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Article published In:
Extending the notion of near-synonymy: Studies in morphological, syntactic and pragmatic equivalence
Edited by Renata Enghels
[Languages in Contrast 18:1] 2018
► pp. 6–34

Near-synonymy in morphological structures

Why Catalans can abolish constitutions but Portuguese and Spanish speakers can’t

| University of Sheffield

This article examines the concept of defectivity in the verbal system of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. Building on previous studies on defective verbs in Spanish and Portuguese I investigate why there are no such defective verbs in Catalan. I conclude that the structure of the verbal paradigm in Catalan non-first conjugation verbs is radically different from that of the other languages; Catalan verbs constitute paradigms which correspond to regular patterns of inflection whereas Spanish and Portuguese display non-predictable types of root allomorphy which require all non-first conjugation verbs to have a memorised form for the rhizotonic forms of the verb. Theoretically, this type of defectivity poses problems for models of inflectional morphology and suggests that the patterns of frequent verbs can become general rules for all verbs of a particular conjugation.

Keywords: defectiveness, defectivity, morphomes, paradigms, Catalan/Portuguese/Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What are defective verbs?
  • 3.The defective verbs of Portuguese and Spanish
  • 4.Explanations for defectiveness
  • 5.My proposal
    • 5.1Allomorphy in Portuguese and Spanish
    • 5.2Abstractive models of morphology
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00002.one
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