The Unvoicing of Old Spanish Sibilants

Author(s): ANDRÉ MARTINET

Source: Romance Philology , November, 1951 February, 1952, Vol. 5, No. 2/3, ANTONIO
G. SOLALINDE MEMORIAL ISSUE (November, 1951 February, 1952), pp. 133-156
Published by: Brepols; University of California Press

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 •Ogo. The Unvoicing of Old
Spanish Sibilants

ANDRÉ MARTINET

I. Introduction

Among the Romance languages spoken today, Spanish stands out as th

whose phonemic pattern is simplest. No other one is satisfied with only
vowels and no more phonemes than there are letters in the Latin alph
This simplicity does not, however, result from non-participation in the
Latin and early medieval phonological changes which considerably
mented the phonemic inventory of practically all Romance dialects. If
lexical matters Iberia would seem at times to have been more conservative
than other areas, it originally shared, perhaps with a certain delay, most
of the early phonological innovations common to Gaul and Northern Italy.
Castilian in particular, with its fairly general diphthongization of Ě and Ö,
appears very soon, in contrast with its Iberian neighbors, as a rather 'pro-
gressive' dialect. In the first stages of their phonological evolution, Iberian
Romance in general, and its central northern varieties in particular, seem not
to have departed from the usual course of Romance development. Later, of
course, individual Western Romance dialects diverged widely. French in
particular underwent a succession of drastic changes which eventually com-
pletely set it apart from its congeners, especially in accentual and quantitative
matters. But, in many respects, French did little more than precede, often by
many centuries it is true, the other forms of Romance along the common
road: widespread nasalization is found in Portuguese and must have existed
in Provençal; the shift from [u] to [y] French shares with Provençal, the
northwestern dialects of Italy, and, more recently, Insular Portuguese,1 and
the total elimination of unstressed post-tonic vowels is nothing but the final
outcome of a two-thousand-year-old tendency to weaken them. In the Iberian
peninsula, Catalan and even Portuguese, with all its innovations, have in no
essential respect departed from the general Western Romance phonemic
make-up.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Castilian, as we know it first from glosses,
later from literary productions, would seem to have followed the common
path. The long Arabic interlude, if it did decisively color the lexicon, seems

1 See F. M. Rogers, "Insular Portuguese Pronunciation: Madeira," HR, XIV (1946),

235-253; idem, "Porto Santo and Eastern Azores," ibid., XVI (1948), 1-32.
133

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 13Ą ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

not to have affected the more in

of the language. At the dawn of
nological changes come to light.
Then, in the second half of the s
seventeenth century, revoluti
confused; three voiced phoneme
parts, and the fricative pattern
In less than a century, the con
have suffered more thorough-goin
millennium. Periods of rapid an
elsewhere: about a century earlie
beyond recognition; and, throu
its unaccented final vowel and f
until then unknown in Romanc
previously acknowledged tren
languages, as when we find in
respects similar to the one we h
feature of the set of sixteenth-c
and, it would seem, suddenly de
There is nothing exceptional in
[0] and [x]. Old French [0] was n
[Ö], but most Franco-Provençal
dorsal fricative may be heard in
speech. Needless to say, phonem
where, but a merger of voiced a
to word-final position is, on th
Romance. Outside of Castilian, it
Southern France2 which happen
features, and where we may ha
tendencies which we shall event
side of the Pyrenees.
This phonemic merger is boun
scholars who have become accus
particularly, phonological chang
of view, since they may legitim
be induced to blur three phonem
decisive rôle in the economy of
chronic phonemics is to determi
by a phonemic opposition in dist
forms may prevent it from bein
tion.3 Now, it is an established

2 A. G. Haudricourt and A. G. Juilla

tisme français (Paris, 1949), d. 68.
8 Ibid., p. x.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 135

prove incapable of surviving if potent factors a

is the duty of the phonologist to try to identify
order to get a clearer idea of the nature of the
which tend to disrupt the existing patterns,
mutual understanding which work for conservat
Before we endeavor to elucidate the problem of
responsible for the set of changes under conside
detailed presentation of the phonemic units conc

Old Castilian Spanish texts distinguish, in intervocalic

The parallelism of other Western Romance dialects, the
voicing wherever Classical Latin geminates are elim
grammarians like Antonio de Nebrixa,6 all seem to indi
counterpart of the phoneme rendered by -ss-. It is mor
exact specific articulation of these two phonemes must
sibilants, just like Lat. s which they continue and Mo
from them; they mrv, at some early period, have had
Fr. or It. s, but it seems that, around 1500, at the time
have been articulated with the tip of the tongue agains
Modern Spanish.6
In the course of the history of Old Spanish, it becam
tinguish, in spelling, between ç (also c before i, e )7 on t
except in word-final position where z, the old favorite,
tive evidence and various testimonies point to an aff
indicating a voiceless phoneme which we might transcr
part [dz]. In word-final position, however, where the d
nemes was neutralized, z must have stood for [ts].* Wha
glide was is difficult to tell. But it seems clear that, aroun
ç and z stood were not the affricati ve counterparts of
Throughout the sixteenth century, grammarians identif
Italian phonemes rendered by means of z, namely /ts/
For Old Spanish x, overwhelming evidence points to a
which the French represent by means of ch and the
case of j, or g before i, e, is more perplexing: initial
consonant 1 or Vulgar Latin palatal G, phonetically bo
from a purely Castilian evolution from early Romanc
points to a hushing articulation, but whether affricativ
decide. For initial [j], we might assume a reinforcement
must account for the [dž] of so many Romance dialec
to [dž]. Yet, the fact that early Romance [j] is retained
front accented vowels as in ya, yeso , and dropped befor

4 On the probable connection between the two phen

clusives ana Affricates with Reference to Some Problems of Romance Phonology,"
Word , V (1949), 121.
6 A. Alonso, ' 'Examen de las noticias de Nebrija sobre antigua pronunciación espa-
ñola," NRFH, III (1949), 1-82 [referred to hereafter as Alonso, "Examen"].
6 Ibid. y p. 58f. We write s and z for the apicoalveolar articulations.
7 Cf. J. D. M. Ford, "The Old Spanish Sibilants, [Harvard J ¡studies and Notes in
Philology and Literature, VII (1900), 2, n. 2.
8 See e.g. R. J. Cuervo, "Disquisiciones sobre antigua ortogratia y pronunciación
castellana," in RH, II (1895), 1-69; V (1898), 273-313; reprinted in Disquisiciones filo-
lógicas, I (Bogotá, 1939), 149 [here quoted as Cuervo, Disquisiciones ].
9 Ford, p. 94 ff. 10 Alonso, "Examen," p. 28 f. 11 Ibid., p. 75.

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 136 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

points to a tendency to streng

instead that back vowels deter
shift from [j] to [žļ. As regar
[j] before becoming a hushin
; poyo (from podiu).12 Theref
We should thus reckon with a
affricative intervocalic varian
out by Amado Alonso,13 there
if the arguments derived by
correspondences should fail to
general, ángel , vergel 16 wou
pronunciation initially and after consonants. However, intervocalically, as in viejo ,
paja, ojo, Judeo-Spanish has a hushing fricative which may well represent the actual
peninsular practice at the time of the expulsion. Alonso himself is ready to admit [ž]
as a combinatory variant of the j phoneme. This [ž] could result from a weakening of
a former intervocalic [dž]. It is therefore likely that most standard Castilian speakers at
the end of the fifteenth century used [dž] initially and [ž] intervocalically, but we shall
see later that, in some sections of the Castilian speaking area, the fricative pronunciation
must have been usual in all positions.
We shall therefore assume that, before the shift with which we are con-
cerned, Standard Spanish had the following sibilants

ts (c or ç, z finally) ś (s, ss-) š ( x )

dz ( z ) ź (-s-) ž or dž (J, or g before i, e)

to which the affricate [tš] i.e., ch should be added.

Less than a century later, we must, on the basis of inc
that standard Castilian speakers pronounced [0], a voi
former [ts] and [dz], [x], a voiceless dorsal spirant, instead
[ź] as well as [ś].
It is a basic tenet of structural linguistics that individu
fied and understood only by reference to the whole patte
ent part. In a similar way, we can never expect to accou
we consider it in the frame of the pattern where it tak
ation of the pattern before and after the change ofte
either to discover some of its causes or, at least, to inter
more general trend. In the case of Old Spanish sibilants,
they all participate in a shift which equally affects the
of the voiced phonemes with their voiceless counterparts
by comparing the whole pattern before and after the sh
standing of the causes of that wholesale merger.

II. The Consonantal Pattern After the Change

We may begin with the easier half of our task, that of setting up th
pattern of Spanish after the change. We should in theory reconstruct it a
been in the second half of the seventeenth century, but, in view of th

12 R. Menéndez Pidal, Manual de gramática histórica española (8th ed.; M

pp. 124 f., 132, 152 f. Ê. Bourciez, Éléments de linguistique romane (3d ed.
pp. 406, 411.
13 "Examen," p. 73.
14 "Correspondencias arábigo-españolas," RFH , VII (1946), 57 ff.
15 Ibid., p. 15, n. 1.

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 THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 137

stability it has evinced since that time, we shall find it e

pattern of contemporary Castilian Spanish and, if necess
discounting such changes as may have taken place du
The task of establishing this pattern is fairly easy, tha
of the pronunciation of that language by Tomás Navarro
phonemic pattern of Castilian Spanish by George Trage
description. If we do not simply refer our readers to Tra
it is not at all because we doubt the general validity of
cause the pattern of phonemes he presents is, in some
binatory latitudes of some of them,18 rather than upon
mically relevant features.
If we exclude nasals and liquids as irrelevant to our pur
consonants tend to conform to three distinct articulator
four phonemes which the spelling renders by means of p
vowels).19 Normally, they are firmly articulated voic
Another type is characterized by a generally weak arti
One of the possible actualizations of the phonemes invol
rounded by sounds of open articulation, between vowels
but weak spirants with little friction, which might be d
lated voiced stops. They correspond to 6, d, y , and g (or
tinction between the first and second types tends to b
position.
A third type comprises four phonemes rendered in the spelling by means of /, z (or c
before front vowels), s, and j (or g). They are firmly articulated fricatives, normally
voiceless, though they may be more or less voiced before a following voiced consonant.21
Every one of the twelve phonemes listed above is further characterized by a local
articulation: p is bilabial and so is 6; whatever difference can be found in the local
articulation of p and b is due to their belonging to type (1) and (2) respectively, so that
p/b can be described as a correlative pair ; / is normally a labiodental and not a bilabial,
but its nature as a firmly articulated fricative would hardly be compatible with a bi-
labial articulation. As a matter of fact, we see that in the most varied languages phone -
mically independent voiceless bilabial fricatives assume a labiodental articulation which
seems to be the only way whereby they can escape the fate of all fol's, namely weakening
to [h] and eventual elimination. Therefore, we may say that the articulation of / de-
viates from that of p and b only insofar as its specific articulation as a strong fricative
makes it necessary, and we can posit for Castilian Spanish a labial triad p/b/f.
The apicodental t is to d what p is to b, and the firmly articulated voiceless fricative
z( = [0j) forms with t and d an apicodental triad, since its interdental nature may be
considered as determined by its non-plosive character.
The dorsal c and g form a pair parallel to p/b and t/d and can be combined with j(- [x])
into a dorsal triad, since the somewhat deeper, at times uvular, articulation of j may be
considered as resulting from its nature of strong fricative, as is clear from many lan-
guages which present a phonemically independent [x] by the side of dorsal occlusives.
The phoneme rendered by means of y cannot be said to be the exact lenis counterpart
of ch. The palatal contact is usually broader with the former than with the latter, the
acoustic result being in one case more ' 'palatal," in the other more hushing. The apico-

16 Manual de pronunciación española (New York, 1944) [referred to hereafter as

Navarro, Manual] .
17 "The Phonemes of Castilian Spanish, TCLP , VIII (1939), 217 ff. See now E.
Alarcos Llorach, Fonologia española (Madrid, 1950), pp. 105-121.
18 Trager, p. 219: "The. . . reason for not placing these two phonemes [ch and y ' with
the 'stops' is that they never enter into uni-syllabic clusters."
19 Navarro, Manual , §§79, 98, 118, 125.
20 Ibid., §§80-81, 99-100, 119-120, 12&-127. 21 Ibid., §§88, 92, 100-107, 131.

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 138 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

alveolar fricative s is acoustic

would be fully so. Yet, in some
takable tendency to group ch, y
the labials, the apicodentals, a
s is widely articulated as a full
Toledo, on the contrary, ch t
affricative counterpart of s.23
of the Spanish-speaking world,
"palatal" quality.
The phonemic situation can be summarized by means of the following chart:

Labial Dental Alveopalatal Dorsal

Fortis p t ch c
Lenis h d y g
Fricative f z s j

The only non-nasal a

which does not appea
the spelling renders by
that of the phonemes
occlusive pronunciatio
with some popular sp
-gü- clusters of the s
conelude that /gw/ an
normal actualization i
variant in other posit
reckon in Castilian ph
hueco ( güeco ), /xw/ as
If we now try to trac
reach the period imm
which we are mainly c
had just shifted its [š]
a sort of fricative cou
anything but i and u
has been at work to r
guage according to th
It may be useful in th
ency." A number of s
been tempted to prese
the part of the speak
determined a number
phonemic pattern is
above, if we assume t
situation where four
ing, and dorsal ones, c
veniently describe as f
22 Ibid., 23 Menéndez
§109.
24 Navarro,
26 Manual ,
Menéndez §§
26 Labiovelars are assumed, at least for certain Spanish usages, by B. Malmberg,
Études sur la phonétique de l'espagnol parlé en Argentine (Lund, 1950); e.g.. p. 93.
27 Cf. Martinet, "La phonologie synchronique et diachronique," Rev. des cours et
conf., XL (1939), 333 f.; Haudricourt-Juilland, p. xi.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 139

the four local with one of the three general articul

disposal twelve phonemic units, though they only nee
different articulations. This is undoubtedly more eco
twelve phonemes were to be characterized by one s
this economy does not result from any conscious or
sheer working of the principle of least effort.28
Let us assume that the normal articulation of a gi
logical elements in common with a number of others
mouth. Like them it is, for instance, consonantal, v
but it differs from them in that it is a continuant in a
stops to continuants depending on emphasis and posit
combining voicing, raising of the velum, and central
with an occlusive pronunciation in well-defined situa
have, in such situations, to dissociate occlusion from
nature it is always a continuant. A number of success
elders, may learn to do this dissociation, but speaker
make a conform in all respects with its fellows, and a d
in the sense that it will be pronounced as a stop in al
formed as stops. This is, of course, meant to illustrate
ess has been delayed in the case of [w], it may be t
favorable to complete occlusion, or that the final in
type implies a phonemic merger with the [gw] cluste
time contributed to the preservation of the tradition
The same economical tendency can be adduced to
towards grouping the heterogeneous ch, y> s into wh
erally a number of phonetic shifts in the most varied
this tendency may be summarized as follows : - Phone
articulatory types upon isolated phonemes; yet, sin
not combine equally well with more general ones lik
nasality, glottalization, and the like, completely h
reached. There is a permanent antinomy between the
patterns and the basic asymmetry of the organs of sp
phonemic instability.29 It will be clear from what fol
rate the importance of what might be termed the int
And yet their existence should never be forgotten.
In the case of Castilian Spanish, we might well be te
toward grouping all non-nasal and non-liquid conso
local types not only the various articulatory modific
phonological evolution during the last three centur
changes which took place earlier in the language. T
what other causes may be suggested, can be discov
Spanish consonantal pattern before the sixteenth ce

III. Early Romance Trends in Castilian Phonology

Since we are mainly concerned with the determination of general trends, we

be satisfied with a phonemic description of Castilian Spanish immediately pri
sixteenth-century change. It is very likely that such a drastic deviation from th
Western Romance pattern did not occur suddenly but resulted from tendencies
in the language for many centuries. Therefore, we shall have to go farther into

28 Martinet, "La double articulation linguistique," TCLCopenh., V (1949), 3

29 Idem, "Rôle de la corrélation dans la phonologie diachronique, 1 LLr, VIII
(1939), 273 ff.

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1Ą0 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

and try to follow the evolution wh

gone in those sections of Iberia wit
We shall here again leave out liqu
Romance evolution presents proble
stances, do not seem directly to af
Furthermore, we need not discuss her
were merged with those of c + fro
occur synchronously in all the diale
On the whole, when we speak of We
dialects concerned underwent a giv
guage. We do not operate with a C
parallel, though not necessarily co
to common inherited tendencies, a
In order to summarize the common
the first period of their evolution, w
and fricatives. We do not mean to
them ever presented it exactly in th
fore the results of Vulgar Latin pa
palatalizations had taken place. But
of the area and therefore has no righ

p t ts k
b d -dz- g
v -â- -z- -7-
f s

Generally, leavin
the reflexes of v
initial voiced stop
intervocalic voic
outcomes of F-, -
To the preceding
of hushing phon
coincide with th
from combinatio
development wh
shift sc + [J] and
one whose standa
counterpart of /
the cluster [jt].
has been discuss
phoneme in init
ones we must ass
j is considered a
As regards hissi
dialects and some
parallelism in th
dorsoalveolar, an
that Alonso assu

30 Menéndez Pid
was sent to the p
31 Orígenes j p.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 1Ą1

Nebrixa; for the same period, he reckons with a "apicodental" ç(=*

with a similar distinction in his treatment of Spanish- Arabic corres
the geographical distribution of apicoalveolar s in southwestern Eu
to coincide with that of other phonic features which we shall, in wh
some non-Romance influences, it is tempting to consider this arti
timately due to this same influence, namely, that of the Basque pho
view of the fact that, by the side of apicoalveolars ([ś]) , most Bas
dorsoalveolar ([s]) phonemes, it is not easy to see why this dorsoa
should not have been chosen by Euskaro-Romance bilinguals to ren
to explain the Old Castilian opposition between dorsoalveolar [ts
[ś] as a reflex of Basque phonetics, we should have to assume that
soalveolars were all affricates, whereas at least some apicoalveolars w
Now it is most likely that many dorsoalveolar fricatives of Moder
old affricates, but it is not so sure that all of them do.34
Another delicate problem is that of the mutual phonemic indep
and /-S-/, /-g-/ and /-7-/. The Old Spanish spelling does not make a
tween the stop and the fricative of each pair, but in the case of /
notice a difference in the behavior of -d- from Lat. -t- and -ci- from La
is perfectly stable, the latter is apt to disappear; hence always vida f
or frio from frīgidvs.38 This would seem to point to a weaker, p
pronunciation jn the case of -d- from -D-. Thus we may be tempted to
phonemes /d/ and /8/, and, analogically, /g/ and /7/.
All this would yield, for Early Castilian, the following pattern:

p t ts 6 k
b d -dz- f dž g
J or

v -ČF- - ź- [ ^ -7-
f ś š

So far, the
points from
specific, bu
if we exam
phoneme in
but it is ne
found. On t
complete se
application
-II- threate
nemic integ
/z/, if it is
deviation from normal Western Romance evolution.

IV. The Shift of F to H

We come now to a phonological innovation which is often considered the m

of all the changes which have contributed to set Castilian apart from oth

32 Alonso, "Examen," p. 81; by "apicodental" Alonso probably means w

prefer to call "dorsoalveolar."
33 Ibid., p. 14 (chart).
34 Cf. R. Lafon, "Correspondances basques-caucasiques, Uernika Łusko-J akintza,
II (1948), 362.
38 See A. Zauner, Altspanisches Elementarbuch (2d ed.; Heidelberg, 1921), p. 37.

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 1Ą2 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

forms of speech: the weakening of

innovation is shared by Gascon and
and that the Gascon shift is much m
huec vs. Sp. fuego), but, from an I
seems to split the peninsula, leavin
Galician-Portuguese areas. Considering that Castilian proper originally was the
Romance dialect spoken in the northern fringes of Old Castile close to the Euskarian-
speaking area, and that Gascon is also the close neighbor of Basque on the northern side
of the Pyrenees, it is tempting to try to find in Basque a clue to a change which, though
it is documented elsewhere, remains from a Romance standpoint something of a mystery.
And, indeed, Basque does not know / except in recent loans from Romance.38 It is too
much to attempt to present here even in condensed form all the views which have been
expressed on the subject. We shall, rather, base our discussion of the problem on the
treatment presented in his Orígenes del español 37 by Menéndez Pidal who, by considering
in detail the geographical aspect of the question, has come much closer than his pre-
decessors to a satisfactory solution of it. It is now clear that the oldest examples of
h (or zero) for / from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries were localized, with one
Aragonese exception, in the extreme north of Old Castile close to the present Basque-
speaking area. Not before the close of the fourteenth century do we find an example of
h for / in Segovia (southern Old Castile).38 In the words of Menéndez Pidal, h was
originally "nothing but a dialectal barbarism restricted to Northern Castile (the old
Cantabria) and the Rioja," and its subsequent extension is one of "the so numerous
cases of, initially very limited, Castilian peculiarities which later, with the spread of
Castile, became diffused over nearly the whole of the peninsula."39 Towards the end of
the fifteenth century, h for / appears to be standard in everyday vocabulary except
before consonants and, irregularly, before [y] and [j].40 Most learned words retain /.
Judeo-Spanish has either / or zero : fizo or izo , f aviar or aviar. 41
According to Menéndez Pidal, the shift of / to h is to be ascribed to the Iberian-speak-
ing41 inhabitants of Cantabria who, when they learnt to speak Latin, replaced/, which
they did not have in their language, with h "through acoustic equivalence."43 This is
probably the most controversial aspect of the great Spanish scholar's hypothesis. We
do not doubt that Old Basque had an h phoneme even in its peninsular varieties which
today lack it. Menéndez Pidal adduces excellent arguments in favor of this assump-
tion, which is further supported by what we can surmise of Basque phonological evolu-
tion. But it is not clear why Euskarian speakers should have replaced the firmly articu-
lated labiodental f of Latin by a weak glottal breath. This is hardly in keeping with
what we know of similar cases of replacements of foreign labiodental / by native pho-
nemes, where, in fact, we find that the labial feature of [f] is carefully preserved. If the
borrowing language has an aspirated labial stop among its phonemes, this will, as a
rule, be chosen as a substitute; if not, a plain bilabial surd will do. But we do not see
languages which have both /p/ and /h/ giving preference to the latter.44 In the case of

38 See H. Gavel, Grammaire basque (Bayonne, 1929), I, p. *62.

37 Pp. 219-240.
38 Orígenes , p. 226; cf. J. H. English, The Alternation of h and i in Old Spanish (New
York, 1926), pp. 35-39.
39 Orígenes, p. 230 f. 40 Alonso, "Examen," p. 80.
41 See, e.g., Bourciez, Eléments , p. 408.
42 Since we do not want to be involved in discussions concerning the scope of the
term "Iberian," we shall make bold to use the term "Euskarian" not only in reference
to attested Basque but also to such extinct forms of speech as were formerly spoken on
the outskirts of the present Basque domain.
43 Orígenes, p. 232.
44 It would not be difficult to draw up a long list of languages which have /h/ but not
/f/ and which consistently replace foreign /f/ by /ph/ or /p/. A few examples will suffice
here: Lat. f is regularly rendered by Gr. <f> (even at a time when <f> was rendered in Latin

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 1Ļ3

Basque loans from Latin and Romance, we find, by the side of word
corresponding to Lat. f-, more frequent instances of initial b- or p
bago, pago for fãgu-, besta, pesta for festa, all quoted by Menén
form like iru 'thread* is derived by him from fïlu- through *h
placement of foreign /- by local h-. But since there seem to exis
vocalic initial corresponds to Latin or Romance p- (as in olio, oilo
from some Romance form corresponding to pullus, cf. Sp. polio),*
an original Basque rendering *pīlu of fïlu-. It remains, of course,
early Basque initial *p can be represented in the modern forms of t
zero. The easiest way to account for what we can surmise of Basq
lution is to assume for a very early period two series of Euskarian
one of voiceless aspirates ph, th, kh, and one of voiceless lenes b, d, g
less non-aspirated fort is, must have been normally rendered by
some cases by ph-; b- was later voiced, probably under Romance inf
weakened to <f>, and, hence, to h or zero today, depending mainly
f, for which there was no Basque equivalent, must first have been
of the aspirated surd *ph or its weakening *<f> ; hence, for fïlu, *phil
further weakening, *hilu> iru. After the weakening of *<t> to h, b
labial left in the pattern, and it was from then on used as a sub
Romance /- as in bago for fãgu, besta for festa. Alternates such a
due to later unvoicing determined by the voiceless initial of the
mance forms.47
Let us now consider the case of the linguistic Romanization of a Euskarian-speaking
community. This is not likely to have been achieved overnight. Indeed, we must reckon
with a long-drawn process extending over several successive generations of more or less
bilingual people imitating as well as they could either the monolingual Romance speak-
ers whom they came across or those of their fellows who had obtained prestige by virtue
of a fairly good command of the socially superior language. If we suppose the process to
have taken place early enough, at a time when Basque still had *ph or its later develop-
ment *4>, a Vulg. Lat. forno must have been rendered by means of *phorno or *4>orno.
If the contacts with standard Latin speakers were frequent and intimate enough, a day
must have come when children were able to reproduce accurately the standard labio-
dental fricative articulation, hence, forno. This process we must assume for a large
section of Northern Spain. In regions where the relations with standard-Latin-speakers
were few and far between and where the prestige language was learned mainly by imita-
tion of recently Romanized natives, a form like *<t>orno may have endured until the
phonological evolution of the vernacular caused [<t>] to be weakened to [h], hence homo.
Or perhaps the support of standard [f] tended to preserve [<t>] in Romance long after

by means of ph and therefore was still an aspirate plosive; cf., in Polybius. &cl'1<tkoi. for
faliscī); the Chinook Jargon, which has both /h/ and /p/, renders Engl, /f/ by means
of p as in piah for fire, kaupy for coffee (H. Hale, Oregon Trade Language [London, 1890],
p. 11; G. C. Shaw, The Chinook Jargon and How to Use it [Seattle, 1909]); Kutenai has
hade' for Engl. Harry and pilaswá , pa'pyán for Fr. François , Fabien (see P. L. Garvin,
"Christian Names in Kutenai, *' UAL, XIII [1947], 70). Languages with voiceless [w]
or clusters such as /hw / or /hv/ and no /f/ will, as a rule, prefer these to /p/ as a render-
ing of foreign /f/. But, in any case, the labial feature must be preserved. In the 3d ed.
of his Orígenes, p. 217, Menéndez Pidal, in support of the "acoustic equi valence* * of
/ and h, adduces "the fact that in other points of the Romance territory in which /-
is replaced, it is always by h- and not by b- or p-"; but this is probably so because no
substitution is involved there, but rather phonetic evolution from a bilabial [<£] which
had been used in the stead of labiodental [i]. When, in vulgar modern Spanish, f- yields
to j- (cf. ibid., n. 3), the labiodental fricative is replaced by a dorsal fricative, not by h.
46 C. C. Uhlenbeck, Contribution à une phonétique comparative des dialectes basques
(Paris, 1910); Gavel, Éléments de phonétique basque (Paris, 1920), p. 330; Martinet,
"De la sonorisation des occlusives initiales en basque," Word, VI (1950), 227 ff. and n. 16.
48 Martinet, ibid., p. 226 f. 4' Uavei, ibid., p. ài».

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 144 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

Basque had been weakened to [h]; bu

place in Romance too, at least in pre
Another possibility should be consi
of Euskarian speakers at a time when
A Romance forno must then have b
besta). But, in their efforts to master
speakers surely must have managed
the fricative: by combining the surd
from their sibilants /s/ and /é/) wit
intervocalic allophone of the phonem
but hit upon [<f>] as an approximate
must have had the same fate as its
to [h] except before non-syllabics.
For centuries [h] must have receded
at length there came an age when th
and finally reversed. By that time, s
lingual for many generations and n
their /- speaking neighbors. The adop
may well have played a rôle in rever
honte they heard from French pilgri
"right" as against those who either
they said when their neighbors said [
compromise, all Castilian speakers b
the latter was blurred,49 a very norm
"aspiration" is not used elsewhere as
tion" are generally preserved in "Fr
in the Euskarian dialects south of the
Basque which took the initiative in
The process of Romanization which
we have reasons to suppose for mos
startling in the particular case of S
indicate a shift of prestige from the
the recent members of the Romance
ditional phonemes. Yet this phase of t
tion and for which it is not impossib
During the first millennium, the up
ern bank of the river, must have re
marginal domain. In Roman times, th
in the east and Gallaecia in the west

48 The fate of [<t>] before non-sylla

Basque where such clusters probably
the close articulation of following no
tion of the labial in flor, frente, fuego
factor must have played its rôle in
happened would be as follows: </>, co
(horno) but preserved as 4> before non
by traditional /-speakers, h was repro
ually, the innovating dialect may eith
did) or to / in imitation of the standard language.
49 In most of Old Castile and in the standard language; in the traditional Castilian
domain, one section of Cantabria still preserves [hi.
80 The rapid survey that follows is essentially based upon the third section ("Re-
giones y épocas") of Menéndez Pidal's Orígenes. As regards the probable extension of
Basque in the ninth and tenth centuries, see the map opposite p. 464 of the 3d ed. of the
Orígenes.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 1Ą5

centers of the two provinces. In the days of Visigothic domination

than ever, at a long distance from Toledo, the metropolis. The first
of the Christians of Northern Iberia to reconquer Spain from the M
by the Asturian monarchy first from Oviedo, then from León fart
before the end of the ninth century that the formerly rather insi
Cantabria began to assert itself under the name of Castile, and it
vassals of the Asturian king, began to extend their dominions towa
ing first the region of Burgos, then, in the course of the tenth cent
as far as Avila and Segovia, i.e., reaching the southernmost sectio
today as Old Castile. Yet not before the eleventh century did Cas
dependent kingdom, make its appearance as the powerful factor in
which was soon to take the lead in the task of reconquering Spai
From then on, the Castilian dialect spread southward fanwise, smot
old Mozarabic dialects, but also, in the east and west, its former Ar
competitors. For a correct interpretation of linguistic facts, it m
that the beginnings of Castilian military expansion must have pre
centuries the self-assertion of Castile as the main political power of
was ultimately to confer upon her leadership in language as well. Wh
ized central and southern sections of Old Castile were more or les
from Arabic domination in the course of the tenth and eleventh ce
conquerors and the liberated Christians must have had little faith in
of the Cantabrian form of speech. Such developments as the shift f
[¡t] to ch , that of se -I- [j] and st -f ['] to ç, which are in keeping wi
of Romance phonology though they set Castilian apart from ot
dialects, must have originated in traditionally Romance territo
indicates61 on two maps the probable extension of the first two shi
eleventh century. They appear to have spread as far west as Saha
and, in view of the comparative insignificance of Castile in the cou
centuries, it is likely that such stretches of León as present the phe
must have been part of the limited domain from which they pro
original cradle on both sides of the Duero, these shifts must have s
the final hushing products being more or less perfectly imitated
speakers who were still wont at the time to look outside for li
With the subsequent rise of Castilian hegemony, the picture chan
we should remember that four centuries were needed to secure the
an outlandish feature as h for /.

V. The Merger of Voiced Stops and Spirants

We have dealt at some length with the shift from h to f because, in our opinion,
gives the clue to the main phonological changes which Castilian underwent between th
thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, including the most startling features of th
sixteenth-seventeenth century consonant shift. It bears the first and clearest testimo
to the influence which Euskarian phonemics must have exerted upon the phonologi
evolution of Castilian, but it is far from being the only one. According to Nebrix
attestation,63 standard Spanish v was, on the eve of the sixteenth century, a labiodent
spirant perfectly distinct from bilabial, probably uniformly occlusive, 6. Yet about
century or so later the confusion, i.e. the situation which we find in modern Castilian
appears to be standard.64 Now, Modern Basque has no [v] and presents for its b ve
much the same allophonic distribution as modern Castilian. There seems to be no reaso
61 Orígenes y p. 519.
62 And were probably still trying to replace their A s by some more or less pertect
imitation of [fl.
63 Alonso, "Examen, " p. 63 ff. 64 Cuervo, Disquisiciones , p. 143.

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 1Ą6 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

to assume that Basque ever had a v

guage, a good many features such
spirant articulation of the lenes int
karian trying to reproduce Vulgar
and v not only inter vocalically, w
throughout the Romance area, but
the product of the merger must ha
with whatever voice Euskarian spe
tervocalic p, which the bulk of W
have been preserved as [p] as show
voiceless surds, as in bake from pāc
ern Old Castile and the neighborin
understood as resulting from an im
b and (consonantal) u seem to be u
vocalically (as in labat , culpauiles ),
betatu , uetait ).66 Intervocalic p is m
in the region with which we are m
Aragon. Menéndez Pidal defines the
in otherwise Romanized forms such
should be more frequent in Castil
in them the reflexes of actual voice
some Aragonese and Bearnese dialec
as the reflex of intervocalic Lat. p, we must admit that whatever traces were left in
early Castilian of original intervocalic surds soon yielded before Leonese and General
Western Romance voiced stops.
Later Castilian documents which, like the Cantar del Mio Cid, most frequently origi-
nate in reconquered territory, present clear evidence of a less Euskarianized pattern:
the distinction between b and v seems to be normally preserved initially (though in-
stances of vacillation can be found, and the distribution of b and u does not always
correspond to etymology.69 In many cases we must reckon with dissimilation and syn-
tactic phonetic phenomena, but it is obvious that the situation is far more confused
than in the average Romance dialect. It is, of course, always difficult in such cases to
exclude the possibility of dialect mixtures. Inasmuch as the Cantar may be supposed
to reflect a well-defined form of speech, the uncertainty of the distribution of 6 and u
initially (and also in post-consonantal position) would seem to point to a dialect where
[b] and [v] still were two distinct phonemic units, but whose speakers had had contacts
with less conservative usages. Intervocalic p is represented by -b-, which never gets
confused with the outcome of -b- and -v-." This is what we should expect at that time
from a Romance dialect of Iberia not influenced by Basque.
Cases of initial confusion of b and v are, in the main, restricted to Old Castile and the
neighboring northern provinces down to the end of the sixteenth century. We have
seen that the Andalusian Nebrixa preserves the distinction between initial b and v.
With the advent of the seventeenth century the picture changed. Initial /b/ and /v/
became completely merged, probably into [b] or [ß] depending on syntactic conditions,
and the same applies to medial post-consonantal positions. Intervocalically [b] (from
p) merged with [v] (from b, v) into [/3]. 61 The product is the Modern Spanish situation

66 See Martinet, "De la sonorisation des occlusives initiales en basque," pp. 228,
231.
66 Orígenes , p. 75. 67 Ibid., p. 257.
68 This does not seem to differ from Menéndez Pidal 's present opinion; see the re-
vised Orígenes , p. 250 f.
69 Menéndez Pidal, Cantar de Mio Cid (2d ed.; Madrid, 1944-46), p. 172 f.
"Ibid., p. 177. 61 Cuervo, Disquisiciones, p. 142 ff.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 1Ą7

with a single voiced labial phoneme whose occlusive or spirantic pron

on context and environment. This should result from the extension to most of north-
central Spain of a labial pattern first limited to Cantabria, the Rioja, and possibly
number of stretches in Old Castile where the repopulation had brought a considerab
number of Basque speakers.62 These elements of the population had probably never bee
able to distinguish [b] from [v] initially; and as regards intervocalic p, the old Euskaria
reflex [p] must have soon been eliminated by imitation of standard [b], but occlusiv
intervocalic voiced sounds being foreign to the pattern of the Basque vernacular, th
final result must have been the spirant [/8], the same as was used for the reflexes of -b
and -v-.
In the first decades of the seventeenth century, this new pattern was rapidly spread-
ing from Old Castile to the other sections of the Castilian-speaking area where, before
long, it became general.
An objection might be raised to our ascribing the spread of the Castilian merger of
/b/ and /v/ to the same influences as the shift of [f] to [h] in spite of the lack of com-
plete parallelism in the respective expansions of the two phenomena. Both spread
through Old Castile first and later extended to other regions; but whereas we find in
Nebrixa around 1500 a distribution of / and h which corresponds to the one we have in
Modern Castilian for /f/ and zero, more than one century was to elapse before the
merger of /b/ and /v/ became standard. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that we
are dealing with two different processes, since in the case of [f] > [h] we have to do with
a single phoneme whose articulation was shifted from the labial to the glottal zone in a
limited section of the Castilian domain from which [h] spread at first as an individual
variant of the f phoneme. This is clearly shown by such spellings as medieval Spanish
fonta corresponding to OFr. honte. In the speech of most of those who write fonta there
is no [h] sound, but they are used to interpreting their neighbor's [h]'s as just another
way of pronouncing /f/. If presented with a form [honta],63 they will interpret it as
fonta and reproduce it as [fonta]. In the course of time more and more numerous speakers
became able to articulate both variants, whose distribution from then on tended to be
determined either by the phonic context, [h] before vocalic sounds, [f] elsewhere, or by
the feeling that [h] was more homelike and [f] more "refined"; hence the retention of the
latter in a word like fe. In late Medieval Castilian, what is called the shift from [f] to
[h] is nothing but the spread to the leading centers of the Castilian-speaking area of the
pattern we have just sketched. Phonemically, the result can be described as a splitting
of one phoneme into two, whereby the economy of the language is not basically affected
since no confusion is likely to arise therefrom. This should at least contribute to the
explanation of why the final victory of [h] preceded by certainly much more than a
century that of innovations which resulted in the confusion of previously distinct pho-
nemic units.
The merger of /b/ and /v/, though in a way less spectacular because it has never
affected the spelling of the language on a very large scale, is in reality only one aspect
of a wholesale merging process whereby voiced stops are confused with the corresponding
voiced spirants. It is most likely that Old Basque, just like modern Euskarian dialects,
did not have [t5] and [7] as independent phonemes but as variants of /d/ and /g/ with
very much the same distribution as in Modern Spanish. All available evidence points to
complete parallelism in the evolution of intervocalic p, t, and c in early and medieval
Castilian, and if we ascribe to Basque the merger of the reflexes of intervocalic b and

62 Orígenes , p. 499.
63 This was probably the original Ibero-Romance rendering of Ohr. honte ; in the
words of J. H. English, p. 68 f., "there existed in northern Spain a primitive domain of
the h to which foreign aspirates could come and survive as h from the time they first
entered Spain. . . It is clear. . . that the French entered Spain by way of the north, which
was the domain of the Iberian h ."

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 1JĻ8 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

v with those of p, we have to do the

those of d and g respectively or, at
the two early Castilian series /b, d, g
the language very deeply, and we sh
have required much more time than
into two phonemic units. This basic d
lost sight of in what follows.

VI. The Unvoicing of Sibilants

In view of the evidence presented so far of protracted influence of Basque

upon Castilian Spanish and the obvious dynamism of such linguistic usages
most intimately affected by it, it is not unnatural to assume that Basque a
plicated in the sixteenth-seventeenth-century consonant shift. As a matter
examination of the fricative pattern of Basque and a comparison with what w
can surmise about Old Spanish fricatives confirms the assumption that the mo
feature of the shift, namely, the phonemic merger, receives a plausible ex
we assume it to result from the generalization of a pattern which must have c
the speech of generations of North Castilians never induced to master som
phonemic distinctions foreign to their Euskarian ancestors.
The sibilant pattern of most Basque dialects is characterized by a well-nigh
preference for voiceless articulations.®4 If we leave out of consideration Soule
on the French side of the Pyrenees and at the extreme northeastern corner of
dialect deeply influenced by neighboring Gascon, we may say that voiced sib
occur except as combinatory variants of normally voiceless phonemes as,
bourdin gasna 'cheese,' which younger speakers of Sare pronounce [gažna].
a few modern dialects have only two sibilant phonemes, there is ample evi
the traditional pattern is represented by such usages as distinguish betwe
sibilants: a voiceless dorsoalveolar /s/ (written z in standard orthography)
apicoalveolar, in some dialects cacuminal, /ś/ (written s), and a voiceless,
slightly "palatal," hushing phoneme /š/ (usually written ch in France, x i
All of these frequently occur in combination with a preceding /t/, hence
Yet these clusters are normally restricted to word medial and final positi
initial /tš/ occurs with some frequency, particularly in expressive words
however, that initial /ts-/ and possibly /tś-/ formerly existed, but were
/s-/ and /ś-/.66 It is most likely that at least /ś/ and /š/ existed by the side
/tš/. Thus, for an older period of the language, we should reckon with th
pattern:®8

Initial Medial

Voiceless I Voiced Voiceless Voiced

ts- S-(?) -ts- -S-(?)

tá-(?) á- -tś- -ś-
tŠ- Š- ļ -tš- -š-
64 Gavel, Grammaire . I, p. *55 ff.
66 Idem. Eléments, p. 146 ff.; Lafon
66 Though modern Basque speakers
unitary phonemes, it may well be th
single phonemes at a time when the
(spelled tz) hardly differs phonetica
(spelled z or tz).

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 1Ą9

We may compare this pattern with the one we might surmise for

Initial Medial

Voiceless Voiced Voiceless Voiced

ts- -ts- -dz-

Ś- -Ś- -Ź-
č- š- ģ- or ž- -č- -Š- -ģ- or -ž-

From these tables we can see that Euskar

difficulty in reproducing with tolerable ac
Castilian , fricative or affricati ve, but th
/dz, ź/ and /ž, ģ/ by their voiceless counter
the phonemes represented by ç and z, -ss-
voiced hushing phoneme, x or ch and j. This
Modern Spanish where, as we know, j was m
diagram :
ts ś š
' ' '
ts Ś š
S S S
dz ź ž

can be conceived as
Castilian sibilant pa
the first act (merge
It seems difficult t
which we know to
should be ascribed
in these matters Ba
is a fact that West
and voiceless sibilan
Here again, as in t
assume successive
case of sibilants, ev
newcomers in the f
speakers with Eusk
tion were presented
with [č] ; this assum
Inasmuch as they e
make [ģ] behave in
their voiced stops
weakened to [ž]. Ne
produce it as [Š], so
would of course be
in Castilian nor in
phonic unity of the
the two hushing un
we consider that in
[6], and that word-
utterance-initial pos

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 150 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

It would of course be useles

processes with which we ha
might assign these to the fri
such stretches of Old Castile
on the whole, probably con
Castilian Reconquest. The rest of that area was occupied by traditional Romance
speakers, but also, a fact which is often somewhat neglected, by a compact mass of
monolingual Euskarians who should by no means be considered as a heterogeneous
element in an age when religion and feudal allegiance were far more decisive sociological
factors than language. It would seem likely that throughout the centuries of the Re-
conquest any Basque population surplus would tend to go south. The farther they went,
the easier they would become totally assimilated to their new surroundings. But those
who did not go much farther south than Burgos would probably find there among the
lower classes a Romance form of speech already permeated with Euskarian features of
all sorts. If they settled there, they and their offspring would learn this local form of
speech and possibly contribute a few more Basque features to it. In the frame of our
hypothesis, there is no need to suppose that Basque was extensively spoken outside of
its traditional domain, let us say, beyond the twelfth century. But, by that time the
lower classes of large sections of Old Castile must have used a phonemic pattern which
largely coincided with, or which bore in germ, the one that was to become standard.
The fact that down to the sixteenth century we find so few traces of such a pattern would
indicate that it was not the one used by those classes of the population from which
scribes and scholars were normally recruited.
What we witness from around 1550 onward cannot be a phonetic shift of the type
whereby a whole community gradually changes its articulations. If we understand that
all the provinces and social classes throughout Castilian-speaking Spain were affected
by such revolutionary changes as we have detailed, it is difficult to imagine them spread-
ing to all corners of such a vast area in the course of three-quarters of a century, the
lifespan of a man and a very short period from the linguist's standpoint. It is incon-
ceivable that the whole nation from Burgos to Granada should have pronounced [vježo]
or [vjeģo] in 1550 what the whole nation was to pronounce [bjexo] in 1625. What about
the octogenarian born a.d. 1540? Of course, many people, particularly in remote dis-
tricts, may have said [vježo] as far down as 1650 and later. But this is not enough. What
happened then can be only understood as the crumbling down of a linguistic tradition
long preserved by the upper classes, but with less and less support from the mass of the
population in an ever-expanding area, a form of speech maintained through some sort
of social segregation and in spite of the influence of nurses and servants. The adherents
of this linguistic tradition must have understood the popular jargon with ease, just as
in contemporary Europe the bourgeois understands the speech of city workers and even
the patois of his tenants. To our octogenarian living around 1625, [bjexo] may still have
seemed part of a very vulgar form of speech, but one he had had opportunities to hear
as far back as he could remember. Changes of such magnitude as the ones which are
said to characterize the period under consideration require centuries to develop, ex-
pand, and obtain universal recognition.
In the course of the preceding centuries, a form of Castilian, without voiced sibilants
and phonemically independent voiced spirants, must have slowly spread from the
north among peasants and the lower classes of artisans toward, and perhaps beyond, the
southern, western, and eastern boundaries of Old Castile, progressively undermining
the traditional form of the language. In the course of its gradual expansion, this pattern
must have reached districts where other changes were in progress modifying the phonetic
performances of some of the phonemes. It is the product of this amalgamation which
finally emerges out of the ruins of the traditional phonemic pattern of the language.
Though the examination of Old Castilian documents does not yield too conclusive

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 151

evidence of early tendencies to merge the voiced sibilant

parts, it is probably worthwhile to present a few releva
/dz/, the use of z or its ç-like variant for /ts/ as well a
century67 is too general in Castile and elsewhere, in León
as resulting from a merging tendency. We have here to r
normally disguise an actual phonemic distinction and m
when and where z really stands for a merger of /ts/ and
Cid , written at a time when the practice of distinguish
usual, there is no trace of any confusion of the voiced an
contemporary documents do not take advantage of the
and z,69 which may be interpreted as a reluctance on the
a phonemic distinction which they found difficult to
Later documents confirm our assumption that Old Casti
Spain to be decisively affected.70
As regards the apicoalveolar fricatives, where intervo
the voiced and double s for the voiceless phonemes, we f
evidence of confusions.71 In Mio Cid,72 -s- for -ss- is rare,
times use -ss- when -s- is expected.73
In the case of the hushing sibilants, we find ample evi
of a tendency to confuse in the spelling the voiceless
reflex of early Romance [I] ; and it is not rare to find gg
or the combinations ch and ih are sometimes used indisc
or the surd.74 This would seem to indicate that the voiced sound was at the time an
affricate [dž] which speakers with a Euskarian background might be inclined to confuse
with the surd /6/. As regards later periods, it would not be safe to draw conclusions
from such spellings as xamas for jamás which are said76 to appear in Madrid documents
as early as the thirteenth century, since Madrid does not belong to the area in which we
can assume sibilants to have been unvoiced at such an early date. On the whole, un-
ambiguous indications of wholesale merger are hardly available before the sixteenth
century, i.e. when the speech of all social classes was being affected.
The ultimate Euskarian origin of the merger of voiced and voiceless sibilants has
been obscured not only by the centuries which had to elapse before the effect of the in-
fluence became visible but also by the fact that the expansion of the new pattern through-
out Spain which led to its ultimate victory in the standard language coincided with
what we shall, for clarity's sake, call the second act of the consonant shift, namely, the
respective interdentalization and velarization of the former dorsoalveolar phonemes,
ç, z , and the hushing phonemes, x, j. If we want to understand the true nature of this
phenomenon and perceive some of the factors which contributed to this reshuffling of
oral articulations, we must try to keep apart the two sets of phenomena, although
direct documentary evidence indicates only the product of their amalgamation. The
plosive and fricative pattern resulting from the sum of Euskarian influences examined
above may be represented by means of the following diagram :
p t ts ò k
b d g
f ś §

From a distinctive st
domain, whereas ne
67 Orígenes 68 Mio 69 , Cuervo
Cid
p. 70, ff.
p. 2
70 Ibid., 71 p. 72 r. 180.
Orígenes, 163 ff. p.
73 Mio Cid, p. 221, n. 3. 74 Orígenes, p. 67 f.
75 Cf. Gavel, Essai sur révolution de la prononciation du castillan depuis le XIV
siècle (Paris, 1920), p. 470.

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 162 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

Basque, which has no /ts/ unit

tends to solve the problem by
for large sections of Andalusia
Spanish, we notice that /ts/ h
fricative counterpart of t , d.
area, an evolution of ç and z t
phonemes, so that speakers in
confused [ts] and [dz] ([0] and
same phonemes). The fact that
variant of /d/ may have been d
ing); it is a well-known fact t
Modern Spanish between the d
-adgo show that, at least in sy
place.
Hushing /S/ also tended to be
in the direction of the dorsal a
the shift had begun in some r
from hushing to dorsal articu
that this in Castilian is due to
li > j >d>dž>tš> š > x], given by Gavel as the process whereby some Basque
dialects acquired voiceless dorsal fricatives, is limited to some regions of Spain. The
sounds [j] and [d] remain the most normal actualizations of the Basque phoneme noted
by means of j.77 Therefore, it is probable that the Euskarian dialects which present [x]
owe this articulation to comparatively recent Castilian influence. The exact nature and
working of this influence could only be determined by an examination of the whole
phonemic pattern of each of the dialects in question. Uncertainty as to the geographic
origin of the retraction of the hushing articulation cannot affect our view that the
merger of voiced and voiceless sibilants, at some stage of its expansion, must have
reached regions where the reshuffling of oral articulations was in progress, and that it
was the resulting pattern which spread further and ultimately became an integral part
of Standard Spanish. Once this had been achieved, a consonantal pattern was reached
which we can represent as follows:

p t eh c
b d g
f z 8 j

It is clear that th
Castilian only ins
tinuant in all pos
not ascribe to Eusk
of y to [d]. The f
tendency should p
similarity of the

VII. Conclusion

We have, in the second section of this paper, dwelt at some lengt

what might be called the functional and structural approach to pho
78 Gavel, Grammaire , I, p. *48.
77 Basque j is normally word-initial, and a shift from [j] to [d] in that positi
course, in keeping with a pattern in which 6, d, g are stops initially and spiran
vocalically.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 153

and, further on, have abundantly illustrated our

of mutual influences on languages in contact. Y
dundant if we present here a few supplementary
which in our opinion should be applied to the st
tion.
Traditionally, scholars who study phonological
more with the establishment of sets of regular co
causal explanation of shifts. It seems to be felt th
a sound shift which took place, say, in the tent
informed about the conditions of all sorts prevai
in question to be able to present a scientifically
immediate or more remote causes of that shift. T
a loss to account for a contemporary change whic
before our eyes. If, on the contrary, we restrict ou
"phonetic laws," we are handling problems whic
trained scholar is able to solve in such a way as
and needs of his fellow-linguists. By thus limitin
achieve exhaustiveness, and since only well-know
the results of such study will be readily utilizable f
is what should be expected of scientific investig
sentially the one which was propounded and practice
and, to this day, it has remained the ideal of man
scholars.
The considerable and, on the whole, well-deserved authority of the neo-
grammarians was not sufficient, however, to prevent people from prying into
forbidden nooks. The substratum theory might be described as a timid and
very limited effort to give causal explanations a place in the science of lan-
guage. Its success in many quarters was probably due less to the quality of
the solutions it suggested than to its being a first attempt to loosen the neo-
grammatical strait-jacket. Many linguists were ready to agree in principle
with the basic assumption of the theory and were not too critical of the il-
lustrations offered to them. However, if the prestige of the neogrammarians
was not such as to prevent the expression of causal hypotheses, it was suffi-
cient to delay the observation whereby these hypotheses could have been
verified: with few exceptions, linguists have neither been very willing to
investigate the process whereby dialects and minority or "inferior" languages
are being slowly squeezed out of existence by powerful competitors, nor
ready to determine the features which, before disappearing, they may be-
queath to the local forms of the victorious languages. To this day, the sub-
stratum theory has been little more than a safety valve to relieve the working
of the traditional linguistic machinery of the hampering pressure of vaporous
hypotheses. The introduction into linguistic speculation of the concepts of
"superstratum" and "adstratum," as the result of an effort to classify the

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 15Ą ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

types of non-genetic linguist

provement in linguistic practi
blur rather than stress the gre
same way as the older "substr
to be content with a very unspec
further investigation and analy
of challenging tradition and
unworthy of scientific treatm
phenomena which the substratu
nothing but a small section of
of every sort of influence exerte
they be totally unrelated lang
dialects or usages of the same
influencing is at work practic
develops, as it were, within clo
most potent factors of linguist
language or one dialect to anoth
tools, syntactic patterns, and
phenomena like morphological
In practice, of course, it will
all the outside influences which
a given language. For older stages
and direction of interdialectal c
only diverge on minor points
not reflect. As regards widely
quite frequent that we have ne
historical grounds, we might b
be innovations in the better-k
preferable to confess our ignor
For instance, our scanty know
contrast of Fr. fait < factu >
trend of Gaulish which existed
by Latin; but we have no indica
ress there at that time.80 When available evidence is sufficient for both

78 The thing is most clearly pointed out by H. Schuchardt in ' 'Sprachverwandtschaf t,"
Sitz. -ber. Berlin (1917), 522: "Mischung durchsetzt überhaupt alle Sprachentwicklung;
sie tritt ein zwischen Einzelsprachen, zwischen nahen Mundarten, zwischen verwandten
und selbst zwischen ganz unverwandten Sprachen. Ob von Mischung oder von Entleh-
nung, Nachahmung, fremdem Einfluss die Rede ist, immer haben wir wesengleiche
Erscheinungen vor uns."
79 See Martinet, Phonology as Functional Phonetics , p. 24 ff.
8° Brythonic is not Gaulish, and the ü which, after Pedersen and so many substratists,
is assumed by W. v. Wartburg, Die Ausgliederung der romanischen Sprachräume (Berne,
1950), p. 49, as an intermediate between the ū of the Celtic equivalent of cūlus and the
i of Welsh cil y is a pure reconstruction and should be carefully starred. The way from
u to i may just as well go through an unrounded back vowel as illustrated by several
well-documented insular Celtic shifts.

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THE UNVOICING OF OLD SPANISH SIBILANTS 155

languages in contact, we should point out whatev

examine how far they can be due to mutual influe
in each case the direction of the current by refer
guistic patterns and by making use of all philolo
logical data at our disposal.
The nature and importance of interlingual influe
the type and extent of prestige which the compet
the bilinguals. But another essential factor is the
tivity of the linguistic pattern exposed to the inf
lexical domain: we see that the rigid structure of
powerful barrier against the acclimatization of fo
other hand, English seems supple enough to integ
loan. The historical fact that the English languag
because it was for centuries submitted to powerf
whereas Chinese, for millennia, had relatively litt
structure to the acceptance of foreign elements,
the explanation of the present situation. But fro
standpoint it is in the main the respective patterns o
determine their different reactions to foreign lo
attitudes are more a reflex of the rigidity of the pat
of lexical conservatism. In phonemic matters wel
probably less apt to yield to foreign inroads. F
assume that a very useful opposition will offer m
outside influences tending to eliminate it than on
hardly result in dangerous homonymy. Yet exper
extension, word-composition, and morphological r
to in order to avoid impending homonymy, which
resistance of phonemic oppositions against outsid
or one section of the pattern has been affected by im
a lack of balance may result, determining a chain
end, may basically modify the phonemic structur
mentioned before81 the existence of a permanent
nomical tendency toward regular patterns and w
the inertia of the speech organs. The very nature
we have focused our attention has prevented us f
the working of those internal factors which should s
soon as the linguistic structure is allowed to devel
from the outside linguistic world.
No one would be ready to deny the existence of othe
evolution besides mutual linguistic influence, int
It may well be that social changes ultimately a
" Pp. 14-15.

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156 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY

Fashions, habitat,82 altitu

But since linguists in gene
should concentrate on th
these afford by far the m
causes can be exhaustive, b
the right to investigate a
guistic reality.
Columbia University
M See e.g. H. L. Koppelmann

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