When Analogy, Sociolinguistic Prestige and Syncretism Collide: Why the Alfonsine Singular Imperatives <i>bendi</i> ‘Bless’ and <i>maldi</i> ‘Curse’ of <i>bendezir</i> and <i>maldezir</i> did not Endure

The Spanish imperatives bendice and maldice of bendecir and maldecir are regular, that is, they are formed like all other regular singular informal imperatives, with a root + a theme vowel, and no ending. However, they are anomalous within their respective paradigms, since they do not align morphologically with the irregular forms of Sp. decir , e.g., pres. ind. digo , bendigo , maldigo , pret. dije, bendije, maldije, etc. Thus, since di is the irregular imperative of decir , one would expect irregular imperatives such as * bendí y * maldí from bendecir and maldecir . The matter is further complicated by the fact that bendi and maldi appear in texts of Alfonso X, el Sabio, from the late thirteenth century, which points to the fact that they were clearly the preferred variants of King Alfonso, and that they continue to this day in Galician and Asturian. A complete historical and philological analysis undertaken here, which takes into account evidence from non-standard varieties of Latin and Romance, together with processes of historical morphology such as syncretism and anti-homophony, explains the curiously regular Modern Spanish imperatives bendice and maldice .