OT: Origin of Catalan reinforced weak pronouns

Does anyone know where the Catalan reinforced weak pronouns come
from? Many of them appear to be the reverse of the corresponding
plain form weak pronouns, e.g. plain forms me/te/se : reinforced
forms em/et/es. Did these come about via metathesis, or by some other
route (e.g. by prefixation of e- followed by deletion of final -e)?

Also tangentially related is something I've wondered about for a
while: do linguists make a distinction between the *process* of
metathesis and *end results* which appear to show metathesis (whether
in fact those results came about through said process)?

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