Syntactic and pragmatic factors in the morphological reduction of Latin HABEO>Spanish (h)e

In a survey of the literature, explanations for the phonologically anomalous morphological reduction of Latin habeo 'I have' to Old Spanish (h)e 'I have' are discussed, focusing on accounts for the loss of the person/number/tense/mood marker -o (first person singular morpheme) from an intermediate (spoken Latin) form */ayo/ in its uses as a future morpheme, auxiliary verb, & main verb. It is proposed that syntactic & pragmatic factors determined this development, whereby occurrence with the postverbal tonic pronoun yo'l' (from Latin ego) for pragmatic emphasis resulted in haplology of the reduplicated syllable (*[ayo] --> *[yo] > *[ai] + *[yo]) in emphatic uses, & loss of the apparent emphatic element *[-yo] (*[ayo] > *[ai]) in nonemphatic uses. 17 References. S. Novak