Tense-sensitive and tense-neutral phi-suffixes in Portuguese
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Description | We may think of phi-suffixes that only occur in some specific tense as being footed at a tense- related feature specific to that tense. If a phi-suffix occurs in more than one tense, perhaps in all, we can think of them either as being footed either at phi-feature or some tense-related feature common to many or all tenses, e.g. T. In Portuguese, a number of phi-suffixes occur in all tenses except for the perfective past tense pretérito, which, with one possible exception, has its own set of phi-features. I take the phi- suffixes specific to the pretérito to be footed at a feature Q which is also specific to the pretérito. It turns out the phi-suffixes footed at Q will block the tense-neutral ones whether these are footed at the lowest phi-feature or at T below Q. The main focus in this paper is on the 1pl suffix mos, which seems to occur in all the tenses including the pretérito. Since mos occurs in the pretérito, it must be footed at a phi-feature rather than below Q. However, mos affects the pronunciation of the theme vowel a in the present tense, but not in the pretérito: present tense 1pl cant-a-mos = cant-[a]-mos ? pretérito 1pl cant-a-mos = cant-[a]-mos This suggests that there is a “screen” # between the theme vowel and mos in the pretérito: Either mos is footed at the lowest phi-feature, and # is a separate morpheme lexicalizing the Q specific to the pretérito, or the 1pl suffix of the pretérito is actually #mos distinct from the mos in the other tenses and footed at Q. It turns out that the second option is preferable when we look at the pretérito forms with dedicated pretérito roots and the special theme vowel ???In these paradigms, a mos footed at the lowest ?-feature would block the pretérito-specific 3pl ram footed at Q. |
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