BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Why heteroclisis? Phonological change and morphomic continuity in 
 Romanian - Martin Maiden (Oxford) (invited)
DTSTART:20080319T115000Z
DTEND:20080319T125000Z
UID:TALK10145@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Anne Breitbarth
DESCRIPTION:The phenomenon of ‘heteroclisis’ (membership of some lexem
 e in more than one inflectional class) has recently begun to attract atten
 tion in morphological theory (see especially Stump in Language 2006). What
  has scarcely been explored at all is how heteroclisis originates historic
 ally. There are probably multiple answers to this question\, but this pape
 r identifies at least one of them by focusing particularly on dialects of 
 south-western Romania\, where a small number of originally third conjugati
 on verbs have acquired first conjugation morphology\, but only in parts of
  the paradigm. Two major factors are found to be at work: one is homonymy 
 avoidance in inflectional desinences (of a kind invoked by Carstairs-McCar
 thy’s No Blur Principle)\, and specifically avoidance of inflectional ho
 monymy brought about by sound change\; the other is the role of ancient an
 d pervasive ‘morphomic’ (autonomously morphological) structures in the
  Romanian (and generally in the Romance) verb\, which reveal a striking ca
 pacity to block the intraparadignatic spread of conjugational innovations\
 , giving rise to heteroclisis. Some other examples of\nmorphomically motiv
 ated heteroclisis may also be adduced if time permits.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR