Syncretism and morphological change: evolution of the verbal ending -AT in catalan

Abstract

Abstract: The Latin verbal ending -at, found in etymons of forms of the 3rd person present indicative (1st conjugation), present subjunctive (2^nd and 3^rd conjugations), imperfect indicative and conditional (all conjugations), has generally become -a (cantat > canta) in Catalan. However, variant -e, now found in Northwestern Catalan and in Northern Valencian, is already documented in the first written evidence from the old counties of Urgell and Pallars (11th century). This divergence has received a phonological explanation, based on the assumption that in early Western Catalan final -t would have been lost late, which would have allowed the closure of the posttonic a (-at > -et > -e). Basing our argument on the principles of Natural Morphology, an alternative hypothesis is put forward in this paper, i.e. the emergence and expansion of variant -e can be attributed to morphological factors such as the rejection of syncretism. The data collected from CICA (Computerised Corpus of Old Catalan) seem consistent with this hypothesis, although the paucity of early texts advises us to be cautious in our conclusions.

Key words: syncretism, linguistic change, Natural Morphology, verbal inflection, Old Catalan, Northwestern Catalan.