FRENCH VERBAL INFLECTION REVISITED - CONSTRAINTS, REPAIRS AND FLOATING CONSONANTS

This article updates Paradis and El Fenne (1991, 1992), The C/0 altern ation (including the V/VN one) in French verbal inflection (e.g. dort [dor]/dorment [dorm] 'to sleep' 3sg. and 3pl. Present Indicative), whi ch occurs in 588 regular (non-suppletive and non-defective) verbs, is explained and related naturally to the C/0 alternation found in many o ther morphological and syntactic environments. More specifically, we m aintain that the notion of 'floating consonant (i.e. a consonant witho ut a timing slot) along with two principles, the No Empty Onset Princi ple and the Licensing Principle, used in the framework of the Theory o f Constraints and Repair Strategies (cf. Paradis, 1988a,b), suffices t o handle the C/0 alternation in verbal inflection and elsewhere, Not o nly does the system we propose result in a considerable simplification of French verbal inflection (it gets rid of numerous thematic segment s and ad hoc - when not contradictory - context rules), it makes impor tant new predictions concerning the selection of Infinitive suffixes i n relation to the nature of a stem-final consonant (floating/non-float ing). We show that these predictions are confirmed by the results of p roduction tests, administered by El Fenne (1994), which clearly indica te that the floating consonant system we propose reflects the competen ce of French speakers.