Intersecting Paradigms: Preposition + Article Contraction and Leveling in Medieval Castile

0. Abstract and introduction. In his analysis of the koineization of multiple Romance dialects into modern Castilian Spanish, Donald Tuten (2000, 2003) describes the leveling of the preposition + definite article paradigms brought to Castile by dialectally diverse settlers. Contraction was frequent in many of these dialects; for example, con + la (“with ” + f. sg. def. article) often surfaced as a contracted form such as cona. Contraction did not surface identically across dialects; for example, the contracted form of con la was realized as cola or cona, depending upon the dialect. Further, the same forms did not contract in every dialect: some dialects contracted both con la and por la (“for ” + f. sg. def. article) as cona and pola, while others contracted only one form, i.e., cona but por la. In contrast, modern Castilian shows a uniform paradigm: with few exceptions, the modern forms do not contract; e.g. con + la and por + la surface respectively as con la and por la. Tuten claims that of the multiple preposition + article forms to which Castilian L1 acquirers were exposed, the non-contracted forms were the most transparent, as their components appeared independently in other contexts, which made them more learnable than th