The Old Spanish -ie imperfect

This study presents for the first time a novel solution for the origin and demise of the Old Spanish -ie imperfect tense ending, through the comprehensive documentation of Old Spanish and dialectal literatures spanning six centuries. The extant phonetically-motivated and analogically-driven explanations for the origin of the OSp -ie fail to consider the effects of external influences on the imperfect paradigm of Old Spanish.Based on structural, chronological, and dialectal evidence, the philological approach employed here reveals that the OSp -ie imperfect can no longer be regarded as a Castilian innovation, nor can it be associated accurately with the earliest period of Iberian Romance. Rather, the OSp -ie imperfect appears in 13th century 'standard' literature after Old Aragonese developed its fully-differentiated -ie preterite paradigm and after the Gallo-speaking influence associated with the Cluniac reforms entered Spain. Crucially, this account is consonant with the fact that no trace of a simple past tense -ie variant appeared in the Galician-Portuguese dialect at any time.This analysis makes a second major contribution to the field of Hispanic philology. Current scholarship continues to associate the disappearance of the OSp -ie from 'standard' medieval literature with the beginning of the 14th century. However, manuscripts dated up to the mid-15th century reveal a frequency of -ie imperfect use falling between 30% and 45%, and others from as late as the end of the 15th century reveal a frequency of use between 10% and 20%.By comparing different manuscripts of the same work, and the manuscripts of different works by the same author, the use of the OSp -ie imperfect has been clearly dated at the aforementioned frequencies for the following works: Documentos linguisticos, Documentos del Alto Aragon, Poema de Fernan Gonzalez, Primera cronica general, Cronica abreviada, Fuero de Jaca, Libro de la monteria, Arte cisoria, Tratado de la consolacion, Los doze trabajos de Ercules, and Carcel de amor. Thus, the claim that the Old Spanish -ie imperfect died in the 14th century is no longer tenable.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio