Abstract
Structural priming has been described as a measure of association between constructions. Here, we apply priming as a diagnostic to assess the status of the Chilean second-person singular (2sg) voseo, which exists in variation with the more standard tuteo. Despite being the majority variant in informal interactions, Chileans are reported to have little metalinguistic awareness of voseo and they avoid the vos pronoun, in some cases using the tú pronoun with voseo verb forms, leading to proposals that tuteo and voseo are conflated into a single mixed form. The patterning for priming, however, indicates otherwise. Analyses of some 2000 2sg familiar tokens from a corpus of conversational Chilean Spanish reveal that a previous tuteo or voseo favors the repetition of that same form, indicating that speakers do treat these forms as distinct. We also observe that invariable forms with historically tuteo morphology are associated with neither voseo nor tuteo, while the invariable voseo discourse marker cachái ‘you know’ retains a weak association with voseo. Furthermore, while tuteo is favored with a tú subject pronoun, this effect does not override the priming effect, evidence that, even with a tú pronoun, voseo and tuteo are distinct constructions in speakers’ representations.
Highlights
According to a usage-based perspective, grammar is shaped by experience with language, through the repetition and conventionalization of frequently occurring patterns of language use (Bybee 2006, pp. 712–14)
The speakers who show no variability in the data are, included in the other analyses, as there is good reason to assume that they share the same conditioning, and that their lack of tuteo is due to a preponderance of voseo-favoring contexts in their form in the previous five Intonation Units (IUs), in the context of a previous tuteo and a previous voseo
Own variables intuitions(Sankoff and judgements not necesbeen shown to be the case for voseo use
Summary
According to a usage-based perspective, grammar is shaped by experience with language, through the repetition and conventionalization of frequently occurring patterns of language use (Bybee 2006, pp. 712–14). In several Latin American varieties, including Chilean Spanish, there are two 2sg familiar forms, with tú existing alongside vos. This pronominal variation is accompanied by variation in the verbal paradigms, in what is known as tuteo and voseo. Chilean speakers appear to have little awareness of their use of voseo verb forms. Some forty years ago this idea was put forward, and it was proposed that mixed voseo might come to replace tuteo as the “norma universal de tratamiento de los chilenos cultos en situaciones informales y familiares” ‘universal standard form of address for educated Chileans in informal and familiar situations’
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