Historical Practices of Standardization in Spanish: A Preliminary Study of Phonetic and Orthographic Changes in the <i>Siete Partidas</i>

Abstract

The current study examines early-modern standardization practices of Spanish that occurred through the reduction or elimination and codification of linguistic variation, specifically the standardization of graphic-phonetic features of Spanish. By comparing various manuscripts with the first printed version of the Siete Partidas--a legal text during the reign of Alfonso X—four graphic-phonetic variables are examined: ff/f, d/t, o/u, and e/i. Findings suggest that there is a movement toward standard variants in the more recent manuscripts, namely f, d, u, and i. It is argued that the republication and printing of the Siete Partidas not only had the purpose of linguistic updating, but also had the objective of standardizing these four variables (Harris-Northall, 1996; Tejedo-Herrero, 2009).