Linguistic syncopes are confusing for musicians, who think of syncopation as redistributive rather than reductive. Confusingly, too, many of the syncopated words in Juan de Valdés’ gem of early descriptive linguistics and linguistic politicking, Diálogo de la lengua (late 1530s), are not produced by medial deletions. Here’s the conventional scheme of things (Hartmann & Stork, Dictionary of language and linguistics (1972)):

And here’s some Valdés:

In reply to your question, I would say that we principally use syncopated words in two manners. Of one I do not approve; it is used in a certain part of Spain by the common people, who say traxon, dijon, hizon for traxeron, dijeron, hizieron; I say that I do not approve of it because those who prize themselves on writing well view this style of speech as bad and reprehensible, because they wish words to be pronounced and written complete when the parliament of vowels [ayuntamiento de vocales, and nothing to do with Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls] does not cause ugliness. The other style of syncopated words is good, and, as such, we all use it, saying: Allá van leyes do quieren reyes, and: Do quiera que vayas, de los tuyos ayas, in which, if you look, we use do in place of adonde; we also use hi for hijo, saying hi de vezino for hijo de vezino, hi de puta, for hijo de puta, and hidalgo for hijo dalgo.

There are still lots of (Hijo) Dalgos around, although dalgo is itself of course a compression of de and algo, so that hidalgo leads to “son of something”.

While they are rare, it would have been good if Valdés had also written about items in the above table’s second row, as well as about playful transformations like Dé donde diere.

Categories: Empire, Languages

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1. kalebeul » Bacalado
   April 10th 2007 08:54

   [...] Wikipedia currently notes the disappearance of the d from the tail of past participles in Spanish (estoy cansado → toy cansao) and corresponding hypercorrections in which a redundant d is inserted into -ao endings. The following passage dealing with syncopes is from Avelino Herrero Mayor’s 1967 Diálogo argentino de la lengua (source: Corde) Profesor. – Señorita, no aumente usted el sentimentalismo del cuadro que nos pinta a un trabajador del campo, que anda con una flor en la oreja y el sombrero… Alumna. – El sombrero requintao, dice la copla. Profesor. – Es una manera de decir al modo campesino, que acorta las palabras: cansao, por cansado… Alumna. – Y retobao, por retobado. Profesor. – La pérdida de la consonante d en las terminaciones ado es muy común en el lenguaje vulgar, lo mismo aquí que allá. Alumna. – Es decir, lo mismo en América como en España. Profesor. – Justamente. En el uso antiguo sucedía, por esa síncopa, que hace apurao, de apurado y desgaciao, de desgraciado. Alumna. – Y creo que ahora sucede todavía en muchos sectores del vulgo. Profesor. – Ocurría también entre la gente urbana y culta. Se dice a este respecto, que Cervantes y Santa Teresa no le hacían asco a la pronunciación ao, y decían soldao y andao. Alumna. – Y bacalao… Profesor. – Naturalmente, porque no hay bacalado, ni Puerto del Callado… [...]