Stress and stem allomorphy in the Romance perfectum: emergence, typology, and motivations of a symbiotic relation

Abstract Perfective stem allomorphy and stress are morphological traits which interact in complex ways Romance verbal inflection. This article surveys the whole range of variation these across varieties, typologizes observed interactions between two, examines attested unattested possibilities. A comparison modern-day original Latin systems suggests that there is a strong pan-Romance bias against having verbs with concrete combination properties: perfective root-stress no alternation. would have frequently resulted diagonal syncretisms past present given phonological changes daughter languages. Homophony avoidance (and adaptive-discriminative role morphology more generally) therefore argued to motivate bias.