The Morphology and Phonology of Inflection

This chapter describes the morphology of nominal and verbal inflection of Portuguese and the way it interacts with phonology. It provides an overview of some relevant studies produced by authors of Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. The discussion concerning the phonology and morphology of inflection in Portuguese involves the traditional issues and controversies concerning the nature of phonological rules or constraints and whether, or to what extent, these are allowed to refer to morphological categories. Most authors dealing with the phonology of mid-vowels in the Portuguese verb agree that their varying surface shape can be predicted by three generalizations that apply in complementary contexts. Future studies will hopefully provide additional evidence disambiguating which part of the alternations under discussion in the chapter is fully productive and which part is not, with the ensuing consequences for the architecture of the phonological grammar.