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Christoph Schwarze
35-49 (complete pdf)
This paper proposes a sketch of how /sk/, a Latin suffix of word formation, developed into an inflectional stem-extension in French. The reconstruction of the process rests upon the following assumptions: (1) morphological representations may differ from phonological surface representations; (2) inflectional classes are sets of properties and implications in the line of Wurzel (1984) and Dressler et al. (2003); (3) in addition to reanalysis and spreading, lexical storage is an important factor in morphological change. The author discusses Maiden's (2004) claim that /sk/ survived after the loss of its meaning because it was still a sign. He then presents a corpus-based study of the evolution of the i-conjugation from Old to Modern French. It shows that the combination of theme-vowel /i/ and stem-extension /s/ was already well established in Old French and then showed continuous lexical growth and remarkable stability.
Published in:
Selected Proceedings of the 6th Décembrettes: Morphology in Bordeaux
edited by Fabio Montermini, Gilles Boyé, and Jesse Tseng
Table of contents
ISBN 978-1-57473-433-1 library binding
vii+180 pages
publication date: 2009
published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA