Paul M. Lloyd - From Latin to Spanish

Memoirs Of The

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Held at Philadelphia

For Promoting Useful Knowledge

Volume

PREFACE

Students of Spanish historical grammar have long felt the need for a new historical grammar of Spanish. Menndez Pidals classic Manual de gramtica histrica espaola was last revised in 1941, and, although it will never lose its value, can hardly be considered the latest word in the historical grammar of Spanish. V. Garcia de Diegos Gramtica histrica espaola of 1951 is only slightly more recent in date of publication.* During the twentieth century, much has been written on Romance and Spanish historical grammar and yet we still lack a synthesis of the research that has illuminated much of the phonetic and morphological development of Spanish. It was to fill this lack that this volume was written. The recent publication of Alvar and Pothers Morfologt histrica del espaol has made the section on inflectional morphology less useful than it might have been, but I believe that I have included in my own sections on inflectional morphology some aspects of study that may still be useful.

This volume was completed, to all intents and purposes, after many years of work and many delays, in 1981. A further year was required for typing the final version, and more than another year passed before the American Philosophical Society accepted it for publication. I have attempted to incorporate in the final version of the text some of the results of more recent research on various problems, but cannot be sure that everything of relevance since 1981 has been included. A second volume will take up problems of word formation and syntactic development.

This book owes much to many people. I can single out only a few who deserve special thanks: to my graduate students who have asked me so many questions over the years; to Curtis Blaylock for supplying material on Latin verbs and Old Spanish past participles which I have incorporated into the text; to Jerry Craddock, for his very useful collection of materials on Old Spanish sound change and morphological change; to Ernst Pul gram for a close reading of Chapter One and many suggestions for revisions; to Roger Wright for numerous other suggestions; to the University of Pennsylvania for a summer grant and two sabbatical leaves. The University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation very generously contributed a grant toward the costs of publication. Finally, I must make special mention of my teacher and friend, Yakov Malkiel, who read many sections of this volume in an early form, and whose immense contributions to Romance philology and Spanish historical grammar can hardly be calculated. His influence will be obvious on every page of this book.

* Thomas A. Lathrop. The evolution of Spanish. An introductory historical grammar (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 1980) and Melvyn C. Resnick, Introduccidn a la historia de la lengua espaiiola (Washington, DC. Georgetown University Press, 1981) are both intended as introductory texts for undergraduates.

PHONETIC SYMBOLS AND DIACRITICAL MARKS

(Most phonetic symbols in the text are the standard ones of the International Phonetic Alphabet, but in some cases other symbols are utilized.)

CHAPTER 1

On The Nature Of Linguistic Change

sound change and sound laws

One of the great accomplishments of historical linguistics in the nineteenth century was the demonstration of the regularity of sound change, and the establishment of such change as the object of scientific study. Although there has been considerable argument about details, and much disagreement about whether it is valid to regard sound change as essentially regular, in practice all students of historical linguistics have followed this principle. An overwhelming mass of evidence supports it, and no one has thus far been able to show that as a basis for the study of sound change the principle of regularity is not tenable.1 This principle means that when one examines the same words or morphemes at two stages in the evolution of a language, one finds that in a great number of cases most, if not all, examples of sound A, and certainly all characteristic examples, have become (or been replaced by) sound B. Thus, if a large number of words in Latin containing the consonant spelled with the letter T, e.g. (all examples given in the accusative singular form, minus the final -m) VTA life, SITI thirst, MTU mute, PRTU meadow, ROTA wheel, SCTU shield, STTU state; position, PATRE father, Latus side, and many more, are compared with their modern Spanish reflexes, it will be seen that the T is consistently replaced by a consonant written with the letter D: vida, sed, mudo, prado, rueda, miedo, escudo, estado, padre, lado. It is not difficult to find a great many examples of this kind of regular replacement in a wide variety of languages.

1 See Pulgram 1955 for a brief but pertinent discussion of the principle of regularity of sound change. Pulgram remarks, Up to this day, no reputable historical linguist has brought the charge that the working hypothesis of the regularity of sound laws does not work (61). The reason for this is simple: If authors did not take this stand [that sound change is regular], they would have no objective, scientific method of describing and classifying the phenomena of phonemic substitution.

A closer examination, however, will show that it is not sufficient to write down a simple formula such as Lat. /t/ > Sp. /d/ in order to sum up in a brief fashion the somewhat longer statement, The Latin consonant /t/ regularly is replaced by (or changes into) the modern Spanish consonant /d/. Complications appear as soon as one begins to examine a larger sample of Latin words containing /t/, e.g., Tres three, Tabula board, Tantu so much, Forte strong, Stare to stand, Autumnu autumn, Septe seven, Tectu roof, ceiling, Fortia strength, and others, and compare them with their Spanish descendants. In these cases the Latin /t/ has either remained unchanged or has been replaced by some other consonant: tres, tabla, tanto, fuerte, estar, otono, siete, techo, fuerza.

It is evident, therefore, that even in the case of some very simple sound changes, certain limitations must be put on the statement that sounds change regularly. The amended form of the principle must be, Sounds change uniformly in the same phonetic environment. In the formula illustrating the fate of Latin /t/, it would be necessary to say that Lat. /t/ becomes Sp. /d/ between vowels or between a vowel and /r/. A short form of this statement would be:

where V represents any vowel or diphthong (providing that we ignore those diphthongs that prevent voicing, and vowels in hiatus). In order to determine what happened to /t/ in other phonetic conditions, it would be necessary to classify all occurrences of /t/ and their modern Spanish equivalents and then examine the surrounding sounds to see how they have affected the /t/.

If one then sets out to examine another area of vocabulary, it will soon become apparent that further modifications of the basic principle are needed. If we take the Latin words CITARE to summon, call, EXPLICITU straightforward, Rotula little wheel, Paternu paternal, patrons patron, protector, Visitare to visit, VITALE vital, and compare them with their Spanish equivalents, we find that the /t/ has been retained: citar, explcito, rtula kneecap, paterno, patrn, visitar, vital. The phonetic environment in which the /t/ appears in these words in no way differs from those cited earlier in which it was replaced by /d/. These examples suffice to show that phonetic conditions alone cannot explain why /t/ has remained in these words. If, however, we attempt to find when these words first appear in written Spanish, it appears that the earliest attestation for any of them is 1220 for visitar. The other words have attested first appearances in writing at later dates: citar 1490, explcito 1737, rotula 1727, paterno 1343, patrn 1450, vital 1440 (Corominas 1967). Most of the items in which /t/ becomes /d/, on the other hand, have been part of the vocabulary of Spanish since the beginning. In other words, they have been used continually by speakers since the implantation of spoken Latin in the Iberian peninsula, without any special influence of literary forms. These phonetically aberrant words, on the contrary, which have not participated in this change, are learned words. That is, they were taken directly from literary Latin after the adoption of the new system of reading written Latin aloud instituted under the Carolingians as a part of the standardization of religious practice (Wright 1982). Therefore they do not reflect the change of /t/ > /d/ that characterized the popular words. As a result, we must limit the principle of regular sound change further: Sounds change regularly at the same period of time. Words borrowed from Latin or other languages at a period later than the one in which the /t/ > /d/ replacement occurred will not show that change. Also words that have not been a part of the popular vocabulary (i.e. the vernacular stock, which includes items transmitted orally) are not likely to show popular sound changes.2