Time: Monday 4/27, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
Speaker: Eulàlia Bonet
Title: Stem extensions in Catalan encliticized imperatives
In Catalan, conjugation II and III 2sg imperatives consist of a bare root (e.g. [‘tem] ‘fear!’). When pronominal enclitics are added, some extra material (a stem extension) surfaces (e.g. [‘temAla] ‘fear it (fem)!’). The form of the extension can vary from dialect to dialect and from verb to verb ([A], [i], [gA], [igA]), but it is totally predictable. I will argue that the presence of the extension is enforced by a phonological constraint, and that the choice of specific extensions is determined by Lexical Conservatism constraints (Steriade 1999, 2007), epenthesis being blocked by other constraints.