Innovation in inflectional paradigms: the Greek imparisyllabic plurals between allomorphy and overabundance

This paper takes into account the issue of the imparisyllabic plurals of Modern Greek as a case of allomorphy and compares it with the situation observed in earlier linguistic stages of Greek, where the imparisyllabic plural forms coexist with imparisyllabic ones, thus resulting in a situation of morphological overabundance. In the first place, the status of MG imparisyllabic plurals as an instance of allomorphy is assessed and briefly discussed in the light of some recent contributions on the topic. Then, the paper focuses on the diachronic development of imparisyllabic plurals in the history of Greek, particularly in the Medieval and Early Modern phases, whereby some instances of coexistence of competing plural stems is framed as a case of morphological overabundance. Finally, the diachronic development observed in Greek from a situation of overabundance to one of allomorphy is discussed and some provisional conclusions on the relationship between the two phenomena are drawn.