[Ads-l] Is Spanish stressed mid-vowel diphthongization becoming non-productive?

[Mark Mandel]

I'm not a student of Spanish historical phonology, so this may be very old
news, but it startled me.

Background: Spanish is full of the diphthongs /we/ and /ye/ (orthographic
〈ue〉 and 〈ie〉) from stressed older /o/ and /e/, as in

   - /'pwerko/ 〈puerco〉 'pig' < Latin 〈porcum〉 and
   - /'jelo/ 〈hielo〉 'ice' < 〈gelū〉.

There are also the so-called stem-changing verbs, in which an /e/ or /o/ in
the stem diphthongizes to /je/ or /we/ respectively when stressed; e.g.,
〈costar〉 'cost'. (Spanish normally stresses the penult of vowel-final
words, and all the Spanish words mentioned in this post follow that rule.)

   - 1s cuesto  <==
   - 2s cuestas  <==
   - 3s cuesta  <==
   - 1p costamos
   - 2p costáis
   - 3p cuestan  <==

Current: Well, a blog I follow mentioned that "*Puerquitos
<http://www.npr.org/2013/05/02/179090872/this-little-piggy-cookie-is-a-sweet-mexican-find>*
are pig-shaped cookies popular in Hispanic cuisine." The link is to an NPR
page that includes a recipe and many comments, but that's beside the point
(although tempting!).  "-ito" is an extremely common diminutive suffix, so
〈puerquito〉/pwer'kito/ means literally 'little pig' or 'piggy'; the NPR
story is titled "This Little Piggy Cookie Is A Sweet Mexican Find" and
calls them "piggies" or "piggy cookies" throughout.

Now, I would have expected the vowel of 〈puerco〉 to revert to monophthongal
/o/ when destressed, but in this word it doesn't. The word is also used
literally, 'little pig', as in "The Three Little Pigs" as well as for real
live piglets— a Google search for puerqitos
<https://www.google.com/search?q=puerquitos> reports "About 145,000
results", for what that number may be worth— but the monophthongal
diminutive "porquito" /por'kito/ is also used. Google reports
<https://www.google.com/search?num=20&safe=off&q=porquitos> only "About
64,900 results" for this form and asks "Did you mean: *puerquitos*?"

Thus my question, as in the subject line: Is Spanish stressed mid-vowel
diphthongization becoming non-productive?

Mark Mandel

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