ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with mechanism for the accommodation of synonymy generated by contact between linguistic systems, namely the exploitation of recurrent, but abstract, patterns of differentiation within the inflectional paradigm of the verb. The foregoing has sought to show that language contact, and resultant 'borrowing', is a potent source of synonymy. Nearly all Romance languages have acquired allomorphy owing to historical differentiation of vowel quality in stressed and unstressed syllables. The paradigmatic patterns can be shown to serve as a powerful model for creation of novel allomorphy in the history of Italo-Romance. The Romance varieties of the Pyrenean area show that the morphological patterns may intervene in the integration of the verbs. The verb 'give' is expressed, in Italo-Romance as in the overwhelming majority of Romance languages, by reflexes of Latin dare.
