1. Prothesis of [a]- in verbs and nouns
In Genoese, the prothesis – that is, the addition in initial position – of a vowel [a]- is particularly frequent in many verbal forms. These verbs may therefore occur in double form, for example: arregordâ [areɡurˈdaː] ~ regordâ [reɡurˈdaː] “to remember”; addeuviâ [adøːˈvjaː] ~ deuviâ [døːˈvjaː] “to use”; allevâ [aleˈvaː] ~ levâ [leˈvaː] “to remove, take away”; ammiâ [aˈmjaː] ~ miâ [ˈmjaː] “to look”; arrecheugge [areˈkødʒˑe] ~ recheugge [reˈkødʒˑe] “to gather, collect”. Although this phenomenon may originally have had an intensifying function, in practice both forms—with or without the initial vowel—are equivalent and entail no difference in meaning. The phenomenon also affects some deverbal nouns, such as arregòrdo [areˈɡɔːrdu] ~ regòrdo [reˈɡɔːrdu] “memory”, allevamacce [ale(ː)vaˈmatʃˑe] ~ levamacce [ale(ː)vaˈmatʃˑe] “stain remover”, or arrecuggeita [arekyˈdʒejta] ~ recuggeita [rekyˈdʒejta] “collection”. In these cases as well, the two forms normally do not imply any difference in meaning. In DEIZE, forms with or without [a]- prothesis are lemmatized under the variant considered most frequent in general usage.