Defective verbs in Portuguese: a morphomic approach

Abstract This article provides evidence via a statistical analysis of corpus data that defectivity in Portuguese constitutes a psychological reality for speakers. It then argues that the morphome-based explanation for Spanish defective verbs is the most appropriate to explain defectivity in Portuguese. Morphomes are abstract distributional patterns of allomorphy based on form-form correspondences alone. The importance of these patterns has not been fully recognised within cognitive linguistics due to their lack of reference to meaning. Morphomes may not be ‘meaningful’ in the narrow sense, i.e. relating to ‘system-external information’, however, they are in the broader sense of them being ‘informative’. Morphomes are extremely informative since they exhibit systematic patterns of form that have a high predictive value within the morphological system. Within such a broader conception of meaning, morphomes have essentially the same predictive value as ‘meaning-driven’ patterns. In this article I present further evidence in favour or morphomes and I argue that Cognitive Linguistics should be open to the possibility of the importance of form-form relationships.