Theme vowel allomorphy in Spanish verb inflection: An autosegmental optimality account

This paper proposes a new analysis of Spanish verb forms. It works from a general assumption in the Spanish literature that the Spanish verb consists of a root followed by a verb theme marker; these are followed by tense/aspect/mood and finally by person/ number. While this structure is often transparent, there are cases where it is unclear, leading to a variety of previous analyses. Problematic cases are accounted for here without violating this order of morphemes. The proposal is compared with the classical analysis by Harris and with a recent one by Arregi.