Ordering 2nd and 3rd conjugation verbs in Spanish through the imperfective

Stem Storage? Not Proven: A Reply to Bermúdez-Otero 2013

The theme vowels of Latin verbs

Stem processing is an essential phase in word recognition. Most modern Romance languages, such as Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, have three theme vowels that define verbal classes and stem formation. However, French verbal classes are not traditionally described in terms of theme vowels. In this work, stem formation from theme vowel and allomorphic processes was investigated in French verbs. Our aim was to define the verbal stem formation structure processed during mental lexicon access in French. We conducted a cross-modal experiment and a masked priming experiment on different French stem formation processes from the first and third classes. We compared morphology-related priming effects to full priming obtained through identity priming, as well as to no priming obtained through a control condition. Stems from the first and third classes with a theme vowel presented full priming, whereas stems from the third class with allomorphy presented partial priming in both experiments. Our results suggest root-based stem formation for French. Verbs are recognized through word decomposition into stem and inflectional suffixes, and stem processing is based on root, theme vowel, and allomorphic processes. These results support a single-mechanism model with full decomposition and pre-lexical access defined by morphological rules.

Spanish has three verb classes, identified by three different theme vowels: -a, e, and -i. The verbs show three different types of paradigm levelling, whereby verb class distinctions are neutralised, either in whole or in part. These three types of levelling interact in a nontrivial manner with patterns of root allomorphy. I analyse both the levellings and the correlations with root allomorphy in terms of the nanosyntactic root size paradigm, which assumes that differences in the size of root are responsible for the choice of the theme vowel. The levellings will be shown to follow from possible variations in root size of verbs internal to a single verb class, causing roots to `shrink', and become the same size as the roots of another verb class. As a result, they behave like the verbs of that other class, giving rise to the levelling phenomenon.

In this article we investigate the historical development of the regular weak verb in Mooring, the most vital Mainland North Frisian dialect. We show that until the first half of the 20th century Mooring still distinguished between the two weak conjugation classes inherited from Old Frisian and typical for most Frisian dialects: Class I without and class II with a theme vowel -e- in the endings of the 2nd and 3rd Person Singular Present, the Past and the Past Participle. From the end of the 19th century onward, a process of deletion of schwa after sonorants gradually caused the fusion of class II weak verbs with a stem-final vowel or sonorant with class I weak verbs. After World War II this process came to its (near) completion and the former morphological division of the weak verbs in two conjugation classes was given up in favour of a phonological distribution of the endings on the basis of the stem-final segment: Endings with e appear after obstruents, endings without e after vowels and sonorants. Although modern grammars in principle recognized this new phonological conditioning of the weak conjugation, they failed to see that there remained a number of exceptions,viz. former class I weak verbs with a stem-final obstruent still taking an eless ending. That one is dealing with exceptions here is clearly shown, however, by the fact that these verbs gradually adapt to the phonological conditioning and assume endings with e in modern Mooring.

This paper offers a Distributed Morphology analysis of verbal theme vowels and primary verbal stem-forming morphology in Ancient Greek (AG). While verbal stem-forming morphemes are standardly analyzed as realizing Aspect in AG, I propose that both the inherited simple thematic and the athematic verbal stem-forming morphology of AG patterns as verbalizing morphology (v) according to a variety of diagnostics proposed in the literature, in particular idiosyncratic selectional properties of roots and the ability to form denominal and deadjectival verbs. Complex thematic suffixes moreover have the same distribution as simple thematic suffixes. These three classes of verbs (simple thematic, complex thematic, athematic) differ from synchronically denominal and deadjectival verbs, whose nominal stem-forming morphemes later became verbalizers in Modern Greek. This paper thus provides clear diagnostics for distinguishing between synchronically denominal, root-derived, and verbal-stem derived verbs in AG and morphologically similar languages. It also provides further evidence that verbal theme vowels occupy the same structural position and have broadly the same Aktionsart properties as other types of verbalizing morphology, contributing to the debate on the functional/semantic content of theme vowels in general.

This article compares the linguistic change produced during the twentieth century in ten features of verbal morphology in the north-eastern part of Catalonia, to the south of the Pyrenees. For the start of the twentieth century, we examine Alcover’s oral corpus (1906–1928) and, for the end of the century, we examine the data compiled from a field research project performed between 1999 and 2000. The features are classified into two spatial geographical types. The first comprises those performed more frequently in Roussillon (French Catalonia), and less frequently south of the state border: 1. Morph of the person-number = /i/ in the 1st person singular of the present indicative (e.g. canti ) in verbs of classes i, ii and iii; 2. Morph of mood-tense = /a/ (= [e]) in the 2nd person singular of the present indicative in verbs of classes II and III (e.g. dormes ); 3. Lack of thematic vowel in the infinitive and thematic vowel /í/ in the rest of the tenses (e.g. fúger ~ fugim ); 4. Lack of velar extension in the 1st person singular of the present indicative of the verb ‘ser’ (som); 5. Epithesis [e] to the infinitive of monosyllabic verbs (e.g. dire). The second comprises features found in an area corresponding roughly to the diocese of Girona, located south of the state border: 6. Addition of /z/ to the morph /m/ of the 1st person plural of the present indicative of the verb ser (and diffusion to other persons, tenses and verbs) (e.g. soms ); 7. Epithesis [k]/[t] in the 1st person singular of the present indicative (e.g. cantoc, cantot ); 8. Posterior epenthesis in the morph /./ of the infinitive (e.g. néix(e)re: /néʃr/ + [e] ); 9. End of the lexical root in non-etymological /b/ for verbs in the subgroup [-w] of the verbal subclass [II, +ext.] (e.g. crevies ); 10. Velar extension in the 1st and 2nd persons plural of the present indicative of verbs in the verbal subclass [II, +ext.] (e.g. creguem ). These two types of feature intersect in the diocese of Girona. This study focuses on the northern part of the Girona area. In general, we find differences in the behaviour of the two groups in terms of their linguistic development during the twentieth century. At the start of the twentieth century the overall level of production of type I features in each place was generally lower than that of type II features. In addition, the presence of alternative forms originally from central Catalan (variety located to the south of the diocese and which coincides to a large extent with standard Catalan) can be clearly seen in type I features. Over the twentieth century, the fall in the production of type I features considered as a whole is particularly notable. This is not the case, however, of type II features: the current data show that they are still quite widely used. The data suggest that the type to which the features belong — defined by their spread throughout the geographical area from the place where they are most used — may be responsible, at least in part, for the differences in their behaviour with regard to the linguistic change that occurred over the course of the twentieth century.

In this paper, I address the formation processes of Spanish diminutives focusing on the relationship between gender and thematic vowels, the materialization of the latter being often taken to hinge on phonological conditioning for their scarcely predictable behavior in the diminutive environment. The analysis made here is of morphosyntactic nature. I adopt the view that gender and thematic vowels are disjoint features, that is, they are introduced in the derivation at a postsyntactic stage. Then, I argue that diminutive suffixes have a highly underspecified root status. An explication is offered showing that the linear proximity of the disjoint features at the moment of Vocabulary Insertion and their belonging to the same word-internal cyclic domain determine the eventual spell-out of thematic vowels.

Every Serbo-Croatian verb form consists of the constituents listed in Table l. While prefixes are optional, every verb form has a stem and at least one inflectional element. The stem consists of at least a root. Every verb paradigm has a thematic vowel in some or all of its forms, though some forms of some paradigms are without this. The remaining stem constituents are optional. The constituents always occur in the order given in Table 1.

This paper deals with the phenomenon of V-to-T movement, which is one of the major parameters differentiating Romance from the majority of modern Germanic languages, and it defends the idea that rich morphology is the cause or trigger of V-to-T: in Romance, in a modern Germanic language like Icelandic, and very particularly in Old English, the precursor of the modern English language. More generally, the discussion endorses the idea that all Germanic languages used to be V-to-T languages in their old periods. I begin by arguing that verbal forms in Spanish contain a specific kind of segment, namely the stem or thematic vowel, which gives rise to morphological variations or asymmetries across tenses in the language. Such a productive system of stem verb classes is also shown to be the case in Icelandic, though not in German (which is therefore rendered as non-V-to-T), and ultimately it is acknowledged for a language like OE. The hypothesis is that the syntactic computation of (OE) verbal forms demands it that the speaker first identifies the verb class that the form in question belongs to before tackling the processing of tense morphology and agreement morphology. In pure syntactic terms, the stem or thematic vowel segment is identified in the present account with a v-feature that T must value, which valuation is realised by means of the displacement of the verb to the T head, that is, by means of V-to-T movement. After the valuation of T’s v-feature comes the valuation of τ-features and φ-features, respectively.

On representations in morphology case, agreement and inversion in Georgian

In Czech as in Russian and the other Slavic languages the verb differs from other inflected categories in that its inflectional patterns are highly dependent upon the derivational structure of the verb stem. By contrast, the theme vowel which marked the various substantival declensions at some early stage of Proto-Slavic merged with either the declensional endings or the stem, so Slavic nouns are composed of only a single stem (containing all derivational affixes) and the inflectional endings. In the verbs, however, although certain derivational affixes are incorporated into the leftmost portion of the stem, for each verb there is a single derivational suffix (which may be zero) occurring between the left-hand portion of the stem and the ending. Since differences between these derivational suffixes may be used to represent differences in the inflectional patterns of the verbs, we may follow Isa'enko in calling this suffix a verbal classifier. When the verbal classifier is zero, we will term the verb NONSUFFIXED; when it is not zero, we will term it SUFFIXED. A classification which does not distinguish between suffixed and nonsuffixed verbs is still used in the Czech handbooks, where verbs are traditionally divided into five groups on the basis of the 3rd sg. form, e.g., (1) nese, (2) tiskne, (3) kryje, (4) prosi, (5) de'ld.1 Note that classes 1-3 correspond to the -et verbs of Russian and class 4 to the -it verbs, while Russian does not have verbs corresponding to those with contracted endings (class 5). In the classification which follows, this traditional ordering of verb classes is changed. This is to capture certain regularities and productive tendencies operating within contemporary standard Czech. Furthermore, we indicate places in the system which are at present subject to phonological or morphological analogy. These, incidentally, are the places where the student may hear so-called colloquial or even substandard forms. It might be helpful to begin with some phonological rules in Czech which have contributed to differences between Czech and Russian verbal types, specifically vowel contraction and so-called pfehlaska (the shift of a and u to 6 and i after palatal consonants). Note for example the homophonous -dt of the following Czech infinitives (3rd sg. form in parentheses)

This paper compared the Park Seung-bin(1931) and the Eogiseol, which are currently used in the Korean language education society in Japan. For this purpose, we first investigated what is the Eogiseol and examined the formation process of it. In Eogiseol, Eogi is a combination of basic forms such as ‘먹’, ‘작’ and ‘-으-’ or ‘-아/어-’ which are thematic vowel, And three Eogie types are depending on the types of endings, and Eogies change their forms but endings are fixed. This shows the opposite perspective from the general conjugation theory that the stem does not change, but the ending changes. The formation process of Eogiseol generally shows the flow of ‘前間恭作→河野六郞→菅野裕臣→浜之上幸’, and it can be seen that the results obtained from the study of medieval Korean are applied to modern Korean. The similarities between the Eogiseol and Park Seung-bin(1931) are discussed in terms of similarities of phonetic realization of ‘먹으’+‘니’ of the Second-Eogi-type and ‘머그’+‘니’ of Park Seung-bin(1931), ‘먹어’+‘서’ of the Third-Eogi-type and ‘머거’+‘서’ of Park Seung-bin(1931), but if we look a little deeper, we can know that the way of spelling is different like ‘먹’ and ‘머그’, the basic type setting is different as ‘먹’ and ‘머그’, and the area of the stem is also different because it is up to ‘먹’ while ‘머’ is different. In addition, supporters of Eogisol argue advantages of the use of Eogisol in the Japanese Korean language education society in that Eogisol does not give learners much concern and can derive the conjugation type quickly and accurately in that it memorizes the form of Eogi according to the type of endings, but the theory of conjugation based on the premise that ‘-으-’ and ‘-아/어-’ belong to the stem can lead to a shift away from the essence of the conjugation of Korean verbs and adjectives that the stem does not change and the ending changes, so deeper consideration of the consistency of the theory is needed.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE SUFFIXES OF DENOMINAL VERBS AND THE INFLECTION CLASSES OF THEIR BASE NOUNS IN MODERN LITHUANIAN Summary It is well known that Lithuanian verbal suffixes - ėti , - y-ti , -o-ti , and -uo-ti are historically related to nominal stems ē , ī , ā , and o respectively. At an earlier stage, the suffix * -eo was added to nominal stems and this addition simply transferred them to the class of verbs without any predictable derivational meaning (cf. Meillet 1937, 219). Later on, the former theme vowels were reanalyzed as verbal (neo-)suffixes, but the relation to certain nominal stems (= inflection classes) still remained to some extent (Skardžius 1943, 488, 493, 504, 509, 521, 534f.; Stang 1966, 360, 364, 366), cf. historically regular seil--ti ‘slobber, slaver’ (← seilės ‘saliva’), vag-oti ‘furrow’ (← vaga ‘furrow’), ak-ýti ‘get holes, become porous’ (← aks ‘eye’), žaibuoti ‘flash (of lightning)’ (← žabas ‘lightning’) alongside (historically) nonregular kand--ti ‘be destroyed by moths’ (← kands ‘moth’), seili-oti ‘slaver’ (← seilės ‘saliva’), dm-y-ti ‘emit smoke’ (← dmai ‘smoke’), etc. In this paper, all synchronically derivationally transparent denominal verbs with - ėti , -y-ti , -o-ti , and -uo-ti found in the dictionary of Modern Lithuanian (DŽ6e) were analyzed and qualified in respect of the relation between the suffix and its historically correlated nominal stem. It is clear that in Modern Lithuanian the distinction can be made between the suffixes with (а) weak ( -ėti , -y-ti ) and (b) strong ( -(i)o-ti , -(i)uo-ti ) relation to the corresponding noun inflection classes -ė , -i- , -(i)o- , and -(i)a- . In the case of group (a), the nouns of historically predictable inflection classes constitute ca. 20–30% of the bases, while in the case of group (b), these classes take up ca. 70% (cf. Tables 1–4). The denominal formations in -ėti (especially the ones which are not based on inflection class ė ) have an easily predictable inchoative meaning, but this has to be an extension of use of inchoative deadjectival -ėti (< * -eh1- ) rather than “semantization” of nominal thematic suffix -ė . In the case of other suffixes, some meanings such as factitive are quite frequent, but they cannot be qualified as specialized and predictable.

This paper focuses on the e/i theme vowel class of verbs in Slovenian to bring together two seemingly unrelated debates: (i) the debate on the correlation between theme vowel classes with certain argument structures and (ii) the debate on the status of derivational affixes within the framework of Distributed Morphology. Our core data come from a list of 108 unaccusative verbs obtained using the adjectival active l-participles as an unaccusativity diagnostic. We show that (i) no unaccusative verbs belong to the two largest theme vowel classes in Slovenian (a/a and i/i), whereas (ii) the two big theme vowel classes tend to get accusative arguments quite frequently. Most importantly, (iii) the e/i-class stands out since more than one half of the unaccusative sample falls into it. The e/i-class is furthermore exceptional in that its theme vowel surfaces in adjectival l-participles, it is the theme vowel class to which inchoatives in inchoative-causative pairs belong and it behaves uniformly with respect to stress. Based on this behavior which sets the e/i-class apart from other theme vowel-classes, we argue that the morpheme e/i is better analyzed as a derivational affix. We further argue, following Lowenstamm (2014), that derivational affixes are transitive roots rather than categorizers and propose detailed PF and LF instructions for the root under consideration.