The emergence and (occasional) loss of multiple exponence in the history of Basque

A number of inflectional forms both in standard and dialectal Basque are characterized by multiple exponence or pleonastic morphology. Doubly or multiply marked morphological constructions compete at times with their singleton counterparts. Multiple exponence, which has had a significant presence throughout the history of Basque, develops out of various diachronic sources and through different processes, and these are the main concern of this paper. Some inflectional pleonasms appear to emerge simply as a side effect of changes like analogical extension and externalization of inflection. In other cases, however, it can be argued that multiple exponence, especially when it relies on reinforcement, is itself the target of change. The different innovations that give rise to multiple exponence in Basque are classified and discussed here, as a prior step to accounting for the deeper factors that may motivate the relative commonness of pleonastic morphology in the Basque grammar. In this part of the study, I lean on notions like morphological awareness and fluidity of inflection, which may arguably explain at least some of the peculiarities of multiple exponence as it is found in Basque, although they can at the same time be of wider relevance. Finally, I focus on sporadic cases of declining pleonastic morphology, paying special heed again to the diachronic processes that underlie them.