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This study attributes the enigmatic diphthong -ie- in Old Spanish dieron ‘they gave’ to a second (and later) phase in the development of this form from Latin dĕdērŭnt ‘they gave’. The earlier phase, I propose, involved regular sound change, namely, lenition and vocalic fusion. Thus, dĕdērŭnt> *de[ð]erunt > *de[Ø]eron > *deeron > *deron. I argue that one of the most (if not the single most) productive types of levelling in the history of the Spanish preterite endings, horizontal paradigmatic levelling, was at the root of the second (and final) phase of the development referred to above. The long-upheld belief that extraparadigmatic levelling and subsequent loss of internal -dē- (i.e., haplology) were the causes of the diphthong -ie- in Old Spanish dieron (i.e., Classical Latin dĕdḗrŭnt > Late/Vulgar Latin *dĕ́-dē-rŭnt > Old Spanish dieron) is challenged by the attestation of three non-haplological forms related to Latin dĕdērŭnt: deestes ‘you gave’ (< dĕdĭstĭs), deistis ‘you gave’ (< dĕdĭstĭs), and deerit ‘should s/he give’ (< dĕdĕrĭt). As these forms, which surface in the extant records of the Spanish and Portuguese High Middle Ages, retained the vowel of the second syllable, they could not have derived from haplology. Rather, given their internal vowel-to-vowel contact, i.e., -eØe- and -eØi-, respectively, they must have appeared due to lenition, i.e., loss of internal -d-: dĕdĭstĭs > deØestes, dĕdĭstĭs > deØistis, dĕdĕrĭt > deØerit. In contrast to the traditional view, then, this study proposes that, once regular sound change produced *deron in Old Spanish, stressed -ie- in dieron must have modeled itself after the diphthong of this form’s third-person singular counterpart, Old Spanish dio. In sum, the ultimate cause of the enigmatic diphthong -ie- in Old Spanish dieron is horizontal levelling in the direction third person singular (Old Spanish dio) → third person plural (Old Spanish *deron > dieron), all within the paradigm of the preterite of dar ‘to give’.
