Cases of verbal thematic vowel allomorphy in word formation in the Cantigas de Santa Maria
Keywords:
verbal thematic vowel allomorphy, word formation, phonological processes, Cantigas de Santa MariaAbstract
This research aims to present and discuss the process of allomorphy of the verbal thematic vowel that occurs in word formation involving the suffix -mento in a corpus composed of 420 Cantigas de Santa Maria. The cases analyzed in this study occurred with nouns formed with the suffix -mento only from the second conjugation verbs. According to Camara Jr. (2004[1970], p. 105), there is, in fact, the first conjugation (-ar) and another class that is divided in the second conjugation (-er) and the third conjugation (-ir), in certain forms. As verb conjugation remained virtually unchanged from Archaic Portuguese to Brazilian Portuguese, this could explain the alternation of /e/ to /i/ in these derivatives. We conclude that, since there is variation between the thematic vowel /e/ and /i/ in verb conjugation, this variation is conditioned by morphological and rhythmic factors.