Inflectional uniformity in the present subjunctive in the dialects of central Friuli

In the evolution of the Latin verb system into (Italo-)Romance varieties, affixal allomorphy based on inflectional classes (‘conjugations’) has normally been preserved (Maiden 2011). Yet the present subjunctive pattern looks exceptional: in this case, the original allomorphy has typically been neutralized, giving way to unprecedented, uniform patterns. A careful examination of data from the dialects of Friuli suggests that the inflectional changes leading to uniformity are due not to a propensity to destroy allomorphy, but to the fact that conjugational allomorphs are subject to some formal and distributional constraints, which, in this case, have been violated. These constraints crucially presuppose that inflectional affixes are signs that, under the right circumstances, can have ‘inflectional class’ as part of their content (Carstairs-McCarthy 1994).