Re: L1 learning question

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Pablo Flores wrote:
>> IIRC these verbs had long /o:/ in Latin, which was diphthongized in
>> Spanish as /we/ when stressed, and shortened to /o/ otherwise. It
>> might be that most present tense forms take the irregular inflection,
>> so the child is exposed to them all the time.
>
>You're a little off.  Those verbs in Latin had a *short* /o/.  In early
>Vular Latin, the long/short distinction was lost, and a new tense/lax
>distinction was formed.
I had no idea about that! But I'm sure I read the explanation I gave
somewhere -- obviously it was wrong, or I missed a part of it. Thanks for
correcting me.


>So, in Old Spanish, there were seven vowels, /i/, /e/, /E/, /a/, /O/,
>/o/, and /u/ (as in modern Portuguese and Italian).  Stressed /E/ and
>/O/ regularly became /je/ and /wo/ (which then beceame /we/).  So, a
>verb like /pOder/ was easily predictable as /pwedo/ in the 1st Sing.
>Later, unstressed /E/ and /O/ became /e/ and /o/.
>
>I suppose that since these "irregularities" occur in the present tense,
>they are heard often enough for children to recognize the pattern.  So,
>I suppose they can't really be called "irregular".
Oh yes, the children do recognize it, but they make the mistake anyway.
These *are* irregularities, because nowadays Spanish doesn't distinguish
vowels by tenseness, so there's no way you could know where a modern /o/
came from. So you may have

"toser" -> "yo toso"
"mover" -> "yo muevo"

The pattern is identical and the only way of knowing about the irregularity
is knowing the Latin original word.


>> "querer" -> "yo quiero, nosotros queremos" sometimes *"yo quero"
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this common in informal adult speach
>as well?  I'm pretty sure I've read of such analogies in at least *some*
>dialects of Spanish.  Perhaps this is more likely to occur that *moro,
>because the change from quiero --> quero merely envolves dropping a /j/,
>while muero --> moro involves dropping a /w/ *and* changing the vowel to
>/o/.
Not necessarily in informal speech. Many people get the inflection wrong
when they talk fast and/or carelessly. And yes, I think the /je/ -> /e/
mistake is more frequent than the /we/ -> /o/. The reason is probably what
you mentioned.

Another common mistake occurs on verbs ending in "-ear" such as "alinear".
Most people say /ali'njar/, and the verbal inflection adjusts to that
pattern, giving

  "alinio" /a'linjo/  instead of correct  "alineo" /ali'neo/

In this case the mistake is more noticeable because of the stress shift.


--Pablo Flores

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