Diacronía de los resultados secundarios del diptongo /ue/ en judeoespañol

Abstract

Abstract Judeo-Spanish presents some surprising results as regards the secondary evolution of the diphthong /ˈue/. Contrary to Spanish jueves ‘Thursday’, tuerto ‘one-eyed’, sueño ‘dream’, nuera ‘daughter-in-law’, Judeo-Spanish has ĵugüeves, tugüerto, (e)sfueño, and elmuera. That is, /ˈue/ has evolved either into /u.ˈgue/, it has developed a fricative before the diphthong (/ˈsue/ > /s.ˈfue/), or labialized the previous nasal (/ˈnue/ > /ˈmue/).In this study we present an explanation for this phenomenon that combines the regular Ibero-Romance phonic evolution and some language-specific features of the evolution of Judeo-Spanish, without an explicit appeal to exceptional solutions. Our hypothesis is based on the realization of the sequence /ˈue/ as a hiatus (ĵu.e.ves, tu.er.to, su.e.ño, nu.e.ra) which eventually developed an epenthetic consonant. This epenthesis was velar (ĵugueves, tuguerto), the latter case also involving further vowel insertion in agreement with the historical phonetics of Judeo-Spanish (ĵugüeves, tugüerto). Examples with labial fricatives or nasals preceding the diphthong have followed this evolution and then lost the pretonic vowel, giving way to a consonantal cluster in which the second consonant is partially assimilated to the first (sueño > *s(u)güeño > sfueño or esfueño; nuera > n(u)güera > *enmuera > elmuera, ermuera > muera).