Theme-vowel class indeterminacy and root allomorphy in Slovenian

Abstract

Slovenian verbs have been analyzed as displaying non-local root allomorphy which gets triggered across the theme vowel (Božič 2016; 2019). We reevaluate the data (using a larger set of verbs) and reconsider the structure of the verb in Slovenian (focusing primarily on the position of the theme vowel). We show that root allomorphy in Slovenian only occurs in a very limited number of theme-vowel classes, making the inventory of theme-vowel classes crucial for the correct analysis of root allomorphy. We further show that an overwhelming majority of verbs with root allomorphy is ambiguous in that these verbs can be analyzed as belonging to different theme-vowel classes. We propose a way of resolving the ambiguity and present an analysis of root allomorphy in terms of phonologically conditioned allomorph selection. In the proposed model, which combines Distributed Morphology and Optimality Theory, a single Vocabulary Item with a complex phonological representation gets inserted and then phonological constraints select the final shape of the exponent (Kager 2008). We show that all root allomorphy is triggered locally and restricted to the phase in which the root gets spelled out.