Why is Spanish getting more complex, instead of less? ("deste," della)

Factual Questions
1

I’m reading Don Quijote* for my Spanish Literature class, and I’m noticing contractions such as “deste” and “della” which I wasn’t taught in “classroom Spanish,” presumably because they have dropped out of usage since the 17th century. I know that languages change over time, but this particular change is counter-intuitive. I always assumed that “del” evolved from people saying “de el” quickly and slurring the words together. Similarly, I could understand “de ella” changing into “della” but why would the language change in the opposite direction?
*Well, part of it.

2

I cross-posted this to the LJ community “linguistics” and someone said:

Okay, so English is wacky too. (sh:eek:cking, huh?) But I still don’t understand why this type of change would happen. In any language.

3

Complex structures stay because they are useful, and this includes structures that have simpler forms. In time the simpler forms may be lost. This can happen because they increase the chance of miscommunication or because they simply don’t get used enough to survive several generations.

4

This is purely an orthographic change, as far as I can figure - it’s only a change in how Spanish is written. The orthography of Spanish was standardized in the 17th or 18th century, and I assume that’s when the older contractions (still present in Portuguese) left the picture. Actually, I’ve personally found that my (slight) acquaintance with Portuguese helps me a lot in reading older Spanish texts - it’s not surprising, really, that the two languages were more similar at one point.

Phonetically, in normal speech at least (as opposed to particularly careful enunciation), there’s no difference in pronunciation between “della” and “de ella”. There’s only one vowel sound either way, so it would come out /`deya/ no matter how you spelled it.

Besides, using one form after another is not necessarily more complicated. It’s really an additional mental task to squish words together. It’s not necessarily any mental savings to retain contractions. Language features come and go as their usefulness develops and fades. Languages do become more complex sometimes, as in the development of separate formal pronouns in the Romance languages, for which Latin had only “tu”.