Lingua 24 (1969) 181-193. Q North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam Not to be reproduced in any form without written pwnisslan from the pubkher

DISCUSSION

TFE SYNTHETIC FUTURE AGAIN: PHONOLOGY AND MOR.PHO-SYNTAX

(Cf. J. L. Butler, Lingua, 24 [I9691 163-180.j

At the beginning of my essay in Lingua (henceforth, ‘Future’) I asked for ‘comments and suggestions’; Mr. Butler’s essay (hence- forth, ‘Kemarks’), full of interesting details, is more than a comment, and it is rich in suggestions. Un iortunately, this article seems to me to be unconvincing with regard to t;:h lit main issues: the re- statement of the problem that I defined as ‘The Romance develop- ments of the phonemes represented in Classical Latin orthography by %he letters B and U/V’ (‘Future’, p. 129 ff.) and Mr. Butler’s ‘nev, hypotheses as to the origin of the Romance synthetic future’. I will comment on both poirrts, trying to be is concise as possible.

On p. 165 of his ‘Remarks’ Mr. Butler presents a rule for the Romance development of the phoneme /b/, and states that: ‘To speak of ‘free dophones’ of the respective plronemes [as I did, see ‘Future’, p. 1321 would render impossible ary cogent explanation of the later phonemic development of, say, Standard Italian, Old Spanish or French, whze in initial position the phor,emic contrast lb/ # /VI corresponds exactiy to the Latin phonemic contrast lb/ # /q”.

But this exact correspondence does not exist, not even in the birthplace of Standard Italian (relatively speaking, of course), Tuscany; in fact, ‘vi sono indizii hen chiari the anche la Toscana fu un tempo territorio betacistico’ (G. Bonfante, ‘L’Iberia nelle norme areali di Matte0 Btioli’, Qat&er& ZBero-Americani, 31 [196S], 7-60; the relevant discussion is on pp. 16-21). The te:m ‘betacismo’ evokes the main obstacle to the too simple analysis in ‘Remarks’: the problem is not only that of explaining the lb/ > v/ development, but also that of explaming the reverse mutation, v

181

DISCUSSION

(that is, /w/) > /b/; and the latter development, at least in initial position, seems to have been more frequent than the former (notice that the title of Parodi’s essay is ‘Def passaggio di ‘v in B . . . ‘). V;uious examplesof this mutation are known, but perhaps a short list (the first part referring to Common Romance forms, the second to some forms from Tuscan and other dialects) will not be out of place :

BACCULEIUS (= ~aCC&&S?; C?. nACCULA)

BALD&(= U&8?)

BALJAT (= udeat; twice) BENI (= U&~?; Orb&@f?]?)

BERUS (= UdYUS)

BIBIUS, f3t+o (= Lrfbbius, UZbiC) BOG0 (= UOC6?)1)

As for the Tuscan forms: boce ‘voice’ (cf. dialectal Rumanian, in the Banat, boace, and Aru- manian boatse) < U~CEM, and bociwe ‘to shout’. boto ‘vote’ < U6TUM (but BdTuM in various Latin Inscriptions: CIL VI, 303,2809; X, 3042, 4183; V, 6232), and botare ‘to vote’ are widespread in the Tuscan dialects and documented in many of the ‘classic’ writers, like Boccaccio and Machiavelli. Notice also: bacca ‘cow’ is inQre&ly attested by forms like i~~&&k ‘cuoio di vacca’ in the Lucchese and Pisan dialects, in the medieval baccino (adjective of aacca) in the Senese dialect, etc.; ba.Uc ‘valley’ < UALLEM is present in various Tuscan place names, like Baijwomaro (< UALLEM PR~M~RIAM ?), B&wvisi (< ?*J.LEM

Cwighisi), Baldigiano, Bolcascio (< UALLEM CASSII?), Balibdrta ‘valle apertd’, Bakedtiltc ‘Ale baforc 'vapour' < UAP~REM is

elsewhere ;

serotina’, etc.; found in the Pisan dialect and

1) AII these forms are G&X. fzzz the well-knowr. monograph of Veikko V&%niinen: Ls k&n. vdgdre &s inswip:ims j~ompCtinws, 2 cd., rev. et augm., Berlin, 1959. We will limit 0urseIves here to the variatioii 2~ l )_ izt%al po- sition. Sut the case of the proper name W&s is pticular1.y interesting, because in the same corpus of inscriptions we witness also the opposite procezs: U!UIA (= Uf&+), u!uf (= Uiair); and finally, there is also the ‘stanbard’ form: uIBIAES (genitive).

DI:,CUSSION 183

bamfia ‘blaze’ < UAP~REM~) appears as bartfn in Lucchese, is present in the verb abanpar ‘to burn’ of an Old Lombard poem, etc., bdmave ‘ploughshare’ < U&WKE:M is fcJnd in the Sewse dia!ect; etc. etc.%)

-- - $) rhe ;;enesis of vampa is unclear ; if I understand the DEI editors correctly,

vat @pa c vat?@ < IMPORE& x Zaw$w ‘lightning’, deverbal of *LAMP& On ti.e other hand D. O!ivleri, in hi Didonario c#imologico italiano (Milano, :953), thinks of a genesis from the cominative form UAPOR x rLAr.m.4 ‘flame’.

s) The: e are only a few of the many possible examples. The concentration on Tuscan I, whirh in its standard variety, still living in Modem Italian, shows initial /v/ in all the quoted forms (vote, sociare, uoto, votavz, ucsca, vacchctfa. vaccine, vatle, vapore, vampa. vcnncro), is meant to show how even in a linguistic area like that of Tuscany, where at first sight the situation seems to be simple and clear, we find traces of an allophonic variation which certainly was more widespread iu the initial period of Italo-Romance (the early Italian texts and the nonTuscan dialezth show the extent of the variation).

Parodt’s essay can still be the starting point for a re-examination of a whole series of /b-/ forms in the French and in the Italian dialects; such a re-examlration should take into account the words of warning on the un- certain status of some of these fcrms which Parodi himself writes, in the footnote on pp. 197-198 (however, these forms are accepted by no less an authority than Meyer-Liibke, in RRW). The forms quoted above were checked in the sources: for bacchctta, Bal#vomaro, oufwe, one should see S. Pled, ‘Fonetica de1 dlaletto lucchese, con appendice less&ale’. AGI, 12 (18X1-92). 107-134, and ‘Fonetica de1 dial&to p&no, con appendice lessi- oale’, in the same volume of AGI. pp. 141-160; for &cc&o and bdmare tne soume is L. IIimch, ‘Laut- und Formenlehre des Dialekts von Siena ‘, EC%, 9 (1885) 513 -570; I owe Bokxmcvisi to B. Bianchi, ‘La declinazione nei nomi di luogo della Tostana’, AGI, 9 (1884-86). 365-436 and 10 (1886-88), 305- 412; ubut@a~ is to be found in line 942 of the poem edited by B. Wiese: Einc altlombardischc Margarden-Legende. Kritischev Text, Halle a.S., 1890 (the other place names, as Parodi reports, were mentioned by Silvio Pieri).

.4 propos of the use of sources: smce what is at issue here. among other things. is the extent and the way in which we can speak of allophonic vari- ation, it is strange to see the way in which Mr. Butler, in footnote 3 of his ‘Remarks’, quotes the lemma VESSICA ‘bladder’ (whose more common variant in Classical Latin in iiits!c~)), REW 9276. The impression one gets from reading the lemma in this shxtened version is that there is a &ear-cut __- opposiF‘or between the initiai srop ur’ Rumanian bd+xZ and the initial contlnuant of ah other languages (I do not consider here the Ibero-Romance situation, for the reasous already made clear in ‘Future’). Ilut this is not the case: Meyer-LUbke, following Parodi, offers a much richer and more problem- atic picture, in which the ancient variation is revealed by such forms as

DISCUSSION

We can go back, now, to the rule proposed in ‘Kemarks’:

ibl -* PI/# - [(q/V _--_ v

Three facts about this rule require comment: in the first place, the rule seems to describe the Early Common Romance situation, the Late Common Romance situation, and the modern situation of a specific area of the Romania, namely Ibero-Romance (this is not a priori impossible, but it must be stated explicitly) ; in the second place, the rule (in order to agree with Parodi’s theory) should express not only the situation at the level of the word, bui also the situation at the level of the phrase: thus it should read like this:

/b/ --f rD]/# _---_

[Pl/V( #) ------ v

Finally (and above all), as I tried to show above, this rule works for Ibero-Romance (a fact which was already made clear in my essay), but it is not adequate to describe the complexity of the diachronic development all over the Romania, especially with re- gard to the ‘betacismo’. Suffice it to say that such a rde would have an absurd form if its relation to the other phoneme involved would be made explicit (something which is not done in ‘Remarks’) :

[vl/V( f) I_- v

This would be the formal transcription of the statement quoted below on p. 194 of Parodi’s essay; it is clear, I think, that this formulation is not adequate.

The key to this development is to be found (as I indicated in my article) in the presence of the allophone [p] in two different pho- nological areas: the complications which follow are, essentially, a consequence of this initial ambiguity. The lemmata of the Appendix

Pro& (cf. the edition by Baehrens quoted below) are the best

psiga in a grcq of Ernilian dialects (those of P%ma, piacenza, Modena, Uirandola), psia in the Monferrato dialect. psey in Lxxraine and (at the opposite end) aUf{ in certain Westeti French dtilects, bnhigo in the Haute+ Pyr&l&s area, pesiibya in certain Swiss diakcts. As I said, it is strange that these forms are not mentioned: some of them are discussed on p. 137 of ‘Future’.

DISCUSSION 185

summary and symbol of this complex of allophonic variations: on the one hand we read the warnings: ALUEUS lzon ALBEUS (70) and UAPULB tiofi BiiPLB (215), on the other hand we are confronted with the opposite developmen!: BACULUS ~0% UACI us (9) and TOLE~~BI- LIS lzon ‘I’OLERiiUILIS (198). The only thing I can do, for the moment, is to refer back to my analysis of the allophonic variations on pp. 132-135 of ‘Future’ (an analysis which, to be sure, could be formal- ized more rigorously) : I do not think that the objections that I have discussed are such as to cause any radical change in it.4)

One last point: one of the negative consequences of reducing this complex development to a rule such as that presented in ‘Remarks’ is to offer a potentially misleading picture oi the general phonetic ‘drift’ which is implicit in this development. In fact, one may have the impression that what we are subserving is a general process of phonetic weakening. But, looking more deeply, we notice that what we really see is rather a phonetic strengthening: the deva!opment of a part of the allophonic complex of an original glide leads to the emergence of a full consonant, /v/ (a continuant to be sure, and thus near to vowels and glides, but still a consonant). More precisely : the process involved is one of weakening insofar as the ancient domain of a noncontmuant is partially inherited by a continuant, but it is also one of strengthening, insof ai as the ancient domain of a non- - consonant is partially inherited by a consonant.“) Another problem which is, in a sense, connected to this one is that of dissimilatory and assimilatory trends.

Forms like bafore and banfa are particularly interesting, because they deviate from Classical Latin in having a stop in the first sylla- ble, against the ancient continuant, and a continuant in the second sy!lable, against the ancient stop. The most plausible reconstruction

4) It is interesting no note that the idea of an allophonic variation emerges also in l?srodi’s essay, on pp. 195496 (but notice the ambiguity of the de- !Sclipti;m): *. . . mentre dapprima il v originario s’altemava co1 b, o trioilfb de1 tutto ;11 b, o piti spesso, anzi, tutto sommato, in un numero di casi senza paragone pih grande, il v ritornb nel pieno posszsso dei suoi dir&i’.

6) A ra&aI process of weakening is the dissimilatory process by which the semi-vowel /w/ goes to 0 hefore the ‘homorganic’ vowel /u/ immediately foUowing (on this see Baehrens, op. cit., pp. 81-82). as shown by lemmata of the A#qs~~?r Toti such as: AUUS WI AUS (29), FLIUUS non FLAUS (62), FAUiLLrr tkVZ FAlLLA (73). RIUUS BOB RlUS (174), PAUOK iic% PAOR (17’6).

186 DISCUSSION

c.eern:, then, to be the following: Classical Latin-Early Common Romr;nce UAI~REM /wapo:r?m/ > Late Common Romance Iwa- p&e-/ = [I)apore] ; and then we have, at least in Italo-Romance, a dialectal divisior. in the Tuscan str-‘? which goes into Standard It&an (and in other dialects) the [p] blophone is developed as a continuant Iv/, and the following stop is retained as such; but in a ‘peripheral’ linguistic area of Tuscany (and in other dialects) the [p] allophone enters into the allophonic area of /b/ and thus fs de- veloped to a stop. The hypothesis may be advanced that It is just this development that triggers the opposite developme~~t, from stop to continuant, in the immediately following syllable (notice that in all the other forms that we have listed, apart from the equivalents of uimus, there are no labial stops in the second syllable). ?!c would have, then, a tendency to maintain a situation of equilibrium, a contrastive balance, between stops and continuants in successive syllables: in the case of the seconc; solution, before, this is realized thrc,ugh a dissimilatory process. In the case of UfBIuS, however, we nave the opposite process: the contrastive balance of Classical Latin is destroyed through assimilation, either under the control of the stops (BiBxus) or in the domain of the continuants (U~UIA).

In fact, W. A. Baehrens, In the paragraph ‘Das v und b’ (pp. 79- 02) of his Ypachlichcr Koniivct?iiiriy 2%~ rVulg~rlatei~ische~ A##endix Probi (Halle,a. S., 1922) stresses the tenlency towards a&nilation as a dominant factor in the development of ‘betacismo’ (in this light he reconsiders, for instance, the phenomenon described by Consentius GL V, 392, 14 K: zct si quis did bobis fire uobis, the Common Romance form BEXBBCFM (Petronius, 57), equivalent to Classical Latin UERU~EM ‘wether’, which shows up in Rumanian berbec [variant berbece] and in French brebis [probably through *EWRBicEM~, etc.). It is important to notice that what Baehrens describes is regressive assimilation : the internal phoneme influences the initial one; this fact, ‘dass lifters ein folgender Laut desselben I-Tortes den Anlaut beeinflusste’ is considered by Baehrens as an important chjection to Parodi’s ‘Sdzsanddhi’ theory. It seems to me that actually there is an important intuition implicit here, but that it could be formulated in acre general terms. The ‘Satzsanddhi’ (‘fonetica sintattica’j &eory is essentially an assimilation theory, only it considers ths pmcess at the phrase level rather than at the word level (the passage from a voiced noncorrtinuant to a voiced

DISCUSSION I67

contmuant, insofarasit approaches the phonetic nature of the vowel, can be seen as a partial assimilation to the vocalic context). +

In this respect, then, Parodi and Baehrens are saying the same thirg: both point to the importance of assimilation (notice this statement by Pa;adi on p. 1~5: ‘La teadenza pi& cpnnrale k stalka di c”..\I....

continuare in certo modo per la stradn the avevb percorso il b in-

terno. tra vocali, e di ridurlo a 7~ ariche quand’eri ioiziale, se una

VOC& IO precedeva’). But (apart from the difference in the context, phmse versus word, to wl&h I will re+um in a moment) there is an important 3ilivergeme : Parorli imwses too strong a constr&i on the phonetic nature of the as&&ion (p. 194 o+. cit.: ‘il v inizisde rimaneva intatto nel latino volgare, se il vocabolo precedente termi- navd in VOcde; diveniva b, se tenninava in consonante’), while

Baelnreia simp!y takes into account the structural pattern of as- similation, which can be realized phonetically either under the dominance of /b/ or under the dominance of /w/. In fact, the second objection of Baehrens to Parodi’s theory is that some of the most ancient contexts of the ‘betacismo’ are vocalic contexts. In the quoted forms from PomP&i we find:

(UITALIO) BALIAT

(PHOEBE) BENI

(SITTIA) BOCd

and in the frequent form siuus (= u%us) and BIXIT (= zcixlt) in

the inscriptions, vie tradition&y find contexts like: (se) Biu6, (~JI)

BIXiT (ANN@ . . ., etc. It is clear, then, that further study is necessary here. At any rate,

this perspective on a Possible contrastive balance (a sort of conflict between dissimilatory and assimilatory trends) seems to dcscrvc further exploration (the short discussion on Pp. 4144 and pp. 97- 98 of R. Posner’s bzihiant book, ConsoncrnW ~dissintilatim in the Romonw languages [Oxford, 1961-J is merely thr: starting point for a Possible fut~rc re-cxaminiiibn). Xoticc, for instance, that the Latin place name UIBINUM develops to Pm&w (a town in F&la, Province of Foggia) : if one keeps in mind cases like batore and &;jlz and all the preceding discussion, the best explai~&on seems to be a sequence of dissimilatory developments, rather than a unitary mete,tl;atic cliar.gc. Seen in this light, the case cf utBIr% is more cu~~@.cx than it seems at first sight. The Clac,sical ancl ‘Vulgar’

188 DISCUSSiClN

variants of this name (4ich was distinctive of various important n---... L:o+r\rr.~ persons xii tiUl ..-.. _ _____.__j , & not sxm tc ~~w.+~r: in the Romance

languages. (But Mr. Anthony Oldcorn reminds me that this name appears in one of the dialogues of Tasso, II Ficiso overo de E’arte, 12: ‘come si legge d’Artemone e de1 re Antigono, di Messala e di Meno- gene, di Bibio e de1 gran Pompeo’; see vol. Ii, tome II of the Dia- toghi, edited by E. Raimondi, Firenze, 1958. Could it be that this way of italianizing UfBIUS is not simply a graphemic phenomenon, but reflects a trend in the spoken language?). But a stern formally equivalent to it, ahhough etymologlcally unrelated, that of uino, -6~1s (which in the Olzoncasticolz totizcs latkitatis appended to For- cellini’s standard Lexicon is distinguished from UIBIO, -ONIS, derived from uisrus) survives in its ‘balanced’ form in the Italian place name Vibo VaZentia (in Calzbria, province of Catanzaro). It is remarkable that the traditional name of the harbour near to this city (a name which appears also in other places in It&ly) is Bivona (for which cf. UIB~NUM > Bovilto). The dissimilatory tendency seems clear, and it is particuiarly interesting to notice how it works both ways.6)

DISCUSSION 189

The second part of ‘Remarks’ is devoted to an expansion of an article (brilliant and important, as usual) by Yakov Malkiel, on the ‘undulatory tendency’ which seems to have been characteristic of the accentual system of Late Common I&ZXP This analysis, and Mr. Butler’s remarks, are useful, and they should be integrated with my analysis which (as I made clear in ‘Future’, p. 155, et passim) is morphological, or better morpho-syntactical, rather than Furely phonological (I will soqn come back to this distinction).

It is claimed (‘Remarks’, p. 172) that the prosodic process hinted at above ‘holds the key to the solution to the problem of the for- mation of the Romance synthetic future’. In order to understand the weakness of such a claim it is necessary to notice the following fact: the arrthor of ‘Remarks’ disregards the complex morpho- syntactic framework which characterizes the periphrastic future form and thus strangely ignores the warnings written by Malkiel at the beginning of the essay on which he relies (p. 155) : ‘it will be helpful to set aside, at !east provisionally, all those forms in which ana,loglcal pressure may have been most active. rNe shall therefore, as a precautionary measure, introduce but few verb forms as evi- dence, and not on a par with other, less suspect slices of material; this restraint obviates the danger of premature attention to dis- tortions caused by inflection. We shall further abstain from ad- ducing compounds and affixal derivatives - especially such as have preserved their original compositional or derivational contour - * * . I.‘)

Now, the analysis in ‘Rerlarks’ 1101: onlv is based on a verbal paradigm, but this verbal puadigm is constituted by compound forms; and furthermore these compound forms hark back not to separate stems but to independent words. The word /phrase

these dialects, and I did not undertake a study of this problem; still. it is very tempting to consider it as a possible indirect confinatlru of the recon- struction Ia ‘Future’ to which the author of ‘Remarks’ objects in the quoted pajsage. In fact, this form could be the proof of the existence of an older variant l /bulcil/ of Old i?ench gorrpil, which would he a close and interesting parallel to the It&-Romance situation.

‘) On p. 158 Malklel insists on his intention ‘to disregard as far as possible’ verb forms; as for phrasal compounds, I noticed only one. in the rich array of forms offered in the article: CANNA FERULA, lit. ‘reed fennel’ > Spanish cagafsrla ‘giant fennel’. -

190 DISCUSSION

problem, which is perhaps the best instance of the delicate inter- locking of morphology and syntax, is not considered here, although in the quoted section (p. 155) of ‘Future’ I considered this frame- work, by representing-the following structures (what I called a ‘range of morpho-syntactic possibilities’) :

*/habeo #I Q Cbeo + / */-Ajo/

where # marks a deep syntactic boundary, by which the descendant Of HABED does not function as an auxiliary verb, -j- marks a weaker syntactic boundary (here the form functions as an auxiliary verb), and -marks, of course, a morphological boundary.8) _

The disregard for the morpho-syntactic framework leads to two related contradictions which, in my opinion, remove most of the possible relevance from the hypothesis expressed in ‘Remarks’. In the first place, while the HABEG forms are considered throughout the analysis as countertonic, at the very end of the article it is claimed that ‘the auxiliary was strongly stressed, as strongly, perhaps, as the infinitive’. But this contradiction is necessary, u:ithin the context of ‘Remarks’, in order to try to avoid the second

8) I think that it is not out of place here to mention several of the com- plexities involved in the prosodic analysis, complexities which do not appear clearly in ‘Remarks’. Let us consider only one of the persons of the verb, and let us disregard the problem presented by the proparoxytonic verbs (like LE~ERE, etc.). Even so, the analysis is far from simple, because there are at least two problems: the syllabic structure of the HABE form, and its status of word co,mponent or phrase component. It is true that in the quoted articie (p. 16) Malkiel remarks: ‘Strictly speaking, the Romanist concerned with primary hiatus operates not with trisyllabic RU-BE-US ‘reddish’ but wltb more advanced, compressed Late Latin [ru-bju]‘. Still, I think that in the evolution of the future periphrasis there is a mutation in this direction. The basic alternatives and successive stages, then, seem to be the following (I follow the style in which Malkiel’s schema is rewritten in ‘Remarks’) :

*!A-we-o kant&re/ $&sS”s or 6r.3 25

*/a-wjo Ifantlre, l&&4( ?) or Bi 3:

As it can be seen, the only stage in which we do not have the problem of choosing between a phrase-structure or a word-rtructure is the last one; but this is precisely tile stage which (as I argue in the main text) is highly doubt- ful for morpho-syntactic reajom.

DISCUSSION 191

and deeper contradiction, which can be described as follows: all the analysis presupposes that a deep relation existed between the auxiliary preposed to the infinitive and the infinitive itself; indeed, the analysis ma.kes sense only if it is assumed that the auxiliary was actually a proclictic morpheme with respect to the main verb.

But if this were true, how is it that all sq;&hetic for;ns are enclitic, including the para-synthetic forms of Ibero-Romance, while the proclitic construction with iiiE daeob forms usually require the intercalation of a preposiiion (Italian ho da cantare, Spanish he de cantar, etc.) ? If the recor.s”ruction proposed in ‘Remarks’ would represent the central strr -t._;: 5 the development of the future, we would expect to finli forms both synthetic and proclitic (for instance, form like **okkantare in Italo-Romance). On p. 175 of ‘Remarks’ we read that ‘The post-positioning of the tense and person marker (corresponding in the periphrastic future to the reflexes of HABi?RE) could be predicted on the strength of all other simple tenses in the Romance languages . . . ‘. Now, apart from the fact that (as I showed in the second part of ‘Future’, analyzing only a few of the Late Latin forms that I collected), the lateness of this post-positinning is doubtful, I find the first part of lihis statement at least puzzling. This is simply a re-statement of Bloom- field’s comment, which I criticized in ‘Future’ (p. !22); ir. fact it is much more objectionable, because Bloomfield’s caution is absent here (he wrote: ‘. . . above all, we mus: remember that Latin a.?d Romance have a complicated set of verb-inflections which served as a model for one-word tense forms’).

But it seems to me that this line of reasoning cannot be accepted: the existence of simple (one-word) tense forms cannot be invoked in order to explain the rise of the new Romance synthesis; indeed, the existence of these forms would rather explain what did ncjt

happen, namely the retention of the old Latin synthetic pattern. As for the compound forms: the ‘conditional’ reflects the same process and thus cannot be used in order to explain the genesis of the future, and thz compound Romance perfecturn (‘passato pros- simo’ in Italian Xerminology) reflects just the opposite kind of morpho-syntactic development, n?pely the permanence lunaffectsd by successive new syntheses) of the ‘analysis’ of an ohginal syn- thetic pattern, with the auxiliary element preceding the main verb and not morphologically incorporated into it. It is clear, then, that

192 DISC’JSSION

the hypothesis proposed in ‘Remarks’ tends to obscure the basic problems (one of which is too quickly disposed of, on p. 178, as a ‘pseudo-problem’).

One of these basic problems is the ‘cause’ of (better: the identifi- catie-. S: the complex of linguistic factors which iead to) the contrast between the syntactic ‘traditionalism’, from the etymological End typological point of view, of the synthetic future (future time expressed th:iough a periphrasis based on the present tense, and containing an auxiliary verb adjacent to the main verb) and the peculiarity of its morphological structure (e~~~Zit;c affixation of the original auxiliary verb, now become a verbal desinence of the main verb, which in its turn has become a verbal stem).s)

One last point must be menticned, bacause of its methodological interest. My original discussion of the phonological problem of 3 and U/V (pp. 129-140) was, however long, a secondary part of my basic inquiry, which (as it was made clear from the beginning, and indeed, already from the title) concerned a problem in morpho- syntax. The ‘Remarks’, on the contrary, are concerned only with phonological problems, even when they deal with the future p&cm. This difference is not simply siylistical: it seems to imply a different idea of the structure and development of human language. Many of the best r-presentatives of historical linguistics, scholars like Jerzy Kurvlowi~z. &mile Beqveniste, Yakov Malkiel, have often stressed * the primary role of morphoiogica! developments in linguistic change.10)

Et seems that this trend is a very promising and important one: the basic ‘causes’ of morpho-syntactic changes should be looked for

8, On this, cf. my article, ‘La genese du futor reman’ which is Lo appear in the Italian journal Lingua c sNk.

1s) For Kwykwicz, see the quotations on p. l2G and 122 of ‘Future’, and the discussion there; for Benveniste, cf. the opening sentence of the essay quoted ia ‘Rzmarks’: ‘The evolution of a language taken z a sign system consists in the mutations undergone by its categories’. As far as Malkiel is concerned, one can refer to the already quotedarticle (‘morphological pressures, pertaining to an entirely different order of glottodynamic forces, have inter- fwed with their [of the phonological tendencies] development’), and various other writings, such as, recently: ‘Linguistics aa a genetic science’, La~gwe. 43 (1967), 223-245, and ‘The inflectional paradigm as an occasional determi- nant of sound change’, on pp. 21-64 of the same v&me which contains the quoted article by Benveniste.

DISC~JSSION 193

in morpho-syntactic factors, and one should avoid the over-evalu- ation (which perhaps is one of the distinctive features of traditicna! Romance Iinguistics) of the importance cf purely phonological de- ve!o?ments, and of the importance (striztly corm:*ed to this view of phonology) of the strugg!e against homophony. I would only like to observe that this shift of emphasis could and should be based on a general idea of the structure of language; that IS, it should have a theoretical basis. It seems that, with some needed and important qualificatior.s,ll) transformational-generative grammar, with its concept of the status and Ale of the phonological component, may offer an adequate basis for this orientation of the analysis.

PAOLO VALES10