Vos and tú in Montevidean Spanish: speakers’ attitudes in the PRESEEA corpus
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52575/2712-7451-2021-40-2-280-291Keywords:
Spanish, Latin America, Uruguay, personal pronouns, forms of address, linguistic attitudesAbstract
This paper examines the attitudes of Uruguayan Spanish speakers towards the singular secondperson pronouns vos and tú. Our approach is based on the analysis of the 32 sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Montevideo, Uruguay from 2007 to 2011 as a part of the PRESEEA project. Traditionally, Montevidean Spanish was considered to have a tripartite system of pronoun address (vos, tú, usted), with tú as an intermediate option. However, recent studies show the increasing use of vos in detriment of tú. The results seem to confirm both opinions: while some speakers’ repertoire only include two pronouns (informal vos and formal usted), the others still use all three options on a daily basis. Yet there are respondents having difficulty in describing the difference between vos and tú, which allows for an assumption that a third pronoun system, with no clear functional vos / tú distinction, might exist in
Montevideo. We hope that our research will serve as a base for future experimental studies on pronouns in Uruguayan Spanish.
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