The evolution of the written accentuation system in Spanish since 1726

Abstract

Douglass (1988) examines Greek and Roman precursors and early uses of written accentuation in Spanish, tracing its development to 1726, and the first Diccionario de Autoridades from the Real Academia Española (RAE). This system continues to evolve, but there appears to be no published research on its development over the last almost 300 years. Along the way there have been inconsistencies, missed generalizations, and overlapping, unmotivated, or ad hoc rules that have undergone significant revisions in the Diccionarios, Ortografías, Prontuarios, and Gramáticas published between 1726 and 2010. The ambiguous and tentative first steps in establishing the rules of written accentuation in Spanish have, over the years, been modified and clarified, coming to form a streamlined and elegant system that constitutes a useful tool for the pronunciation and spelling of unfamiliar words. Early accentuation rules differed widely from the current ones in questions relating to prosody, the accentuation of vowels appearing singly as separate words, the use of the diacritical accent, diphthongization and hiatus, the relation between written accentuation and grammatical categories, and the consolidation of rules for the accentuation of words ending in -n, -s, or a vowel, all of which are explored in the current study.