Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of verbal inflection in Central Catalan in a Word and Paradigm or realisational framework (Stump, 2001). In particular, the analysis I present relies on the notion of Stem Space (Pirrelli & Battista, 2000; Boyé & Cabredo-Hofherr, 2006; Bonami & Boyé, 2007), which constitutes an implementation of Aronoff's (1994) morphomic hypothesis. The paper first addresses the question of the division of labour between phonology and morphology. Some alternations traditionally considered as phonological appear, at a deeper observation, not so regular. A morphological treatment of those alternations seems to be more adequate. Secondly, I discuss the morphological organisation of verbal infl ection in Central Catalan. This analysis differs from the ones that have been previously proposed (Mascaró, 1986; Viaplana, 1986; Wheeler, 2002, among others) in that the relations between forms are not expressed as traditional rules attaching morphemes to lexical roots, but rather as generalizations on the existing lexicon.