In this paper, I discuss partly unpublished data from the area around Nuoro and from northern Oristanese. I focus primarily on the highly irregular verbs ‘to do/make’, ‘to give’, and ‘to say’, which are characterised by polymorphism. Stem alternations within verbal paradigms can be analysed in the light of morphomic theory (cf. Aronoff 1994; Maiden 2011, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021). As observed by Maiden (2011: 227 and 263) and, in greater detail, by Loporcaro (2012: 17; 2013: 147–152), in central-northern Sardinian the distribution of different verbal stems across the cells of the inflectional paradigm primarily follows the L-pattern, largely as a result of the so-called yod-effect.
Fieldwork conducted in the Nuoro area and in the transitional zone of northern Oristanese between the central-northern and central-southern Sardinian systems (cf. Wagner 1938–1939; Floris 2024) has yielded new and interesting data, particularly concerning the polymorphic verbs mentioned above and verbs characterised by suppletion, such as ‘to go’.
References
Aronoff, M., Morphology by Itself, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994.
Floris, B., Aspetti della morfo-sintassi verbale di varietà sarde della Sardegna centro-occidentale, PhD thesis, Università per Stranieri di Siena, 2024.
Loporcaro, M., “Stems, Endings and Inflectional Classes in Logudorese Verb Morphology”, Lingue e Linguaggio 11.1, 2012, pp. 5–34.
Loporcaro, M., “Morphomes in Sardinian Verb Inflection”, in Cruschina, S., Maiden, M. and Smith, J. C. (eds), The Boundaries of Pure Morphology: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 137–160.
Maiden, M., “Morphonological Innovation”, in Maiden, M., Smith, J. C. and Ledgeway, A. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 216–267.
Maiden, M., “Morphomes”, in Maiden, M. and Ledgeway, A. (eds), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 708–721.
Maiden, M., The Romance Verb: Morphomic Structure and Diachrony, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Maiden, M., “Di che cosa sono fatti i «morfomi»? Esempi tratti dai dialetti italoromanzi”, in Del Puente, P. (ed.), Dialetti: per parlare e parlarne. Atti del quinto Convegno Internazionale di Dialettologia. Progetto A.L.Ba, Potenza, Lauria, Vaglio 1–3 Dicembre 2016, Venosa (Pz): Osanna Edizioni, 2019, pp. 115–126.
Maiden, M., “The Morphome”, Annual Review of Linguistics 7, 2021, pp. 89–108.
Wagner, M. L., “Flessione nominale e verbale del sardo antico e moderno”, L’Italia dialettale 14, 1938, pp. 93–170, and 15, 1939, pp. 1–29.

