A morphophonological analysis of the velar insert in Italian verbs

Nicola Lampitelli (1)

1 LLL - Laboratoire Ligérien de Linguistique

This paper analyzes a particular group of Italian irregular verbs that are characterized by the insertion of [g] between the root and the inflectional markers. Despite the apparent unetymological status of such a velar insert (Rohlfs 1968), it is shown that the allomorphy of the root depends on the internal organization of the segmental material with respect to a fixed template made of a strict alternation of onsets (C) and nuclei (V). The analyses are couched within the CVCV framework (Lowenstamm 1996; Scheer 2004) and are consistent with a syntactic approach to word-formation such as Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993; Embick 2010).

Mots clés: Romance velar insert; Italian verbs; root allomorphy; template; phonological government

Domaines: Linguistique

Nicola Lampitelli. A morphophonological analysis of the velar insert in Italian verbs. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics (2016-2021), 2017, 2, pp.47. ⟨10.5334/gjgl.234⟩. ⟨halshs-01523279⟩