This book is the first ever comprehensive comparative–historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb that appear to be autonomously morphological in the sense that, although they can be shown to be persistent through time, they have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. Some of these patterns are well known in Romance linguistics, while others have scarcely been noticed. The sheer range of phenomena that participate in them far surpasses what Romance linguists had previously realized. The patterns constitute a kind of abstract leitmotif, which runs through the history of the Romance languages and confers on them a distinctive morphological phsyiognomy. Although intended primarily as a novel contribution to comparative–historical Romance linguistics, the book considers in detail the status of patterns that appear to be, in the terminology of Mark Aronoff, ‘morphomic’: a matter of ‘morphology by itself’, unsupported by determining factors external to the morphological system. Particular attention is paid to the problem of their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time. Why do abstract morphological patterns that quite literally do not make sense display such diachronic robustness? The evidence suggests that speakers, faced with different ways of expressing semantically identical material, seek out distributional templates into which those differences can be deployed. In Romance, the only available templates happen to be morphomic, morphologically accidental effects of old sound changes or defunct functional conditionings. Those patterns are accordingly exploited and reinforced by being made maximally predictable.