Article published In:
DiachronicaVol. 30:4 (2013) ► pp.492–530
The Latin ‘third stem’ and its Romance descendants
The ‘third stem’ in the Latin verb provides one of Aronoff’s best-known illustrations of the notion of ‘morphome’: unpredictably variable in form, it is also consistently associated with an abstract and heterogeneous pattern of distribution. My perspective is diachronic, exploring the history of the third stem as it continues into Romance (especially Romanian). My findings support the ‘psychological reality’ of the morphome for successive generations of speakers, but suggest also that unity of lexical meaning is of central importance in the diachronic persistence of morphomes in general, such persistence finding an explanation, perhaps surprisingly, in universal principles of form-meaning iconicity.
Cited by (21)
Cited by 21 other publications
Beckwith, Joseph Finnegan
2024. Assessing coherence in the Spanish PYTA morphome. Probus 
Cappellaro, Chiara, Nina Dumrukcic, Isabella Fritz, Francesca Franzon & Martin Maiden
2024. The cognitive reality of morphomes. Evidence from Italian. Morphology 34:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
Round, Erich, Louise Esher & Sacha Beniamine
2024. The natural stability of autonomous morphology: how an attraction–repulsion dynamic emerges from paradigm cell filling. Morphology
Herce, Borja
2023. Morphological autonomy and the long-term vitality of morphomes: stem-final consonant loss in Romance verbs and paradigmatic analogy. Morphology 33:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Kodner, Jordan
2023. What learning Latin verbal morphology tells us about morphological theory. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 41:2 ► pp. 733 ff.
Pellegrini, Matteo
2023. Predictability and Paradigm Organization in Latin Verb Inflection. In Paradigm Structure and Predictability in Latin Inflection [Studies in Morphology, 6], ► pp. 69 ff.
Pellegrini, Matteo
2023. The Theoretical Framework. In Paradigm Structure and Predictability in Latin Inflection [Studies in Morphology, 6], ► pp. 1 ff.
SIMS-WILLIAMS, HELEN
2022. Token frequency as a determinant of morphological change. Journal of Linguistics 58:3 ► pp. 571 ff.
Sims‐Williams, Helen
2016. Analogical Levelling and Optimisation: The Treatment of Pointless Lexical Allomorphy in Greek. Transactions of the Philological Society 114:3 ► pp. 315 ff.
Maiden, Martin
2021. The Morphome. Annual Review of Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2014. Review of Cruschina, Maiden & Smith (2013): The Boundaries of Pure Morphology: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives. Studies in Language 38:4 ► pp. 995 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2014. Reinforcement in inflection classes: Two cues may be better than one. Word Structure 7:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2019. Thoughts on morphomes, on a Scandinavian background. In Morphological Variation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 207], ► pp. 159 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2019. In defence of morphomic analyses. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 51:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2022. Type frequency is not the only factor that determines productivity, so the Tolerance Principle is not enough. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 144:2 ► pp. 161 ff.
Enger, Hans-Olav
2023. Meta-morphomic patterns in North Germanic. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 46:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Esher, Louise
2014. Autonomous morphology and extramorphological coherence. Morphology 24:4 ► pp. 325 ff.
Esher, Louise
2015. Morphomes and predictability in the history of Romance perfects. Diachronica 32:4 ► pp. 494 ff.
Esher, Louise
2016. Morphomic distribution of augments in varieties of Occitan. Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures 51:2 ► pp. 271 ff.
Esher, Louise
2021. Gallo-Romance imperfects betwixt multiple morphomic patterns. Word Structure 14:3 ► pp. 271 ff.
Esher, Louise
2022. Overlapping subjunctive forms in Gallo- and Ibero-Romance verb paradigms. Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures 57:1 ► pp. 86 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.