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Old Spanish Resistance to Diphthongization, or Previous Vowel Lengthening?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Yakov Malkiel
Yakov Malkiel*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

The Latin vowels ě ⊖, pronounced in Late Antiquity as /ɛ / respectively, yielded rising diphthongs, usually /je we/, in Old Spanish stressed syllables, whether checked or free: FěRRU > fierro ‘iron’, C⊖RNU > euerno ‘horn’. Before certain palatal and prepalatal consonants (e.g. /j ž/), the monophthongs failed to diphthongize: SěDEAT > /sɛja/ > sea ‘let it be’, H⊖DIE > /je/ > (h)oy ‘today’, FOLIA > /fλa/ > foja ‘leaf’. However, the same environment long believed to have blocked diphthongization in Old (or Proto-) Castilian has been credited with stimulating that process to the north of the Pyrenees.

A new attack on the old problem is here undertaken, starting with the apophonically conditioned pairs RěGERE/RēGULA, TěGěRE/TěGULA, and SěCāRE/SēCULA. In a backward section of the Republic and the Empire, speakers could easily have been misled into transmuting SPěCULU ‘mirror’ into *SPēCULU etc., with /e: o:/—not subject to diphthongization—substituted for /ɛ / in words of the indicated syllabico-accentual structure.

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Research Article
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Language , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1984, pp. 70 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by Linguistic Society of America

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