Resumen de The morphology of schwa in the history of French
First conjugation verbs appear with an unetymological schwa in the 1st person singular of the present indicative and in the present subjunctive in later Old French texts. This feature of ‘schwa generalization’ has been traditionally explained as analogical to verbs in which the vowel had been triggered phonotactically (cf. entrer) and to the subjunctive of non-1st conjugation verbs.
This paper will attempt a reinterpretation of these facts in the framework of natural morphology. It will become clear that schwa generalization cannot be considered an isolated phenomenon for the evolution of French, but does, in fact, perform a vital role in the global change-over from Latin to Old French to Modern French inflectional morphology.
