morphological? - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

3.2.4 Whichever side is right, both concur that the ending originated in just one tenseform
(and was therefore, in our terms, ‘not blurred’), but was extended into the other. Its
distribution therefore ‘became ‘blurred’.
3.2.5 In some Aromanian varieties (especially those spoken in Albania: Capidan
1932:471f.) the ending -"i has also been extended into the conditional (the pluperfect is
extinct). Again a ‘blurred’ distribution is the result:
Present Subjunctive Imperfect Preterite Conditional
cân!i cân!i cântai cânta"i cântari"i
3.3 Third person plural -r#
3.3.1 In Old Romanian, and in most modern dialects, restricted exclusively to the
preterite tense, and therefore not blurred:
Present Subjunctive Imperfect Preterite Pluperfect Conditional
cânt# cânte cânta cântar# cântase cântare
zic zic# ziceau ziser# zisese zisere
3.3.2 Originates in Latin 3pl. present perfective –RUNT (CANTAUERUNT) possibly, but
controversially, with some influence from Latin pluperfect indicative –RANT
(CANTAUERANT).
3.3.3 From the 17 th century, -r# is subject to analogical extension into other plural forms
of the preterite. Principally in Muntenian and Oltenian dialects it is also subject (from the
early 18 th century) to extension into other tense forms, but this is always ephemeral —
with one exception: the ending –r$ may be systematically extended from the preterite into
the pluperfect, but nowhere else. Thus modern standard Romanian
Present Subjunctive Imperfect Preterite Pluperfect
cânt# cânte cântau cântar# cântaser#
zic zic# ziceau ziser# ziseser#
3.3.4 Once again, a ‘non-blurred’ distribution gives way to an apparently ‘blurred’ one’.
3.4 The PYTA morphome as ‘signatum’ of the ‘blurred’ inflections
Maiden (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004) has argued that the remnants of Latin perfective roots
and stems in the Romance languages, while synchronically devoid of any common
phonological or functional characteristic, show an extraordinary diachronic ‘coherence’:
any analogical change affecting a former perfective root affects that root in exactly the
same way in all the tense forms where that root persists, despite the lack of any common
phonological or semantic feature binding those tense-forms together. The distribution
consitutes a ‘morphome’, in the sense of Aronoff (1994) — labelled by Maiden (2000) as
‘PYTA’. The Romanian remnants of Latin perfective roots and stems have the following
characteristics:
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