Getting rid of zeroes

Abstract This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on employing zero morphology in theoretical modelling (cf. Dahl & Fábregas 2018 , Iordăchioaia & Melloni 2023 ). As an empirical case, we focus on Italian deadjectival ‘A-verbs’ that are either derived through overt suffixation (e.g. solid-ific-are ‘solidify’) or by converting the category of the base without any additional morphological marking (e.g. ferm-ø-are ‘stop’). Our proposal is that the need for zero derivational suffixes can be eradicated if one adopts the Nanosyntactic model of (phrasal) lexicalisation (cf. Starke 2009 , Caha et al. 2025 amongst others), and that the contrast between the two types of ‘A-verbs’ can be explained away as an effect of varying sizes of lexical items rather than the absence of overt affixes. In addition, we show that our no-zero account can be extended towards the inflectional domain in both groups of verbs as well, ultimately eliminating the need for zero morphology altogether.