Origin of the pronominal diversity in America

Peninsular influences or diastratic and diaphasic factors?

Abstract

Through letters from individuals to Indies (16th century), and according to three sociolinguistic criteria (gender, diaphasia, diastratia), I have analysed the Spanish pronominal system evolution in a variety of forms of treatment and sentence constructions, as well as considering the morph syntactic aspects (evolution of tenses) in the letters’ discourses. The results of this quantitative and qualitative analysis corroborate the evolution of different pronouns that went to America (vuestra merced, vos, vosotros and tú); the evolution depends both on socio-cultural issues and register, since context, for example, in the case of vosotros and vuestra merced, appearing on complaints and pleas. In addition, independently to the verbal pronominal system, I have explored the cause why these forms are not a single block. Thus, we see a high degree of diphthongization (-ais, -eis), which testifies the expansion of diphthongization in the 16th century Spanish. As for the forms, which are not diphthongized, its appearance is minimal and reduced to forms stressed on the third-to-last syllable, against those, which are penultimate stressed syllable forms. There is also in this period an initial phenomenon of overcorrection (vinieredeis; trajeredeis), indicating both the loss of -d- and its stigmatization. Although our corpus do not constitute a pure sample of oral language of the 16th century, these written letters may be considered similar to hearing samples.