Re: Spanish pronouns

Basilius ániyë:
  I read somewhere that in Old Spanish there was a contracted form _jelo_
 or _xelo_, corresponding to Italian _glielo_. Like in many other cases,
 Old Spanish had <j> for Vulgar Latin palatalized /l_j/. (Note that Spanish
 <ll> mostly descends from V. L. clusters, and wasn't a palatalized sound
 at first).

 This <jelo> got to be pronounced /Selo/ at some stage, and then was mixed
 with se + lo /selo/ (instead of developing regularly to some /xelo/).

I've seen this form too (in El Cid). But how would it get mixed up with "se
lo" in
the first place? It is my understanding that a sentence such as "él se lo da"
would have originally meant "he gives himself it"  whereas "él xelo da" meant
"he give him (another person) it"  These two concepts are pretty distinct.

Elliott