French verbal inflection revisited: Constraints, repairs and floating consonants

Abstract

This article updates Paradis and El Fenne (1991, 1992). The C/0 alternation (including the Ṽ/VN one) in French verbal inflection (e.g. dort [dor]/ dorment [dorm] ‘to sleep’ 3sg. and 3pl. Present Indicative), which occurs in 588 regular (non-suppletive and non-defective) verbs, is explained and related naturally to the C/0 alternation found in many other morphological and syntactic environments. More specifically, we maintain that the notion of ‘floating consonant’ (i.e. a consonant without a timing slot) along with two principles, the No Empty Onset Principle and the Licensing Principle, used in the framework of the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (cf. Paradis, 1988a,b), suffices to handle the C/0 alternation in verbal inflection and elsewhere. Not only does the system we propose result in a considerable simplification of French verbal inflection (it gets rid of numerous thematic segments and ad hoc - when not contradictory - context rules), it makes important new predictions concerning the selection of Infinitive suffixes in relation to the nature of a stem-final consonant (floating/non-floating). We show that these predictions are confirmed by the results of production tests, administered by El Fenne (1994), which clearly indicate that the floating consonant system we propose reflects the competence of French speakers.