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Spanish Plural Formation: Apocope or Epenthesis?

1970; Linguistic Society of America; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/412409

1535-0665

Mario Saltarelli,

Linguistic Variation and Morphology

This paper presents and motivates a novel 'epenthesis' theory of Spanish plural formation as opposed to a recently proposed 'apocope' theory. Whereas the apocope theory provides a lexical explanation adding to the complexity of the lexicon and adds a rule, the epenthesis theory provides a phonetic explanation of the phenomenon by generalizing the independently needed rule of prothesis without adding any new rules to the grammar. Simplicity considerations appear to support the epenthesis solution, synchronically as well as diachronically.