Resumen de De DĔDĒRŬNT a dieron: en torno a la fase inicial de un cambio a la postre fonético-morfológico
This study focuses on how consonantal weakening, i.e., lenition, affecting intervocalic -/d/- must have been at the root of the first phase of the development of the Latin third person preterite plural form DĔDĒRŬNT in the Iberian Peninsula. Latin DĔDĒRŬNT, I contend, produced the reconstructed forms *deeron, then *deron (derunt) in Old Spanish. Deestes (< Latin DĔDĬSTĬS) and deistis (< Latin DĔDĬSTĬS), two High Medieval Portuguese second person plural preterite forms of the verb DĀRĔ, which also lost intervocalic -/d/-, lend support to this hypothesis. Paired with the attestation of Old Navarro-Aragonese third person singular future negative non deerit (< Latin NŌN DĔDĔRĬT), with no intervocalic -/d/-, whereas the consonant most likely existed in Latin, the documental evidence adduced in support of the proposed view, all attributed to the eleventh century, allows me to contradict the prevalent view that invokes stress shift and subsequent loss of the full syllable -DĔ-, i.e., haplology, to explain the innovation of diphthongal Old Spanish dieron. Possible later levelling in the direction third person singular → third person plural might ultimately explain the last phase of this very Spanish innovation.
