The intricate inflectional relationships underpinning morphological analogy

Abstract

In Gévaudan varieties of Occitan (Gallo-Romance), exceptionless syncretism between preterite and imperfect subjunctive forms arises in the first and second person plural (e.g. faguessiám [faɡeˈsjɔn] ‘do.pret/ipf.sbjv.1pl’, faguessiatz [faɡeˈsjat] ‘do.pret/ipf.sbjv.2pl’). Reconstructing the historical emergence of this syncretism pattern reveals that it is crucially dependent on multiple and diverse implicational relationships of form, inferred and productively exploited by speakers: in particular, inherited identity between preterite and imperfect subjunctive stems, and identity between imperfect indicative forms of èstre [ɛsˈtʀe] ‘be’ and preterite or imperfect subjunctive desinences. The observed developments support a view of inflectional analogies as informed by intricate paradigmatic and implicational structure of the type proposed within ‘abstractive’, word-based theories of inflection.