Title: Capèsset? Understanding Morphomes and Analogy across Romance

Abstract: The concept of morphomes (Aronoff 1994), patterns of paradigmatic coherence, has predominated much of the scholarship on the Romance verbal system (e.g., Maiden 2003, 2005, etc). While originally conceived of as a synchronic phenomenon that is 'uniquely morphological', much of the evidence for the existence of morphomes comes from their diachronic persistence and analogical attractiveness. This talk explores the intersection between paradigmatic leveling and the preservation/loss of morphomic patterns, focusing on changes in the N-pattern (Maiden 2003) across a selection of Romance languages from the region spanning Northern Italy to Catalonia. I will show that the breakdown of morphomes takes place in a manner consistent with any other morpho-syntactic rule or set thereof, i.e. that they are subject to regular biases in frequency, usage, and featural coherence. In doing so, I aim to not only demystify the concept of morphomes but also demonstrate some of the general principles that govern analogical change.

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