# Irregular Preterite in Old Spanish



## pollohispanizado

Hola, estimados conforeros.

The preterite forms in Spanish have been highly regularized over the centuries. Compared to French and Italian, which both have many verbs with irregular preterite forms and have been replacing the preterite with the "present perfect" in speech (to varying degrees depending on where one is -- it is even being replaced in some French literature), it's rather striking.

I was just wondering if anybody had information about the Spanish preterite before being regularized, common regular verbs that used to be irregular, etc. (i.e. MOD. conocí, traje > OSp. conuve, truxe --- these are just two examples given on the "español medieval" Wikipedia page).

I know it's a broad topic, but I would appreciate any insight you intelligent folks might have on the subject.

Gracias


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## Circunflejo

Meanwhile experts on the subject give you an answer, I'll say that the current endings in ais used to be ended in ades. Example: amabais was amábades. The eis ending of the pretérito indefinido used to be an es ending till XVII Century. Examples: amastes instead of current amasteis.


pollohispanizado said:


> conuve


That uve ending is still present on some verbs: anduve, tuve...


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## pollohispanizado

Si mal no recuerdo, las formas _anduve_ (y _tuve_) fue basadas en _hube_. (_Andar_ viene de _ambulare_, un verbo que parece regular aunque no sé latín...)

Edit: O recordé mal o leí información incorrecta anteriormente, pero según Wikipedia, en latín fueron AMBULĀVĪ y TENUĪ.


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## Circunflejo

Ambulavi is the Latit perfect (preterite) (1st person) while ambulare is the active infinitive (in present).


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## pollohispanizado

Right. I really should study more Latin 😅

The irregular preterites in French and Italian mirror the irregular past participles (in French they are sometimes identical). I wonder if Spanish ever had something similar (the majority of the irregular past participles have now become pure adjectives and sometimes nouns in Spanish).

Fr. Mettre; mis; je mis
It. Mettere; messo; misi
Sp. Meter; metido; metí; but, remiso (from lat. remissus, past participle of remittĕre)

It's also interesting how Italian maintained the original Latin stress (méttere), and also French in it's own way (mèttre -- the last e which is optionally (though almost always) silent doesn't recieve the regular oxytone stress, leaving the infinitive essentially with the original stress).

I wonder if the readjustment of the infinitive stress happened before or during the regularization of the preterite.


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## Circunflejo

pollohispanizado said:


> The irregular preterites in French and Italian mirror the irregular past participles (in French they are sometimes identical). I wonder if Spanish ever had something similar



Nowadays, dicho (past participle) and dijo (preterite) could be an example. I don't know too much about language evolution so I can't provide you a lot of info. Let's wait for the ones who know about the subject.


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## pollohispanizado

Yes, you're right. We do have a handful of irregular participle/preterite combinations, but compared to Italian, for example, son exiguas.


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## Penyafort

It's not just a matter of Spanish vs French, but rather of West Iberian vs the rest (or the core).

1) Preference for the simple past:

West Iberian: (Portuguese) cantei | (Spanish) canté​The rest: (Catalan) vaig cantar | (French) j'ai chanté | (Italian) ho cantato | (Romanian) am cantat​
2) Preference for regularized participles [-UTU, -ISSU, etc > -ITU]:

West Iberian: (Portuguese) bebido, prometido | (Spanish) bebido, prometido​The rest: (Catalan) begut, promès | (French) bu, promis | (Italian) bevuto, promesso | (Romanian) baut, promis​
3) Stress moved to the infinitive ending:

West Iberian: (Portuguese) romper, meter, crer| (Spanish) romper, meter, creer​The rest: (Catalan) rompre, metre, creure | (French) rompre, mettre, croire | (Italian) rompere, mettere, credere​​


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## pollohispanizado

Penyafort said:


> It's not just a matter of Spanish vs French, but rather of West Iberian vs the rest (or the core).


Sorry, I didn't mean to reduce it to that; French just happens to be a striking counterexample (and I know it best after Spanish). I was just focusing on Spanish because it's my interest, but Portuguese is very similar, that's true, and it could be considered as the language family in general. However, Portuguese doesn't have all the same irregular verbs and it shows a preference for the irregular past participle in many more occasions than in Spanish (pt. _progedir_, _progresso_ ; sp. _progresar_, _progreso [*I don't actually know if _progresso_ is used as a past participle, to be honest, but the difference between the two has always struck me.]_


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## jazyk

_Progresso_ is not used as a past participle, only as a noun. The past participle of _progredir_ is _progredido_.


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## pollohispanizado

Ok, thank you jazyk. I have studied Portuguese in the past, but it's been a while, which is why I didn't include it in the first place


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## S.V.

For example, in View/Open, this tome Repozytorium Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza (AMUR): El español medieval: hacia la consolidación de un idioma mentions -_xe_ (like 'zhe' with /_ʒ_/) in p. 161 and -_udo_ in page 184 (Janusz Pawlik, Adam Mickiewicz University).



> Los perfectos de –SI, registrados sobre todo en el modelo en –ERE, se perdieron también copiosamente y los que persistieron en español antiguo son DIXI dixe, TRAXI troxe/traxe, QUAESII quise, CONDUXI conduxe, ADDUXI aduxe.  Pero  lentamente  se  sustituyen  por  débiles  otros  perfectos  fuertes  antiguos: conquiso,  después  conquistó;  mise  (<  MISI),  luego  metí;  riso  (<  RISIT),  rió; destruxo   (<   DESTRUXIT),   destruyó;   cinxo   (<   CINXIT),   ciñó;   escriso (< SCRIPSIT), escribió; coxo (< COXIT), coció; fuxo (< *FUXIT), huyó; priso  (< *PRESIT), prendió (Menéndez 1968: 313-319):¹⁵³ “prys[e]  del agua un bocado e fuy todo esfryado” (Razón), “El Salvador del mundo […] pora nos dar enxiemplo al deserto se miso” (Domingo), “El rey conquiso tod’el mundo, metiólo so su mano” (Alexandre).


​


> Es importante advertir que en esta etapa temprana los participios de los verbos en –er terminaban a veces en –udo: “Et desta guisa fueron perdudos los fechos della […] assi que apenas puede seer sabudo el comienço de los que la [villa] poblaron” (PCG), „[…] pero era tenudo por omne derechero” (Domingo). Es muy probable que la proliferación de participios en -udo durante el siglo XIII fuera debida en alguna medida al influjo francés (perdre, perdu). Pero el origen último de estos participios se encuentra en latín vulgar y parece estar en un deseo de incorporar una desinencia específica del participio de los verbos de la segunda conjugación –utu (avudo, tenudo), equiparable a las desinencias propias de las otras dos (amado y partido) (Elvira 2005: 452). La prosa alfonsí muestra con especial claridad la favorable acogida de estos usos. En cualquier página de la Primera Crónica General es posible encontrar formas como uençudo, sabudo o tenudo alternando en proporción variable con las correspondientes formaciones en -ido. Parece, en todo caso, que el gusto por los participios en -udo tuvo un carácter literario más que un apoyo real (Lloyd 1987: 368). Más tarde los participios de este modelo terminarían todos por adoptar la desinencia –ido, tomada de la conjugación –ir, lo mismo que el perfecto simple


​And for instance, a "Youtube channel" like Sh4m69 had several examples.


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## Olaszinhok

In my opinion, French does not have as many irregular forms  as Italian in the preterite. Basically, French irregular endings in the preterite are almost always the same: _-is -us_, etc. Also Catalan has highly restricted most of its irregular forms to _gui/gué_, such as _ell digué, ell respongué_, etc. Portuguese has about twenty irregular verbs in the Preterite (plus their derivative forms), Spanish just some more, essentially due to vowel mutation, such as _morí/ murió/ pedí/pidió_, etc. Italian even has double forms in regular endings such as_ -ei/-etti _for the second conjugation in _- ere_. Actually, I do not know any other language with such a variety of irregular (regular) forms  in the preterite, morphologically speaking.


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## Penyafort

Olaszinhok said:


> Also Catalan has highly restricted most of its irregular forms to _gui/gué_, such as _ell digué, ell respongué_, etc.



That's verbs in -ir and -re and not all of them, many don't velarize (_dormí, bullí; perdé, interrompé_). Most verbs in -ar and -er do -à and -è (_anà, treballà; sabé, pogué_).

But yes, irregularities are quite restricted, most simple forms are regularized from weak forms. Classical Catalan had many strong ones though (_hac_, _venc_, _dix_...), just like the rest of Romance languages. First and third persons would mostly coincide and often they'd do with present ones too.

The only three irregular forms that still survive -I'd say- in modern Catalan (_*fou *_'he was', _*feu *_'he did' and _*veu *_'he saw') all come from the Latin type in -I. The latter is even more common in the regularized _veié_.


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## pollohispanizado

Very interesting. I wasn't aware that the Catalán preterite was so regular (probably because I've never read a book in Catalan, so I've only ever come across the perifrasis).

PD: Muchísimas gracias a ti @S.V., que tu respuesta fue la que buscaba. Ahora que tengo unas pistas, puedo hacer mejores búsquedas.


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## Olaszinhok

Penyafort said:


> That's verbs in -ir and -re and not all of them, many don't velarize (_dormí, bullí; perdé, interrompé_). Most verbs in -ar and -er do -à and -è (_anà, treballà; sabé, pogué_


Yes, of course. I was just referring to the main irregularities in the  simple past in Catalan.
Just a comparison between Italian and Catalan
he drank - it. b*evve* - Cat. be*gué*
he said - it- d*isse* - cat. di*gué*
he fell - it c*adde* - cat- cai*gué*
he knew - it con*obbe* - cat. cone*gué etc. *


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## pollohispanizado

I have been doing more reading. It's a very interesting subject, I must say. I found the following text from which I've taken this excerpt about _pretéritos rizotónicos_ en el poema de Mio Çid.



> Poema de Mio Cid
> 
> Esta obra, como ha podido comprobarse en la tabla anterior, contiene un 32,2% de formas fuertes con respecto a las formas totales encontradas en el fragmento analizado.
> 
> Estas formas fuertes son las siguientes (se indica entre paréntesis cuántas se han encontrado en cada caso)7: cinxo (4); crovo (1); dio (6); dixo (16); fizo (7); fue (11); ovo (7); poso (2); priso (4); plogo (6); pudo (1); quiso (2); respuso (3); retovo (1); sonrriso (2); sopo (1); sovo (1); tovo (2); vio (8); vino (6); yogo (1).
> 
> Existe tan solo una alternancia entre el fuerte nasco (13 casos) y su correspondiente débil naçió (1 caso).
> 
> De todos los verbos aquí expuestos, los ejemplos de cinxo, priso, plogo, sonriso, nasco y yogo, aunque es sabido que no van a sobrevivir muchos siglos más (y muchos menos llegarán a nuestros días), aparecen, sin embargo, con una forma relativamente etimológica (cinxo procede de CINGO que tenía un perfecto sigmático CINXIT; la desinencia varió, como se ha dicho, adaptando la de la I conjugación terminada en -ĀUT, de una forma semejante a lo que le ocurrió a priso < PRENDIT, y a sonriso < (SON)RISIT; plogo <PLACUIT y yogo < JACUIT) en la que se mantiene la forma fuerte procedente ya del mismo latín.
> 
> El resto de los verbos mantendrán la forma fuerte hasta el español actual (excepto en el caso de sovo, que acabaría siendo desplazado por fue).
> 
> Dado que no hemos encontrado ningún ejemplo de verbos como andar o vivir recurrimos a las formas que pueden hacernos ver cómo sería ese perfecto simple en las 1ª y 3ª personas, esto es, según los ejemplos de andidieron (2) o andidiste (1) y de visquiéredes (1), porque en obras posteriores sí aparecerán. Según estos casos, las formas correspondientes en la 1ª y 3ª personas serían rizotónicas.


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