A morphophonological analysis of the velar insert in Italian verbs

Abstract

This paper analyzes a particular group of Italian irregular verbs that are characterized by the insertion of [g] between the root and the inflectional markers. Despite the apparent unetymological status of such a velar insert (Rohlfs 1968), it is shown that the allomorphy of the root depends on the internal organization of the segmental material with respect to a fixed template made of a strict alternation of onsets (C) and nuclei (V). The analyses are couched within the CVCV framework (Lowenstamm 1996; Scheer 2004) and are consistent with a syntactic approach to word- formation such as Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993; Embick 2010).

This article is part of the special collection: Motivating Form in Morpho-Syntax

Keywords

Romance velar insert, Italian verbs, root allomorphy, template, phonological government

How to Cite

Lampitelli, N., (2017) “A morphophonological analysis of the velar insert in Italian verbs”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 47. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.234

Download

Download PDF

863

Views

561

Downloads

6

Citations

Share

Authors

Nicola Lampitelli (LLL UMR 7270/Université François Rabelais de Tours & CNRS 3, rue des Tanneurs, 37000 Tours)

Download

Issues

Publication details

Dates

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Identifiers

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • PDF: 37a6bb54da1fce4fe0875510801e1312