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SUMMARY:Romance theme vowels: not just ornamental morphemes\, but not synt
 actic elements either - Eva-Maria Remberger (University of Vienna) and Nat
 ascha Pomino (University of Wuppertal)
DTSTART:20221108T130000Z
DTEND:20221108T141500Z
UID:TALK185831@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Onkar Singh
DESCRIPTION:Theme vowels (ThV) are considered by many linguists (e.g. Oltr
 a-Massuet 1999) to be mere ornamental elements without any effect on synta
 x and semantics (see however Fábregas 2017). We agree with the idea that 
 ThVs are not to be confused with the realizations of the verbalizer v°\, 
 but we would like to show that they are not as ornamental as one may think
 . Work on the systematicity of stem allomorphy has shown that irregularity
  of inflected elements is related to a reduced number of affixes of these 
 forms (cf. Vanden Wyngaerd 2018). In Romance\, many irregular verbs lack a
  ThV\, i.e. they are athematic. Thus\, it seems as if ThVs have an impact 
 on the (ir)regularity of verbal forms (Calabrese 2015). One central questi
 on is\, however\, how athematicity is implemented in the theoretical frame
 work\, in this case Distributed Morphology (DM\, see Halle & Marantz 1993)
 : Is athematicity explainable by zero exponence\, by fusion or by cumulati
 ve exponence? The aim of this talk is to investigate more in detail the co
 nnection between irregularity and athematicity and to argue for an approac
 h based on cumulative exponence.\nMost 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 developme
 nt in French\, however\, is different and has led to less transparent verb
 al forms and to a CC system that is not describable\, at first glance\, in
  terms of ThVs. In our talk\, we will show that the link between athematic
 ity and irregularity is attested also in other verbal forms in Romance and
 \, more important\, it holds also for French\, a language for which the as
 sumption of ThV is contradictorily discussed in the literature. We will di
 scuss the CC system of French and propose that it has two thematic and sev
 eral athematic CCs. Certain types of root allomorphy\, e.g. the (non)appea
 rance of root final consonants\, depend\, in essence\, on whether or not t
 here is a ThV-position available (cf. also Schane 1966). As will be shown\
 , the athematic CCs are exactly the ones with the (most) irregular verbs\,
  in French as in other verbal forms in Romance.\nFollowing the DM-based Vo
 cabulary Insertion-Only model proposed by Haugen & Siddiqi (2016)\, we wil
 l propose\, for selected Romance verbal forms\, an analysis for the mentio
 ned link between athematicity and irregularity based on Spanning. Since th
 e exact conditions and rules for Spanning are still to be investigated\, w
 e contribute to the discussion of this issue by the analyses of verbal for
 ms in Romance. The core idea of the analysis proposed is that the spanning
  size of the vocabulary items (VIs) realizing the roots depends on the res
 pective CC-features and is motivated by the (a)thematicity of the roots. W
 hat is more\, our analysis is predominantly based on the general process o
 f Vocabulary Insertion to correctly derive the Romance forms. There is no 
 need for Fusion\, Pruning nor Impoverishment\; root allomorphy is instead 
 explained in essence via Vocabulary Insertion only.\n \nReferences\nCalabr
 ese\, Andrea. 2015. Irregular Morphology and Athematic verbs in Italo-Roma
 nce. Isogloss\, Special Issue on Italo-Romance morphosyntax: 69–102.\nOl
 tra Massuet\, I. 1999. On the constituent structure of Catalan verbs. MIT 
 Working Papers in Linguistics 33. 279–322.\nFábregas\, A. 2017. Theme v
 owels are verbs. In Caha / DeClercq & Vanden Wyngaerd (eds.)\, The unpubli
 shed manuscript. A collection of Lingbuzz papers to celebrate Michal Stark
 e’s 50th birthday. 51–62.\nHalle\, Morris\, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Di
 stributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. En Kenneth Hale\, and S
 amuel Keyser (eds.)\, The view of building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain 
 Bromberger\, 111–176. Cambridge\, Mass.: MIT Press.\nHaugen\, Jason D. &
  Daniel Siddiqi. 2016. “Towards a Restricted Realization Theory. Multimo
 rphemic monolistemicity\, portmanteaux\, and post-linearization spanning.
 ” In Morphological Metatheory. Edited by Daniel Siddiqi and Heidi Harley
 . Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins\, 343–86.\nVanden Wyngaerd\, Gui
 do. 2018. Suppletion and affix reduction. Accessed October 29\, 2021. http
 s://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/004095.\nSchane\, Sanford A. 1966. The morphopho
 nemics of the French verb. Language 42/4: 746–758.
LOCATION:Zoom
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