Short vs long stem alternations in Romance verbal inflection: the S-morphome

Abstract

Some verbs in Romance (e.g. the reflexes of faciō 'do', dīcō 'say', habeō 'have', sapiō 'know', possum 'be able', and volō 'want') display alternations between a short (e.g. It. f-are, f-a, d-ire) and a long (e.g. It. fac-evo, dic-e, dic-evo) stem. This paper contains an exploration of the lexical and paradigmatic distribution of these stem alternations across Romance varieties to trace when they emerged, how, and why. The results suggest a comparatively early emergence as a result of the interaction between preexisting morphological predictability relations within the paradigm and an evolutionary preference for shorter forms in high-frequency word forms and lexemes.