Paying the inheritance tax: Novel and preserved overabundance in Latin prefixed verbs

This paper analyses how derivational history influences inflectional behaviour by focusing on the phenomenon of overabundance – the presence of multiple forms within the same paradigm cell – in Latin prefixed verbs. By integrating data from multiple sources – namely, the PrinParLat lexicon and the LASLA corpus – this work investigates two key aspects: the emergence of novel overabundance patterns in prefixed derivatives, and the preservation (or lack thereof) of overabundance patterns from base lexemes to their derivatives. Results show that even for derivational processes where inflectional behaviour is expected to be inherited from the base to the derivative, this is not exceptionless, but an “inheritance tax” needs to be paid: such processes can both introduce new overabundance patterns and fail to preserve existing ones.