Some Interactions Between Word, Foot, and Syllable Structure in the History of Spanish

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the loss of unstressed vowels in Old Spanish from an Optimality- Theoretic perspective. The conditions of vowel loss are made explicit: only posttonic vowels are affected, that is, vowels appearing after primary or secondary stress, whereas initial vowels are generally preserved. Additionally, the loss of final vowels, known as apocope, is conditioned by a morphological constraint that bans deletion of lexical material. According to this constraint, only -e can be deleted in final position, because of its status as a desinence without meaning. The process of vowel loss in medial position, known as syncope, already began in Latin with the goal of optimizing the prosodie format of words and it continued in Romance, West Romance being more affected by it. The increase of syncope in Old Spanish is interpreted as the result of Germanic influence, whose stress-timed characteristics made stressed syllables differ from unstressed syllables more markedly in prominence. Moreover, final vowel deletion was partly conditioned by the limitation on complex codas. Between the 11th and the 13th centuries this ban on complex codas was removed and all cases of final -e tended to be lost, being again restored towards the end of the 13th century. The increase of apocope is interpreted as taking place under the influence of exogenous forces, especially French. The chapter closes with a discussion of the formalization of grammatical change by constraint demotion and promotion. The conclusion is reached that constraint demotion is the normal means of endogenous sound change, whereas constraint demotion followed by promotion of the same constraint might be a clear sign of externally conditioned change.