The Romance plural isogloss and linguistic change: a comparative study of Romance nouns

• Nicola Lampitelli ^[1]
  1. [1] Université François Rabelais de Tours
• Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 140, 2014, págs. 158-179
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 4 Citas
• Resumen

  • Romance nouns show a well-known morphological isogloss. There are two groups of languages: those pluralizing by suffixing -s (such as Spanish), and those pluralizing by changing the quality of the final vowel (such as Italian). In this paper, I propose an explanation of this isogloss. More precisely, I argue that the cross-linguistic diversity within Romance depends on morpho-phonological parameters on the structure of the noun. These parameters consist of language-particular restrictions on the form of the (nominal) roots and the exponents of gender and number.