˈtʀe] ‘be’ and preterite or imperfect subjunctive desinences. The observed developments support a view of inflectional analogies as informed by intricate paradigmatic and implicational structure of the type proposed within ‘abstractive’, word-based theories of inflection.

Keywords

abstractive morphologyanalogyimplicational relationshipsinflectional paradigmsOccitanRomancesyncretism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 285 - 323
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Versions of this study were presented, and received constructive discussion, at the workshop ‘Analogical Patterns in Inflectional Morphology’ (Berlin/online, 14 April 2022) on the invitation of Sascha Gaglia, and at the Romance Linguistics Seminar (Oxford, 28 April 2022) on the invitation of Martin Maiden. Erich Round gave invaluable advice on an early draft, and Xavier Bach on a later draft. The recommendations of three anonymous JL reviewers increased the precision, efficacy, and accessibility of the paper and its argument. Any remaining errors are the responsibility of the author alone.

The final version was prepared during a Visiting Fellowship at Trinity College, University of Oxford, supported by a grant from the CNRS Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales under the scheme ‘Soutien à la mobilité internationale 2022’.

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