The interaction between theme vowels and secondary imperfectives in Slovenian

The curious case of ava and eva

Abstract

Our analysis targets two Slovenian secondary imperfectivizers characterized by comparable frequency and surface form, eva and ava. We consider arguments in favour of various morphological segmentations in an attempt to establish their structure. Both are argued to end in the theme vowel a, which also contains the hiatus-repairing floating segment ^v. In eva, the theme vowel ^va is preceded by the surviving morpheme e from the original perfective verb. In the case of ava, the theme vowel ^va is combined with the morpheme av, which also occurs in various different environments. We further argue that the surviving morpheme e from eva is not a theme vowel, but rather a derivational affix -- just like av.