Multi-Conditioned Sound Change and the Impact of Morphology on Phonology

Two ill-defined and controversial sound developments of late Old Spanish, namely the asymmetric diphthongizatioris ié > ì and ué > e , become better understandable if one selects as starting points a set of morphological rather than phonological conditions. Both verbal inflection and suffixal derivation can be invoked, including the rivalry of certain characteristic groups of preterits (- iemos, -ieste(s ) beside - imos, -iste(s) etc.) and the competition of pairs or clusters of functionally more or less related suffixes: - ero beside - uero, -eño alongside - ueño —in addition to the pressure exerted, in the ranks of hypocoristics, by the close-knit series - ico, -ito and - in(o) on isolated - iello.