Italian verbs
Phonotactic Filter on the Choice of Verbal Forms in Italian.
An essay in empirical linguistics
With the material of the LIF corpus of modern Italian, is examined the syllable combining a verbal base with its ending, and more precisely the CVC sequence constituted by the final consonant of the base, the radical vowel and the initial consonant of the ending. Evidently the choice of verbal base and ending is, mainly, directed by world knowledge, pragmatics and grammar, but the results of the present study show that the tendency to avoid repetitive sequences like C1VC1 is strong enough to have an influence on the choice of verb and ending.
Items treated include the Italian verbal system and the Lessico Italiano di Frequenza. The problems of obtaining statistically valid results are discussed, as well as the statistical facts themselves.
The author has previously carried out several research programs to investigate the presence and the conditions of the tendency to non repetition in many different languages, Romance, Germanic and other languages, like Hungarian, Etruscan, Old Greek, Latin, etc. Most of the studies concern the structure of CVC sequences in word derivation (suffix and prefix distribution) and in word roots. The method employed is always statistical, conducted on large numbers of examples, and computer supported.
The results of the present study - which had all odds against it because of the influence on the choices of verb and ending by main criteria like world knowledge, pragmatics and grammar - are nevertheless corroborating accurately those of the previous ones, thus conveying an important confirmation of the universality of the principle of non repetition.