| The Italian -ire class has a "regular" subclass, partire, part-o 'I leave', and an "irregular" one, which inserts the morpheme -isc- between the stem and the desinence, e.g., finire, fin-isc-o 'I finish.' This dissertation is a study of the principles that govern this infix in Italian and in the contemporary Romance languages, and of its historical evolution from Latin.;By postulating a simple metrical condition that excludes stress clashes we account for the distribution of -isc- in the paradigm of verbs like finire. By the same metrical condition we also account for the behavior of verbs like partire, which are often switched into another conjugation. This process, which is particularly pervasive in the Italian dialects, effects a switch to the stem-stressed (=rhizotonic) conjugation, e.g., Italian partire, Piedmontese parte(re). Furthermore, we find that this metrical principle governs not only the distribution of -isc-, but also the occurrence of such phenomena as the syncopated past participle and the syncopated future.;Alongside the Italo-Romance system (characterizing Italian, Italian dialects, Catalan, Rumanian), we discuss the systems operating in Gallo-Romance (French, Provencal) and Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Portuguese). We argue that, whereas in Italo-Romance the infix is lexically marked for stress, in Gallo-Romance it is not. In Ibero-Romance the descendent of /-sk-/ no longer is a morpheme as in Italo- and Gallo-Romance, but has been reanalyzed as part of the stem.;We take the diversity of the systems of Romance as the result of different reanalyses of the ancient system. In the final portion of this dissertation, we therefore turn to a study of the Latin system and the reasons for its demise. We propose that the morphene /-sk-/ was part of a productive mechanism that produced change-of-state verbs from stative verbs. We identify the cause of the collapse of the Latin system with the disappearance of stative verbs. |
