The Conjugations of Italian

Abstract

Beyond these three categories, however, there is considerable controversy. On the basis of the position of stress and the presence or absence of the additional sequence -iscin some verbal forms, we find arguments for up to five verb conjugations (see Danesi 1976 and Vincent 1987 for discussion). The question is of relevance not only to teachers of Italian, but to scholars interested in the morphophonological analysis of Italian. This paper addresses the question of how many conjugations there are in the Italian verbal system from a morphological standpoint. We restrict our attention here to what can be called standard Italian. The verbal systems of regional varieties of Italian and of dialects often vary considerably and merit systematic study in their own right (see Rohlfs 1966). We examine in this paper such factors as productivity and the way in which verbal forms participate in various word formation processes, as well as certain historical developments and the usual issues of stress placement and the presence of -isc-. Despite interesting points in favor of more or even fewer conjugation classes, we conclude that the most convincing evidence nevertheless requires us to posit three classes.