Thematic Vowel Research Articles

The status of verbal theme vowels in contemporary linguistic theorizing: some recent developments. An introduction.

Contemporary theoretical approaches to morphology have devoted considerable attention to verbal theme vowels, i.e., the issue of whether they can be shown to possess identifiable syntactic or semantic properties. The position that theme vowels are items without syntactic or semantic import has profound theoretical consequences, entailing the existence of an autonomous component of Grammar dedicated to Morphology (Aronoff 1994, Anderson 1992, Embick and Halle 2003). Approaches that dispense with a separate morphological module must assume that theme vowels do, in fact, have discernible semantic contributions (Jabłońska 2004, 2007). In this paper, we review the arguments from both sides in order to set the stage for and critically examine a series of new contributions published in this Special Collection. On balance, evidence of a link between theme vowels and particular meaning components (either aspect or argument structure) can be observed, though only in the form of (often very strong) tendencies, which figure most prominently in ‘minimal pairs’ of verbs differing only in their theme vowel. We highlight this observation and the methodological approaches that were employed to extract it (quantitative corpus or experimental studies) as the main contribution of this Special Collection and discuss the theoretical significance of this finding. Our position is that it cannot be taken as a falsification of the view that theme vowels are ‘pure morphology’, to the extent that it would require proof of a perfect correlation between theme vowels and a particular semantic property. At the same time, following Marantz (1997) we consider the possibility that categorial rules are not necessarily to be expected in structures involving only a root and a little v, highlighting an innovative approach in terms of markedness hierarchies where aspect/argument structure is only one factor determining theme vowel selection (Milosavljević and Arsenijević 2022) as a possible way of deriving non-categorial rules observed in other papers from a mix of morphosyntactic and phonological factors.

Theme-vowel minimal pairs show argument structure alternations

Abstract This paper investigates correlations between theme vowels and argument structure in Serbo-Croatian. Specifically, we focus on two different theme vowels, -i- and -ova-, isolating ‘minimal pairs’, that is cases where the same base combines with the two theme vowels to derive different verbs. Starting from two online corpora of Serbo-Croatian, we created a comprehensive list of -i-/-ova- minimal pairs. For all pairs in the list whose both members were attested at least 50 times in the corpora, we randomly selected 50 tokens per verb and annotated them for transitivity. A statistical comparison of -i- and -ova- verbs according to the proportions of transitive uses was carried out. The findings show that -i- verbs are much more likely to be used transitively than -ova- verbs. This finding corroborates the view that theme vowels are associated with argument structure properties and challenges the idea that they are universally ‘ornamental’ pieces of morphology without syntactic/semantic import. Based on these and supplementary (non-corpus) data, we claim that -i- derives transitives and unaccusatives, while -ova- derives unergatives. We propose a model couched in Distributed Morphology whereby these two theme vowels are treated as instantiations of different ‘flavors of v’.

Перцепцията на аористни форми с тематична гласна -а- вм. -о- (ново изследване)

This paper presents and analyses the results of a non-representative survey on the perception of aorist forms with an unstressed thematic vowel -a- instead of a thematic vowel -o-. My primary objective is to validate the hypothesis that the ability to identify errors of this nature in spoken language depends on the individual's perceptual style. The study encompasses diverse texts that vary in the level of concentration and attention exhibited by the listener. Four perceptual styles are employed: listening to a brief, coherent text; a simple sentence; a three-word list; and a single word. The analysis also evaluates the accuracy of the hypothesis concerning the relationship between respondents' sociodemographic characteristics and their success in identifying the error in aorist forms with an unstressed thematic vowel -a- instead of -o-.

Root-adjacent exponence in the Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin verbal systems

Proto-Indo-European verbal morphology is generally described as consisting of at least a “thematic” and an “athematic” conjugation, which differ in whether or not a fixed vocalic piece adjacent to the root (traditionally known as “thematic vowel”) is present. This paper investigates the behavior of the outcomes of the thematic vowels in three ancient Indo-European languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. We show that, on the one hand, Latin thematic vowels are typically “ornamental”, in that they lack any morpho-syntactico-semantic information, and are used exclusively for classification purposes; on the other hand, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek thematic vowels are fully functional, in that they expone (at least) aspectual information. We argue for a diachronic account of such differential treatment of thematicity across the three languages, whereby the original functionality of such pieces, albeit fully preserved in Sanskrit, was gradually lost over time, and finally gave rise to the Latin verbal ornamental system.

Latin verbal morphology and the diachronic development of its thematic and athematic constructions

Abstract This paper investigates the verbal morphology of Latin in terms of the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). In addition to providing a synchronic analysis of the verbal system of Latin, this paper discusses the development of the thematic vowel system and of athematic perfect forms in this language from their reconstructed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) antecedents and demonstrates the role of morpho-syntactic structure in constraining the historic analyses, and specifically the role that morpho-syntactic locality played in this historical development. It will be shown that despite radical changes in the exponence, the morpho-syntax and the semantics, of the verbal forms, the (local) structural relation between roots as the repositories of idiosyncratic morphological information and aspectual morphemes displaying special (irregular) exponents was consistently preserved across the millennia.

Conjugation II verbs: the diachronic and comparative aspects

The article proposes an approach to defining verbal conjugations which is based, in my opinion, on the essential features of this grammatical phenomenon. These include diachrony, the concept of two stems of the verb, and the material of foreign Slavic languages. Of all verbal lexemes, only verbs with the non-root thematic vowels -i-, -eand -а-(-ya-) before -t’ undergoing syncope in the stem of the present (future simple) tense but only in one class with each final belong to the second conjugation. From the diachronic perspective, all these verbs originated from the Proto- Slavic thematic *-ī stem verbs. I consider the verbs shave (brit’), endure (terpet’), twirl (vertet’), offend (obidet’), depend (zaviset’), hate (nenavidet’), see (videt’), look (smotret’), hear (slyshat’), breathe (dyshat’), hold (derzhat’) not as exceptions, but as ordinary verbs belonging to corresponding classes with unstressed vowel endings verified by stress. Each verb class of conjugation II has systemic correspondences in foreign Slavic languages. The study relies on comparative-typological, structural, and diachronic analysis.

The inflection of Latin masculine proper names inThe Old English Martyrology

AbstractThis paper focuses on the inflectional morphology of Latin masculine proper names in Old English. Most common Latin loans are perfectly integrated into the Old English system. Latin proper names, however, like late scholarly loans, show both Latin and Old English inflectional endings in an apparently chaotic distribution. By analysing a selection of 833 tokens fromThe Old English Martyrology, this paper shows that despite variation, a clear pattern resulting from a combination of the Latin and Old English systems can be detected. While the inflectional endings of one language dominate in some cases, e.g. Latin in the nominative and Old English in the dative, other inflections, e.g. the genitive thematic vowel + ‑s,result from a combination of both languages based on phonetic or spelling similarities. The result is a mixed paradigm predominantly modelled after Old Englisha-stem nouns.

일본 한국어 교육계의 어기설(語基說)과 朴勝彬(1931)의 용언 활용론에 대한 소고

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.

Ablaut and transitive softening in the Russian verb

Transitive softening in Russian is a type of consonant mutation resulting from an underlying [CjV] cluster. There exist two closed classes of verbs where it occurs in the present tense in the absence of a clear source for a glide: five verbs with the thematic suffix ‑o‑, which can be illustrated by the verb kolótʲ ‘to stab’, and some 100 verbs with the thematic suffix ‑a‑, which can be illustrated by the verb pisátʲ ‘to write’. To explain how [o] and [a] end up as glides, I propose that the vowels in question change into their front counterparts as a result of the same process as that responsible for the stem ablaut in the verb molótʲ ‘to grind’ (1sg: melʲú). I argue that the hypothesis that ablaut can apply to thematic vowels as well as to stems makes it possible to account for another Russian verb exhibiting an unexpected behavior in the present tense (revétʲ ‘to bellow’). Since the latter part of the argument introduces ablauts involving more than one feature, the remainder of the paper is dedicated to the discussion of how multiple feature changes should be formalized.

Passive vP is not phasal in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Legate (2003) argues, contra Chomsky 2001, that passive vP is a phase in English. In this paper, I present novel Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) data from (i) theme vowel quality, (ii) apparent non-local allomorphy and allosemy, and (iii) agreement to support the claim that passive vP is not phasal in this language. Comparing these findings with Legate’s, I show that those of her diagnostics that can be applied to BCS put BCS passive participles on a par with active verbs, patterning with the English data. This result, I argue, supports the view that Legate’s diagnostics may not be phasehood detectors at all and has consequences for our general understanding of phasehood.

Theme-vowel class indeterminacy and root allomorphy in Slovenian

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.

Phenomena in Romance verb paradigms: Syncretism, order of inflectional morphemes and thematic vowel

This article aims to propose a treatment of the internal morphological organization of words, based on the idea that morphology is part of syntactic computation. We disagree with Distributed Morphology model, whereby morphology is identified with a post-syntactic component conveying an information ‘separated from the original locus of that information in the phrase marker’ (Embick and Noyer 2001: 557) by rules manipulating syntactic nodes. We also consider inadequate the costly and complex syntactic structures that cartographic approach maps into inflectional strings. We pursue a different conceptualization assuming that morphology is governed by the same rules and principles of syntax. Sub-word elements, including inflections, thematic exponents and clitics, are fully interpretable and enter (pair-)merge operations (in the sense of Chomsky 2020a,b, 2021) according to their content, giving rise to complex words.

Output-conditioned and non-local allomorphy in Armenian theme vowels

AbstractCross-linguistically, it is difficult to tease apart allomorphy from readjustment rules. But regardless, both tend to respect locality and are sensitive to information that is present in the input, not the output. We document a counter-example to these tendencies from Western Armenian, and we discuss how the data falsifies such restrictive models of allomorphy. The Western Armenian theme vowel-i-changes to the theme vowel-e-due to two types of triggers. The first type of trigger is phonological: the change happens when the theme vowel is unstressed in the output. This is a type of allomorphy that is conditioned by output phonology. The second type of trigger is morphological: the change happens when the verb is in the past tense. The+Pastmorpheme can be either in the verb (adjacent to the theme vowel) or on a separate auxiliary in periphrasis. This amounts to a case of long-distance allomorphy that is conditioned across words, even in suspended affixation. For suspended affixation, I provide semantic and prosodic evidence that suspended affixation is created via base-generation and not via ellipsis. The inability to use ellipsis acts as additional evidence that the allomorphy is long-distance.

Does French have theme vowels?

Most Romance languages have reduced the Latin conjugation classes (CCs) maintaining only three main classes which are marked as general rule by different theme vowels (ThVs). The development in French, however, is different and has led to less transparent verbal forms and to a CC system that is not describable, at first glance, in terms of ThVs. In our contribution, we pursue the following questions: Does French have ThVs? And if so, which form do the French theme “vowels” – or maybe better, theme extensions – have? Can French verbs be segmented in more than two constituents? Based on a critical discussion of psycholinguistic evidence and embedded in the framework of Distributed Morphology, we show that, in French, regular verbs, verbs with morphophonologically predictable allomorphy and even idiosyncratic verbs are decomposed for lexical access. We argue for two thematic CCs (with the ThV [-ə-] for the 1st CC of the type aimer and [-is-] for the CC of the type finir), while the remaining CCs are athematic. Certain types of root allomorphy, e.g. the (non)appearance of root final consonants, depend, in essence, on whether or not there is a ThV-position available. We propose a feature hierarchy for French CCs, which additionally mirrors the fact that even athematic CCs can have ThVs in certain neutralization contexts, where the realization of the ThV is taken over from the CC of the type finir.

To <em>v</em> or not to <em>v</em> ? Theme vowels, verbalizers, and the structure of the Ancient Greek verb

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.

The derivatives of Barth's Law in the light of modern Arabic dialects

AbstractIn 1894, Jacob Barth proposed that the preformative conjugation in some of the Semitic languages goes back to a – generally bygone – inverse correlation between the thematic vowel of the stem and that of the conjugational prefix. Evidence for such a distribution is well attested in all branches of Central Semitic, yet it remains disputed whether it should be reconstructed for Proto-Semitic as well. This paper makes use of new data from a living Semitic variety, namely the Arabic dialect of Ḥugariyyah in the south of Yemen, where the pattern observed by Barth is still operative. We examine the interaction of the conjugational prefixes with the dialectal future tense marker š(a)-, and point to cases where the inverse correlation is violated. We outline a sequential development, starting with a phonetically-driven re-distribution of the preformative vowels, and followed by their reanalysis as integral to the prefix. We then propose that comparable developments may have taken place in other Semitic varieties, predominantly Akkadian, and thus view the Akkadian preformative conjugation as a derivative of a former inverse correlation, as reconstructed by Barth.

What differentiates Serbo-Croatian verbal theme vowels: content or markedness?

We examine two hypotheses regarding the role of theme vowels (ThVs) in Serbo- Croatian (SC): (i) that the various ThVs attested in SC are markedness-based realizations of the same syntactic feature specification, and (ii) that different ThVs carry different syntactic features. We focus on the two SC ThVs occurring with the highest number of bases: <a, a> and <i, i> (the ordered pair specifies the infinitive-stem and the present-tense-stem realization of the ThV). We show that if these ThVs are to be distinguished by feature specification, the best fitting analysis has <a, a> bearing only the categorial verbal feature, while <i, i> is additionally specified for the feature [SCALE], which contributes scalarity to the verbal predicate (Hay et al. 1999; Kennedy & Levin 2008). A corpus-based exploration shows that the stronger hypothesis (ii) encounters problems, the most obvious being that the regularities are only tendential, with a significant number of exceptions. If the ThVs carried different features, they would be expected to yield systematic patterns. We conclude that the weaker alternative (i) provides an empirically more accurate account and propose a specific model where at the interface with phonology, the aggregate degree of markedness of the context in which the ThV is realized is computed from a set of markedness hierarchies of the relevant phonological and semantic properties of that context (the latter mediated by the corresponding syntactic features). A mapping of the aggregate degree of markedness onto the morphological markedness hierarchy of ThVs determines the realization.

What 1sg forms tell us about Spanish theme vowels

This article argues in favour of a view of the Spanish Theme Vowel (ThV) as the direct spell out of an identifiable syntactic head, specifically Ramchand's (2018) Event head, responsible for tagging lexical verbs with world and time parameters. I will argue that several apparent cases of verbal irregularity related to the conjugation of 1sg forms can be related to each other, and can receive a principled explanation once one adopts this view of Spanish ThVs. An approach where ThVs are post-syntactic morphemes that idiosyncratically tag the functional structure of verbs, or where they are syntactically inert morphemes, can only treat these facts as accidental and cannot provide an account of their mutual interconnection.

A morphosyntactic approach to gender and thematic vowels in the formation of Spanish diminutives

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.

Root, Thematic Vowels and Inflectional Exponents in Verbs: A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis

A long-time generative tradition treats the functional domains of the verb and noun as a result of motion and affixing; however, assuming a close correspondence between the order in syntax and morphology, as in the Mirror Principle proposed by Baker seems to be too strong a hypothesis and empirically unsustainable. Distributed Morphology (DM) incorporates this idea by translating it into rules manipulating syntactic nodes. The morphological phenomena we will investigate essentially concerns the thematic vowel (TV) and its interaction with agreement morphology. A complex micro-variation emerges, which provides us with a test bench in order to account for the word-internal morphological organization. We question the idea that morphology is an auxiliary and expensive post-syntactic component, DM, that conveys information separated from its original locus as assumed by Embick and Noyer. On the contrary, we think that a more adequate account is reached assuming that the morphology is governed by the same computational rules as the syntax, where the operation Merge combines fully interpretable sub-word elements forming complex inflected words.