A Small Old Spanish Mystery: Why Wasn’t did(e) the First Singular Preterite of dar ‘to give’?

Reprinted, with slight revisions, from Homenaje a Jose Durand ([Homage to Jose Durand] Cortest, Luis [Ed], Madrid: Verbum, 1993, 183-188). The phonologically regular outcomes of Latin 'I saw' & 'I stood' in Old Spanish, & respectively, are attested as nondominant varian...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Romance philology 2006-01, Vol.60, p.215-220
Main Author: Craddock, Jerry R
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Reprinted, with slight revisions, from Homenaje a Jose Durand ([Homage to Jose Durand] Cortest, Luis [Ed], Madrid: Verbum, 1993, 183-188). The phonologically regular outcomes of Latin 'I saw' & 'I stood' in Old Spanish, & respectively, are attested as nondominant variants for centuries; whereas the expected form */did(e)/ 'I gave' from Latin is absent from even the earliest Spanish sources. It is proposed that the same process of haplology that accounts for the emergence of the regular second & third conjugation third person plural preterite in , inexplicable by phonological change, operated throughout the paradigm of prefixed verbs of the Latin 'I lost' type, producing eg 'they lost' from */perd(epsilon)(de)runt/ & 'I lost' from */perd(epsilon)di/ after metaphony to */perdidi/, whereupon the process of haplology was extended to unprefixed but otherwise homophonous */didi/ 'I gave'. References. J. Hitchcock
ISSN:0035-8002
2295-9017
2295-9017
DOI:10.1484/J.RPH.2.305745