10.15160/1826-803X/127
Nel modello di analisi morfologica della Morphology by Itself, proposto  da Aronoff (1994), i paradigmi flessivi possono presentarsi internamente  organizzati in "classi di partizione", cioè insiemi di celle occupati  da forme flesse costruite a partire da una stessa base (stem), ma che  non condividono tratti sintattici. Nel verbo romanzo, una classe di  partizione molto frequente (denominata "N-pattern" da Maiden) è quella  che raggruppa le prime tre persone del singolare e la terza plurale del  presente indicativo, ma esclude prima e seconda plurale. Questa  partizione è evidente in molti verbi italiani, che presentano alternanze  tra forme dittongate e non (ad es. in sedere), tra forme con -isc- e  senza (ad es. in finire), o alternanze suppletive specifiche di singoli  verbi (uscire, udire, andare). Nel lavoro si sostiene che questa  partizione sottende anche l'organizzazione del presente indicativo dei  verbi regolari della prima coniugazione (come già sostenuto in forma  embrionale in Dressler - Thornton [1991]). La proposta, formulata dopo  una revisione delle analisi precedenti di Dressler - Thornton (1991) e  Pirrelli (2000), comprende una nuova analisi della costituzione delle  forme di prima e terza persona plurale.
application/pdf
1826-803X
127
it
Anna M. Thornton
Sezione di Lettere
<i>Is there a partition in the present indicative of Italian regular verbs?</i>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://annali.unife.it/lettere
Linguistica
2012-10-11
2012-10-11
2016-10-20
43-61
AOLF
Anna M. Thornton
2007
10.15160/1826-803X/127
43
1826-803X
it
61
<i>Is there a partition in the present indicative of Italian regular verbs?</i>
https://annali.unife.it/lettere/article/download/127/78
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere
Vol. 2 (2007) 43/61


                                              ANNA M. THORNTON

                Is there a partition in the present indicative of Italian regular verbs? *

        Introduction

        Models of morphological analysis inspired by the Morphology by itself framework of Aronoff
(1994) recognize the possibility that inflectional paradigms are internally organized in such a way
that they display partition classes.
        The term «partition class» has been proposed by Pirrelli – Battista (2000) to designate the set
of cells in a paradigm that contain inflected forms built on the basis of the same stem.
        Substantial evidence has been collected regarding partition classes in the Romance verbal
paradigms, and in Italian verbal paradigms in particular (see Dressler – Thornton [1991]; Maiden
[1992; 1995; 2003; 2004; 2005]; Pirrelli – Battista [2000]; Pirrelli [2000]).
        Martin Maiden (2004; 2005) has devised a clever system for labelling at least some of the
patterns that partition classes give rise to in Romance verb systems, by means of associating each
pattern with the name of a letter of the alphabet. Two of the classes he has baptized, the L pattern
and the U pattern, are shown in (1) and (2):

        (1)         The L-pattern

        Example: Portuguese tenho ‘I have’ (Maiden [2005, 147])

                   1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural            2nd plural      3rd plural

Present     tenho                    tens       tem             temos           tendes          têm
Indicative
Present     tenha                    tenha      tenha           tenhamos        tenhais         tenham
Subjunctive


        (2)         The U-pattern

        Example: Old Italian vaglio ‘I am worth’ (Maiden 2005, 147)

                   1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural            2nd plural      3rd plural

Present     vaglio                   vali       vale            valemo          valete          vagliono
Indicative
Present     vaglia                   vaglia     vaglia          vagliamo        vagliate        vagliano
Subjunctive

*
 Versions of this paper were presented at the 12th International Morphology Meeting (Budapest, May 2006) and at the
University of Ferrara (December 2006). I thank Laura Bafile, Michele Loporcaro and Martin Maiden for useful
discussion. None of them should be held responsible for the views expressed here.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                   A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 44/61




          As is probably obvious, and as Maiden (2005, 170, fn. 10) observes, «These labels are
(perhaps rather fancifully) suggested by the distribution of the relevant cells of the paradigm in
conventional paradigmatic distributions».
          A third basic partition, which Maiden (2004) calls «the N pattern», has the shape in (3). In
this pattern, the three singular forms and the third person plural form share a stem, which is
different from the one employed in first and second person plural forms:

          (3)       An Italian present indicative partition («the N pattern» of Maiden [2004])

          1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural              2nd plural     3rd plural

          stem 2            stem 2         stem 2         stem 1         stem 1         stem 2

          The etymology of the name of this partition is less obvious. Maiden (2004, 249, fn. 7)
explains it by observing that «If the paradigm is laid out in the appropriate way, the N-pattern forms
assume a shape somewhat reminiscent of an ‘N’ in Morse Code!». Indeed, in Morse Code the letter
N is signalled by a line followed by a dot.
          The N pattern is represented in Italian in a number of different kinds of verbs, such as verbs
which alternate a stem 2 containing a diphthong with a stem 1 containing only the corresponding
vowel, like      SEDERE     ‘to sit’ (4a), or verbs with lexeme-specific allomorphies, like      UDIRE   ‘to hear’
(4b) 1:

          (4) Present indicative of SEDERE ‘to sit’ UDIRE ‘to hear’ FINIRE ‘to finish’ and ANDARE ‘to go’

                   1st singular      2nd singular   3rd singular   1st plural     2nd plural   3rd plural
a. SEDERE          siedo             siedi          siede          sediamo        sedete       siedono
b. UDIRE           odo               odi            ode            udiamo         udite        odono
c. FINIRE          finisco           finisci        finisce        finiamo        finite       finiscono
                   /finisko/        /finiʃʃi/     /finiʃʃe/     /finjamo/     /finite/    /finiskono/
d. ANDARE          vado              vai            va             andiamo        andate       vanno

          The same pattern underlies more complicated partitions, which furtherly subdivide the areas
where a stem 2 appears, such as the ones displayed by verbs which have the -sk- infix, like                FINIRE

‘to end, to finish’ (4c), or the highly suppletive verb ANDARE ‘to go’ (4d).
          Other verbs present different partitions, like «the U pattern» of Maiden (2004), represented by
a verb such as CONOSCERE ‘to know’, whose present indicative is shown in (5):



1
 PIRRELLI – BATTISTA (2000, 326) label this pattern «The UDIRE schema», and observe that «This schema holds for 2
base verbs only, namely SEDERE ‘sit’ and UDIRE ‘hear’».
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                     A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 45/61


        (5)         Present indicative of CONOSCERE ‘to know’

                   1st singular      2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural        2nd plural     3rd plural
CONOSCERE          conosco           conosci        conosce      conosciamo conoscete           conoscono
                   /konosko/        /konoi/     /konoe/   /konoamo/ /konoete/      /konoskono/

        An open question, which will be addressed in the present paper, is the following: do regular
verbs display some kind of partition in the present indicative, or are their present indicative forms
all realized on the base of a single stem?


        Dressler – Thornton’s proposal

        Maiden (2005) seems to think that regular verbs (that is, in Italian, virtually all verbs in the
first conjugation) do not display the N pattern or any other of the patterns he has identified so far.
        On the contrary, in an early analysis, developed in the pre-Morphology by itself era, Dressler
– Thornton (1991) have maintained that in Italian even regular verbs display what is now called
«the N pattern». They proposed that present indicative forms of Italian verbs belonging to the two
partition classes in the N pattern were built respectively on the basis of a «radical base» and a
«thematic base»: the radical base (≅ root) has stress on the root (i.e., is «rhyzotonic», in the
traditional terminology of Romance linguistics) and contains no theme vowel, while the thematic
base contains a stressed thematic vowel, and therefore the root is unstressed («arhyzotonic»). The
radical base occupies the slots marked as stem 2 in (3) above, while the thematic base occupies the
slots marked as stem 1 in (3) above, as shown in (6). The analysis is exemplified by the present
indicative of the regular first conjugation verb AMARE ‘to love’, built on the two bases shown in (7):

        (6)         Distribution of Dressler – Thornton’s (1991) two bases (to be compared with [3]
                    above)


         1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural                  2nd plural    3rd plural
         Radical      Radical      Radical      Thematic                    Thematic      Radical
         base         base         base         Base                        Base          base

        (7)         Bases and Present Indicative inflection of the regular verb AMARE ‘to love’
                    Radical base:                 am-
                    Thematic base:                ama-

          Present indicative of AMARE ‘to love’ (radical base = am-, thematic base = ama-)

                      1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular          1st plural 2nd plural      3rd plural
         AMARE        amo         ami         ama                  amjamo amate             amano
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                     A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 46/61


        Another aspect of Dressler – Thornton’s analysis that must be borne in mind is that it was
formulated with the aim of reanalyzing the traditional classification of Italian verbs in conjugation
classes.
        Traditionally, the three conjugation classes shown in (8) are recognized in Italian. Verbs are
classified in the different conjugations according to the thematic vowel they display in certain
forms, notably the infinitive forms. Dressler – Thornton, on the contrary, chiefly on the base of the
distribution of certain endings, maintain that Italian verbal inflection is organized in two
macroclasses, corresponding respectively to the traditional I conjugation and to the set of all the
other conjugations. Some of their arguments for this choice will come up in the following
discussion.

        (8)         Conjugations in Italian verb inflection (traditional analysis)

                              I conjugation           II conjugation            III conjugation
          infinitive          am-a-re                 tem-e-re                  sent-i-re
                              ‘to love’               ‘to fear’                 ‘to hear’

        Dressler – Thornton’s analysis of the formation of Present Indicative forms has a number of
advantages, but also quite a few shortcomings.
        The main advantage of this analysis is that it allows to encompass in a common pattern both
so called “regular” verbs, and verbs which display a number of different allomorphies, such as the
ones seen in (4) above. The analysis postulates the same partition (i.e., the N pattern) both in the
present indicative of regular verbs and in the present indicative of a number of different kinds of
irregular verbs, the ones listed in (9) and exemplified in (10):

        (9)         verbs with the so-called alternating diphthong, like SEDERE ‘to sit’
                    verbs with the so-called -sk- infix, like FINIRE ‘to finish’
                    suppletive verbs, like USCIRE, UDIRE, ANDARE ‘to go out, to hear, to go’

(10)               1st singular      2nd singular   3rd singular   1st plural       2nd plural    3rd plural
SEDERE             siedo             siedi          siede          sediamo          sedete        siedono
FINIRE             finisco           finisci        finisce        finiamo          finite        finiscono
USCIRE             esco              esci           esce           usciamo          uscite        escono
UDIRE              odo               odi            ode            udiamo           udite         odono
ANDARE             vado              vai            va             andiamo          andate        vanno


        There are, however, two disadvantages in Dressler – Thornton’s analysis.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                         A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 47/61


        First, the analysis is empirically inadequate to predict the 1st person plural forms. These
should be based on the thematic base, that is, they should display a stressed thematic vowel, a
different one in each of the three conjugations, and should have the form in (11c); instead, they are
like the ones in (11b): in all conjugations, they display a palatal glide /j/ followed by a stressed /a/, a
vowel which is equal to the thematic vowel in the first conjugation 2.
        The second problem concerns the 3rd person plural forms: these should be based on the root,
and should appear as the forms in (12b), but instead they appear as in (12a).

        (11)                         I conjugation           II conjugation             III conjugation

        a.          infinitive       am-à-re                 tem-é-re                   sent-ì-re
        b.          1st plural       am-jà-mo                tem-jà-mo                  sent-jà-mo
        c.          not:             °am-à-mo                °tem-é-mo                  °sent-ì-mo


        (12)                         I conjugation           II conjugation             III conjugation

        a.          3rd plural       àm-a-no                 tèm-o-no                   sènt-o-no
        b.          not:             *àm-no                  *tèm-no                    *sènt-no


        The forms in (11c) are actually attested in many non-standard varieties of Italian, while the
ones in (12b) are totally ill-formed phonotactically and have never been attested.
        Of course Dressler – Thornton propose an explanation for the existence of forms such as the
ones in (11b) and (12a), instead of the forms in (11c) and (12b) predicted by their analysis.
        For the first person plural, the explanation proposed is the following:

        La vocale tematica […] viene cancellata dagli indicatori superstabili -iamo […] e -iate […]. -
        iamo, -iate sono indicatori superstabili perché valgono per ambedue le macroclassi: la
        cancellazione della vocale tematica davanti ad essi segnala la neutralizzazione dell’opposizione
        tra le due macroclassi in queste forme (Dressler – Thornton [1991, 8]) 3.


          It is important to observe that the deletion of the theme vowel in first person plural forms
invoked by Dressler – Thornton (1991) is not an instance of the ubiquitous Italian vowel deletion
rule (13) identified by Scalise (1984), because the regular VDR deletes unstressed vowels, while the

2
  In (11) and (12) I have not given IPA transcriptions, to enhance readability; primary word stress is represented, when
necessary, by a stress mark on the vowel; following a tradition in Italian linguistics, <é> represents stressed /e/, <è>
represents stressed //.
3
  «The thematic vowel […] is deleted by the superstable markers -iamo […] and -iate […]. -iamo, -iate are superstable
markers because they apply in both macroclasses: deletion of the thematic vowel before them signals the neutralization
of the opposition between the two macroclasses in these forms». -iate is the ending of the second person plural in the
present subjunctive. We do not address the analysis of the subjunctive forms in the present paper.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                           A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 48/61


thematic vowel present in thematic bases according to Dressler - Thornton’s analysis is crucially
stressed.

        (13)        Italian Vowel Deletion Rule (Scalise [1984, 68], fn. 2)
                   V      →            ∅ / ____ + V
               [- stress]

        So Dressler – Thornton’s analysis of the first person plural appears quite ad hoc; in any case,
the fact remains that first person plural forms in the present indicative of Italian verbs do not display
the same stem ending in a stressed thematic vowel that we find, for instance, in the second person
plural, and that we would expect if the present indicative forms of Italian regular verbs were built
according to some version of the N pattern, which has the same stem in first and second person
plural forms.
        The other problem with Dressler – Thornton’s analysis concerns the third person plural.
        If the forms of Italian present indicatives are built according to the N pattern, or its precursor
in (6), third person plural forms should be built on the root, and this is what Dressler – Thornton
dutifully assume. But concatenation of the eding -no to the root in third person plural forms almost
always yields phonotactically unadmissible sequences, like the ones listed in the third column in
(14), as we have already seen in (12b):

        (14)      Verb                     root            root + -no           actual third person plural form

        a.        amare ‘to love’          am-             *am-no               amano
        b.        portare ‘to carry’       port-           *port-no             portano
        c.        vedere ‘to see’          ved-            *ved-no              vedono
        d.        sentire ‘to hear’        sent-           *sent-no             sentono
        e.        finire ‘to finish’       finisc-         *finisc-no           finiscono

        To repair the unadmissible sequence, Dressler – Thornton assume a vowel insertion. The
inserted vowel is /a/ in the first macroclass, and /o/ in the second macroclass. The insertion is not
determined by phonology: the quality of the inserted vowels is different from that of phonologically
inserted epenthetic vowels, which are always front vowels in Italian (cf. Dressler – Thornton [1991,
8, fn. 5]), and does not depend on the phonological context, as the contrast between (14b) and (14d)
shows 4. Dressler – Thornton maintain that the insertion is of morphological nature, and the


4
  «L’aggiunta diretta della desinenza -no alla radice nella terza persona plurale del presente indicativo produce quasi
sempre nessi consonantici fonotatticamente inammissibili, p. es. in */am-no, parl-no, port-no, agit-no, caric-no, ved-no,
sent-no, finisc-no/. Per evitarli si inserisce (morfologicamente) una vocale -o- nella seconda macroclasse, una vocale -a-
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                         A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 49/61


difference between the two vowels signals the opposition between the two macroclasses of
conjugation in Italian verbs. They defend the vowel insertion analysis by appealing to the fact that
insertion rules are more natural than deletion rules according to the parameters of Natural
Morphology, because deletion rules diminish the iconicity of a base form, and the transparency of a
morphologically complex form:

        Le regole di inserzione sono più naturali di quelle di cancellazione perché queste ultime
        diminuiscono (e talvolta distruggono) l’iconicità e la trasparenza di una forma base, importanti
        parametri della Fonologia e della Morfologia Naturali (Dressler – Thornton [1991, 4ff.]) 5.

       To sum up, Dressler – Thornton’s analysis, which is explicitly coached in an Item-and-Process
(IP) model, paradoxically proposes, contrary to the main tenet of an IP model (that of the
derivability of all complex forms from a unique underlying representation), that present indicative
forms of Italian regular verbs are built on two different stems, distributed according to the pattern
now called the N pattern. The problems that arise with first and third person plural forms, which on
the surface do not present the expected stem, are solved by non-phonological deletion or insertion
rules, i.e, highly ad hoc processes, motivated by appeal to the superior interest of signalling
inflection class, a concept extraneous to the IP model, and more at home in a Word-and-Paradigm
(WP) model of morphological analysis.


       Pirrelli’s proposal

       A different proposal for the analysis of Italian present indicative forms has been put forward
by Vito Pirrelli in his (2000) book. Pirrelli’s proposal stems out of an application of Aronoff’s
Morphology by Itself framework to Italian. Contrary to Dressler – Thornton, and paradoxically for
an author who is well-known for having described in detail all the partitions in Italian verbal
inflection, Pirrelli repeatedly observes that the forms of Italian regular verbs can be analyzed as all
built on one and the same stem, and consequently that there is no partition in the present indicative
of Italian regular verbs:

        La coniugazione regolare necessita […] di una sola base tematica.
        […]
        L’unicità della base tematica è una proprietà che caratterizza i verbi regolari dell’italiano nel
        loro complesso (Pirrelli [2000, 14]) 6.

nella prima. Questa inserzione non è di ordine fonologico perché la qualità della vocale inserita non è determinata dal
contesto fonologico ma dalla classe morfologica» (DRESSLER – THORNTON [1991, 7ff.]).
5
  «Insertion rules are more natural than deletion rules because these diminish (and sometimes destroy) the iconocity and
transparency of a base form, which are important parameters of Natural Phonology and Morphology».
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                     A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 50/61




        In Pirrelli’s analysis, the single basic stem used to build the present indicative forms of
regular verbs is called B1, where B stands for Italian base “base”, which translates “stem”. In
Pirrelli – Battista’s (2000) paper in English the same formal object is called S1, where S stands for
Stem. As Pirrelli – Battista (2000) do not develop the analysis of present indicative forms we are
interested in, I will follow Pirrelli’s (2000) book, which is written in Italian, and use B1 as short for
the single present indicative stem he poses for Italian regular verbs.
        B1 is phonologically equal to the lexical root of a verb. For example, the verb AMARE would
have am- as its B1, as shown in (15):

        (15)        AMARE      “to love”           B1 = am-

        The root is then always followed by a thematic vowel, which is different for different
conjugations, as we can see in (16); the thematic vowel is normally assumed to be the vowel
present, for instance, between the root and the infinitive ending.

        (16)        Thematic vowels (in bold) of Italian verbs in different conjugations

                    infinitive         am-a-re              tem-e-re                    sent-i-re
                                       ‘to love’            ‘to fear’                   ‘to hear’

        Another aspect of Pirrelli’s analysis concerns the position of stress: he thinks that the position
of stress in the stems (whether on the root or on the thematic vowel) must be stipulated, as a
property of the paradigmatic cells involved. His formulation of the stipulation of stress distribution
on the thematic vowels in the present indicative forms is given in (17):

         (17)       Pirrelli’s rules for the distribution of stress in Italian present indicative forms
                    (translated from Table 2.3 in Pirrelli [2000, 12]).


             ThV                 / [[X]V   root   _____] V THEME INDICATIVE – PRESENT   α
             - stress

             ThV                 / [[X]V ROOT _____] V THEME INDICATIVE – PRESENT
             + stress

             α = {1s, 2s, 3s, 3p}

        ThV = thematic vowel


6
  «Regular conjugation needs […] only one basic stem». […] «A unique basic stem is a property that characterizes all
Italian regular verbs».
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                           A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 51/61


        Pirrelli’s proposal also invokes Scalise’s vowel deletion rule ([13] above), that will regularly
apply wherever its context is met, to delete an unstressed thematic vowel.
        Pirrelli’s analysis of the formation of present indicative forms is given in (18):

        (18) Paradigmatic pattern of regular verbs Present Indicative (Pirrelli [2000, 24, Table 2.4])

         1st singular                B1-o
         2nd singular                B1-i
         3rd singular                B1-vt
         1st plural                  B1-jamo
         2nd plural                  B1-vt-te
         3rd plural                  B1-{vt, o}-no

        bold = stressed; vt = thematic vowel

        In (19) I show how Pirrelli’s system predicts the output verbal forms.

        (19)        Derivations in Pirrell’s analysis

                                 underlying representation   rules         output
                                 (following from (17))
         1st singular            B1-vt-o                     VDR (13)      B1-o
         2nd singular            B1-vt-i                     VDR (13)      B1-i
         3rd singular            B1-vt                       dna           B1-vt (0 in III conjug.)
         1st plural              B1-vt-jamo                  dna           B1-vt-jamo 0
         2nd plural              B1-vt-te                    dna           B1-vt-te
         3rd plural              B1-{vt, o}-no               dna           B1-{vt, o}-no

        dna = does not apply

        In this analysis, there isn’t any partition in the present indicative of regular verbs; the
alternation between rhyzotonic and arhyzotonic forms, which was analyzed as the result of a
partition by Dressler – Thornton, is stipulated; the presence vs. absence of a thematic vowel in the
different forms, also analyzed as resulting from a partition between cells containing a bare root and
cells containing a stem in Dressler – Thornton’s analysis, in Pirrelli’s analysis is taken care of by
means of the vowel deletion rule.
        Unfortunately, however, Pirrelli’s analysis suffers from empirical inadequacies, as we will
now show.
        The first problem concerns the third person singular form of the verbs belonging to the III
conjugation. The schema in (18) fails to predict the correct third person singular form for the verbs
belonging to the III conjugation. Pirrelli thinks that the vowel following B1 in third person singular
forms is the thematic vowel, rather than a monovocalic ending. But this is plainly false in III
conjugation verbs, as we can see in (20). The hypothesis of a vocalic ending for the third person
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                            A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 52/61


singular, however, is compatible with Pirrell’is analysis at no extra cost, given that vocalic endings
and the consequent application of the VDR are already postulated for first and second person
singular forms. So the misanalysis of third person singular forms is just a slip in Pirrelli’s model,
which can easily be amended, as shown in (21).

        (20)        Second person plural and third person singular forms of regular verbs of the three
                    conjugations

        verb and conjugation                 I amare ‘to love’          II temere ‘to fear’         III sentire ‘to hear’
        infinitive                           am-a-re                    tem-e-re                    sent-i-re
        third person singular                am-a                       tem-e                       sent-e / *sent-i

        (21)        Analysis of first and third person singular forms based on stems (root + thematic
                    vowel)

        input string          [ama]STEM + [o]1S     [senti]STEM + [o]1S       [ama]STEM + [a]3S        [senti]STEM+[e]3S
        VD rule (13)          ∅                     ∅                         ∅                        ∅
        output                amo                   sento                     ama                      sente

        A further problem with Pirrelli’s analysis concerns the first person plural form.
        From (17), we gather that this form is supposed to have a stressed thematic vowel. But from
(18) we see that the stressed thematic vowel has disappeared. This absence is elsewhere attributed,
by Pirrelli himself, to the VDR. Pirrelli (2000, 11) observes that the front glide /j/ should be
included in the context of application of the VD rule, exactly because the rule appears to have
applied in first person plural forms such as amiamo [amjamo]. But if the thematic vowel is
(stipulatively) stressed, as follows from (17), it does not meet the conditions for the VDR to apply 7.
        Therefore, the first person plural, which was already a problem in Dressler – Thornton
analysis, is still a problem in Pirrelli’s analysis, and for the same reason: it should present a stressed
thematic vowel, but this vowel is not there.
        A third problem with Pirrelli’s analysis concerns the third person plural forms.
        These forms are analyzed by Pirrelli as formed by the root, followed by the thematic vowel in
first conjugation verbs but by the vowel /o/ in other conjugations, and finally by the ending -no. The
vowel /o/ which appears in non-first conjugation third person plural forms is different from the
thematic vowels in these conjugations, which are /e/ and /i/, as we have seen in (16) and (20) above.



7
  In the representation of the first person plural in (18), Pirrelli represents the stressed /a/ in -jamo in bold, using the
same convention he uses to represent stressed thematic vowels. However, this should not be taken to imply that in
Pirrelli’s view this /a/ is the thematic vowel in first person plural forms: no “vowel-hopping” mechanism is proposed by
Pirrelli, and the presence of a stressed thematic vowel immediately after the base in Pirrelli’s analysis follows from
(17).
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                           A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 53/61


        The substitution of the thematic vowel by /o/ 8 is as arbitrary in Pirrelli’s system as it was in
Dressler – Thornton’s analysis, or even more so, as Pirrelli does not take the non-first conjugation
verbs to form a specific macroclass.
        So we have seen that Pirrelli’s analysis, which, in contrast to Dressler – Thornton, moves
from the hypothesis that there is no partition in the present indicative of Italian regular verbs, meets
with exactly the same problems that were encountered by Dressler – Thornton, who hypothesized an
N-pattern distribution.



        A new proposal

        Now I will propose an analysis which returns to Dressler – Thornton’s original intuition that
even Italian regular verbs display a partition in the present indicative, and I will try to overcome the
problems encountered by our original analysis by exploiting some of the theoretical tools offered by
WP approaches to morphology 9, and also by considering some additional data from non standard
varieties of Italian that can shed light on the analysis of third person plural forms.
        In my present analysis, I propose that the present indicative of Italian regular verbs does
display the N pattern, i.e., it is partitioned in two classes, one containing the three singular cells and
the third person plural cell, and one containing the other two cells, as illustrated in (22).

        (22)        Partition of the present indicative of Italian regular verbs

                          1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular           1st plural 2nd plural         3rd plural
         REGULAR
         VERBS                  root         root              root          theme           theme            root


        The forms in the first class (the “gray class”) are built on the verb’s root, devoid of thematic
vowel, like in Dressler – Thornton’s original analysis; in these forms, the root is always followed by
vowel initial endings.
        The cells in the other class (the “white class”, or the “colorless class”) are not indexed to
contain a specific stem of the Italian verb, and therefore should host forms built on the most basic
(“default”) stem, that is the theme, formed by the root followed by a thematic vowel (again, like in
Dressler – Thornton’s original analysis).




8
  «[N]ella 3P del PRESENTE INDICATIVO, la vocale tematica può, in alcune classi di verbi, essere rimpiazzata da una [o]»
(PIRRELLI [2000, 21]). (In the third person plural of present indicative, the thematic vowel, in some verb classes, can be
replaced by [o]).
9
  Dressler – Thornton’s analysis was consciously framed in an IP model (DRESSLER – THORNTON [1991, 4]).
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                                                A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 54/61


        The first person plural cell, however, is preempted from being filled by a form built on the
verb stem because it falls under the scope of a rule of referral, whose effect is to fill this cell with a
form identical to the first person plural of the present subjunctive.
I give a rough formulation of this rule in (23).

        (23)        Rule of referral for the first person plural
        Verb [person : 1.pl] [tense : present] [mood: indicative]: → Verb [person : 1.pl] [tense : present] [mood: subjunctive]

        The referral analysis seems the most compatible with the historical developments which have
brought about the identity of the indicative and subjunctive first person plural forms.
Common accounts of this fact (e.g. Rohlfs [1968, §530]) talk about a change of ending from the
subjunctive to the indicative, favoured by the semantic overlap between contexts in which the first
person plural subjunctive is used as an imperative or hortative form, and interrogative contexts of
use of the indicative form.
        Vincent (1980), however, on the basis of data like the ones in (24), observes that at least for
the verbs in (24) the change must have been a substitution of the whole first person plural indicative
word form (24a) by the corresponding subjunctive form (24b), because if the change had been just a
substitution of the indicative ending by the subjunctive ending, it would have yielded forms like the
ones in (24d), which are not attested at all.

        (24)                   a. Old It.           b. Old It.                      c. Modern It.                   d. Unattested
                               Indicative           Subjunctive                     Indicative                      Indicative
        FARE                   facemo               facciamo                        facciamo                        *faciamo
        AVERE                  avemo                abbiamo                         abbiamo                         *aviamo
        DOVERE                 dovemo               dobbiamo                        dobbiamo                        *doviamo
        VOLERE                 volemo               vogliamo                        vogliamo                        *voliamo
        SAPERE                 sapemo               sappiamo                        sappiamo                        *sapiamo

        Glosses: fare ‘to do’, avere ‘to have’, dovere ‘must, to have to’, volere ‘to want’, sapere ‘to
        know’.

        In fact, Vincent proposes that while for irregular verbs like the ones in (24) the change has
been a “word substitution”, for regular verbs the change has been a replacement of the indicative
ending with the subjunctive ending. He bases this claim on data such as those in (25a-c):


        (25)                   a. Old It.           b. Old It.                      c. Modern It.                   d. Modern It.
                               Indicative           Subjunctive                     Indicative                      Subjunctive
        VEDERE                 vedemo               veggiamo                        vediamo                         vediamo
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                          A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 55/61




        The form vediamo (25c) cannot have arisen out of a whole-word replacement of the form
vedemo (25a) by veggiamo (25b): it appears to have arisen from concatenation of the Indicative
stem of the form in (25a) with the Subjunctive ending of the form in (25b). What Vincent fails to
remark, however, is that in Modern Italian the form of the Subjunctive is no longer the one in (25b):
it is the one in (25d), which is identical to the form of the indicative.
        So, even if Vincent’s account may well be correct historically, in that verbs like the ones in
(24) underwent a «replacement at the level of the word» (Vincent [1980, 389]) while verbs like the
one in (25) underwent replacement «at the level of the individual morpheme» (Vincent [1980, 389-
390]), i.e., of the ending, subsequent developments brought about a condition of identity between
whole word-forms in the first person plural of Present Indicative and Present Subjunctive, not just
between their endings. This state of affairs is best captured by means of a rule of referral relating
the two cells in the paradigm, or by a Paradigmenstrukturbedingung à la Wurzel.
        Let us now turn to the other problematic form, the third person plural.
        For the third person plural, I revise Dressler – Thornton’s analysis by proposing that the
vowel which appears after the root is not an inserted vowel, nor the thematic vowel, not even in the
first conjugation. Rather, it is part of the ending.
        The idea that this vowel is part of the ending is unwelcome, and as we have seen was rejected
without discussion in previous analyses, because the -no string appears in the third person plural
ending in many tense / mood combinations in Italian, as we can see in (26). In a previous attempt to
revise some of the problems encountered by Dressler – Thornton’s original analysis, I myself have
argued in a (1999) paper that third person plural forms could be analyzed as formed by
agglutination of the ending -no to the third person singular word forms.

        (26)        Tense / Mood           third person singular      third person plural
                    Present Indicative     ama                        ama-no
                    Imperfect Indicative   amava                      amava-no
                    Future Indicative      amerà                      amerà-nno
                    Present Subjunctive    ami                        ami-no

        The main advantage of this analysis was morphosemantic rather than morphological; it
allowed to analyze third person plural forms as “real plurals” of third person singular forms,
following Benveniste’s observations on the status of third person as opposed to first and second
person.
        But obviously this analysis fails to apply to the third person plural forms of the non-first
conjugation (the second macroclass of Dressler – Thornton), which, if anything, seem to be
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                               A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 56/61


agglutinatively built not on their third person singular counterparts, but on the semantically highly
inappropriate first person singular forms! See the data in (27):

         (27)
         a. first person singular                               third person plural
                                                                (= first person singular # no)

         conosco, tengo, temo, sento, finisco                   conoscono, tengono, temono, sentono, finiscono
         ‘I know, I keep, I fear, I hear, I finish’             ‘they know, they keep, they fear, they hear, they
                                                                finish’


         b. third person singular                               possible but non-existing third person plural 10
                                                                (= third person singular # no )

             conosce, tiene, teme, sente, finisce               *conosceno, *tieneno,*temeno, *senteno,
                                                                *finisceno
             ‘s/he knows, s/he keeps, s/he fears,               ‘they know, they keep, they fear, they hear, they
             s/he hears, s/he finishes’                         finish’

         These facts can be captured by an analysis that maintains that the present indicative of regular
Italian verbs conforms to the N pattern only if one postulates that the third person plural forms are,
like the first person singular forms, built on the root followed by a vowel initial ending. The
analysis is the one in (28):

         (28)       Analysis of the third person plural forms

                    a.        I conjugation              b.       II conjugation + III conjugation
                              (I macroclass)                      (II macroclass)

                              root + ano                          root + ono

           examples           am+ano                              tem+ono, ved+ono, sent+ono, finisc+ono


         This analysis of course sacrifices the hypothesis of a unitary ending -no for third person plural
forms, which seemed so appealing by observing the data in (26) above.
         At present, I think that the analysis in (28) is the correct one. Evidence comes from a
phenomenon present in the Florentine variety and in most other Tuscan varieties of Italian.
Florentine, the dialect of Florence, is the variety on which standard Italian is based. But since the
codification of a standard written variety of Italian, based on 14th century Florentine, Florentine has
evolved in its own way, and nowadays differs in several aspects from Standard Italian. One of the

10
     Actually, forms such as these are attested in some dialectal and ancient varieties of Italian: cf. ROHLFS (1968, § 532).
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                           A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 57/61


main differences, present in the speech of all speakers, even highly cultivated ones, concerns
exactly the present indicative third person plural forms. The ending -ano, appearing only in the first
conjugation in Standard Italian (cf. the data in [27]), has spread to all other conjugations in most
Tuscan varieties (Rohlfs [1968, § 532]; Giannelli [1976; 1988]). The Standard Italian third person
plural forms of several second macroclass verbs, both regular and irregular, are given in (29), and
the corresponding Florentine forms are in (30):

        (29)        Present Indicative third person plural forms of several second macroclass verbs in
                    Standard Italian

                    temono, vedono, sentono, dicono, vengono, siedono, finiscono, escono, odono…


        (30)        Present Indicative third person plural forms of the verbs in (29) in Florentine

                    temano, vedano, sentano, dicano, vengano, siedano, finiscano, escano, odano…

        It is important to stress the fact that what has spread from the first macroclass to the other one
is exactly the third person plural ending -ano, not the thematic vowel /a/: Florentine shows no
tendency to use hypothetical infinitives or second person plural forms like the starred ones in (31),
which we would predict to arise if just the thematic vowel, and not the whole third person plural
ending, had spread to the other classes:

        (31)        Existing and non-existing forms in Florentine

         verb              third person plural   infinitive           second person plural
         temere            temano                temere, *temare      temete, *temate
         sedere            siedano               sedere, *sedare      sedete, *sedate
         finire            finiscano             finire, *finare      finite, *finate
         udire             escano                udire, *udare        udite, *udate


        Florentine speakers, then, analyze third person plural forms as based on a stressed root
followed by a vowel initial disyllabic ending, and they have spread the ending of the first
conjugation to second and third conjugation verbs 11.
        I take the Florentine data to show that the present indicative of Italian regular verbs presents a
partition that conforms to the N pattern, obscured only by the fact that the first person plural cell is
filled by a rule of referral rather than being built on the stem formed by root+thematic vowel. There
are actually both ancient and dialectal varieties of Italian in which the rule of referral is not present,


11
  Spreads in the opposite direction (yielding forms like lavono for lavano) are also attested in older varieties of Tuscan
dialects.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                             A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 58/61


and these display regular second person plural forms based on the stem, like the ones in (11c)
above. An example is the verb VALERE in Old Italian whose paradigm was given in (2).
           To sum up, the analysis of the present indicative forms of Italian regular verbs I propose is
given in (32):

         (32)       Analysis of Italian present indicative forms

          1   root-o
          2   root -i
          3   root {-a / -e}
          4   Rule of referral (23)
          5   theme-te
          6   root {-ano / -ono}


         There are different endings for the two macroclasses only in third person forms, and in
contemporary Florentine the distinction is lost in the third person plural.


         Discussion and conclusion

         One final point that deserves discussion is the following: do we need all this?
         In other words: can’t we just generate the same output with an appropriate cooperation
between well-chosen underlying representations and well-defined phonological rules? Descriptively
adequate accounts of the Italian present indicative forms based on unique URs and a number of
minor phonological rules have been available for a long time (from Wanner [1972] to Vogel
[1993]).
         One could contend that the choice between two alternative lines of reasoning, sometimes
called the «syntagmatic» (Pirrelli) or «phonologizing» (Maiden [2004, 239]) approach and the
«paradigmatic» or «morphologizing» approach, when they yield results which are equally adequate
at the descriptive level, is a matter of faith 12.
         I believe, however, that there are two classes of good reason to pursue the paradigmatic
account outlined here.
         First, even if syntagmatic or phonologizing accounts are available for the Standard Italian data
I have presented, if one widens the field to include other Romance varieties, as Maiden has done in
a number of contributions over the last few years, one discovers data that cannot be equally well
expressed in a syntagmatic or phonologizing account. For example, a phonologizing account
maintains that in Sicilian varieties the two suppletive alternants of the verb meaning “to give”,


12
     Maiden (2005, 160 ff.) also discusses this point.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                 A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 59/61


which go back to the two Latin lexemes            DARE   and   DONARE,   are distributed according to stress:
forms derived from          DONARE   would appear where the root is stressed, forms from    DARE   elsewhere.
But Maiden (2004, 251) shows that the second singular imperative form, which is stressed, is da,
i.e., it goes back to DARE, not to DONARE.
        Second, if morphomic partition classes are properties of some inflectional systems (and a
considerable body of evidence has been accumulated by authors such as Aronoff, Maiden and
Stump to prove this), they must be universally available to all languages, i.e., they must be allowed
by UG. If this is true, it is possible that even apparently uncomplicated data such as the Italian data
presented above arise as an effect of the existence of morphomic partition classes in the language,
and not just of the interaction between unique URs and phonological rules.
        A similar position is taken by Maiden (2005), who observes:

        the Romance languages display […] morphological changes which appear, at first sight, to be
        ‘common or garden’ analogical levellings of allomorphy, ostensibly extramorphologically
        motivated by iconic matching of form and lexical meaning. […] But could we exclude an
        autonomously morphological, ‘morphomic’, alternative, namely that there is a ‘fourth
        morphome’ which happens to specifiy every cell of the paradigm as its distribution? The
        implication would be profound, for it would open up the possibility that in general, across the
        world’s languages, analogical levelling of allomorphy could have an autonomously
        morphological dimension, being a specification about the shape of paradigms, rather than a
        direct signalling of lexical meaning (Maiden [2005, 164-165]).


        Maiden seems to believe that the Standard Italian Present Indicative forms of regular verbs
are based on a unique stem, but claims that this paradigm structure condition is still evidence of the
existence of a specific partition of the paradigm, what he calls a «fourth morphome». I have
proposed an analysis which differs in details from Maiden’s, but agrees with it in spirit. I have
proposed that Standard Italian Present Indicative forms of regular verbs can be reduced to the N
pattern which is observed in a number of so-called irregular verbs, rather than coming about
through the operation of a fourth morphome.


Anna M. Thornton
Università dell’Aquila
Dipartimento di Culture Comparate
Piazza S. Margherita, 2
I-67100 L’Aquila
thornton@cc.univaq.it
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                      A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 60/61


         References


Aronoff, M. (1994) Morphology by itself: stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, Mass. MIT
Press.


Dressler, W.U., Thornton, A.M. (1991) Doppie basi e binarismo nella morfologia italiana. In Rivista
di Linguistica. 3/1. 3-22.


Giannelli, L. (1976) Toscana. Pisa. Pacini


Giannelli L. (1988) Aree linguistiche VI. Toscana. In Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M., Schmitt, C. (eds.)
Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik IV. Tübingen. Niemeyer. 594-606.


Maiden, M. (1992) Irregularity as a determinant of morphological change. In Journal of Linguistics.
28. 285-312.


Maiden, M. (1995) A proposito dell’alternanza ESCE, USCIVA in italiano. In Lingua Nostra. 56/2-
3. 37-41.


Maiden M. (2003) Il verbo italoromanzo: verso una storia autenticamente morfologica. In Giacomo-
Marcellesi, M., Rocchetti, A. (eds.) Il verbo italiano. Studi diacronici, sincronici, contrastivi,
didattici. Roma. Bulzoni. 3-21.


Maiden, M. (2004) When lexemes become allomorphs. On the genesis of suppletion. In Folia
Linguistica. 38/3-4. 227-56.


Maiden, M. (2005) Morphological autonomy and diachrony. In Booji, G., van Marle, J. (eds.)
Yearbook of Morphology 2004. Dordrecht/Boston/London. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 137-75.


Pirrelli, V. (2000) Paradigmi in morfologia. Un approccio interdisciplinare alla flessione verbale
dell’italiano. Pisa / Roma. Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali.


Pirrelli, V., Battista, M. (2000) The paradigmatic dimension of stem allomorphy in Italian verb
inflection. In Rivista di Linguistica. 12/2. 307-80.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                        A.M. Thornton
Vol. 2 (2007) 61/61


Rohlfs, G. (1968) Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. Morfologia. Torino.
Einaudi.


Scalise, S. (1984) Generative morphology. Dordrecht. Foris.


Thornton, A.M. (1999) Diagrammaticità, uniformità di codifica e morfomicità nella flessione
verbale italiana. In Benincà, P., Mioni, A.M, Vanelli, L. (eds.) Fonologia e morfologia dell'italiano
e dei dialetti d'Italia. Roma. Bulzoni. 483-502.


Vincent, N. (1980) Words versus Morphemes in Morphological Change: The Case of Italian –iamo.
In Fisiak, J. (ed.) Historical Morphology. Paris. The Hague: Mouton. 383-98.


Vogel, I. (1993) Verbs in Italian morphology. In Booij, G., van Marle, J. (eds.)Yearbook of
Morphology 1993. Dordrecht/Boston/London. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 219-54.


Wanner, D. (1972) The Derivation of Inflectional Paradigms in Italian. In Casagrande, J., Saciuk, B.
(eds.) Generative Studies in Romance Languages. Rowley, Mass. Newbury House. 293-318.
