| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 935597 | Lingua | 2014 | 22 Pages |
•Romance noun structures share a unique set of functional categories.•Parameters on the structure of the noun account for cross-linguistic diversity.•I argue that Italian plural -i derives from Latin accusative plural -s.
Romance nouns show a well-known morphological isogloss. There are two groups of languages: those pluralizing by suffixing -s (such as Spanish), and those pluralizing by changing the quality of the final vowel (such as Italian). In this paper, I propose an explanation of this isogloss. More precisely, I argue that the cross-linguistic diversity within Romance depends on morpho-phonological parameters on the structure of the noun. These parameters consist of language-particular restrictions on the form of the (nominal) roots and the exponents of gender and number.
