Pronouns in Foreign Lands: Vosotros in Latin America and Ustedes in Spain (original) (raw)

The second-person plural pronouns vosotros and ustedes have received scant attention when compared to their singular counterparts tú/vos/usted. Until Morgan and Schwenter (2016), the purported symmetry between 2SG and 2PL pronouns in Castilian Spanish had never been questioned. They showed that in Spain there is clear asymmetry between the forms: choice of usted in the singular is often mirrored not by ustedes but by vosotros in the plural. Even in Andalusian dialects where both pronouns are found, verbal agreement is overwhelmingly with the vosotros form (e.g. ustedes queréis) and vosotros is replacing ustedes more generally (Jaime Jiménez 2018). Meanwhile, vosotros is not used natively by any speakers in Latin America, where ustedes is the only 2PL pronoun available in naturally-occurring speech. Here, we examine the roles of the "minority" 2PL pronoun in each region: vosotros in Latin America and ustedes in Spain. Using examples from oral and print sources, as well as qualitative commentary from native speakers from both regions, we show that the functional range of these pronouns is similar, albeit not (yet) identical, in their "foreign" varieties. Ustedes in Spain is mainly used in formulaic sequences or formal/scripted situations (Morgan and Schwenter 2016). In our online survey of over 200 native speakers of Peninsular Spanish administered via social media, respondent commentary regarding usage of ustedes was of two types. First, respondents failed to comprehend the question about the use of the 2PL form, and instead interpreted it as referring to the 2SG form, leading to comments about what kinds of individuals and/or situations would merit tú or usted. We interpret this result as a kind of "plural blindness" on the part of speakers, who appear to have little access to intuitions about use of ustedes. Of course, it may be that these respondents use ustedes so rarely that they don't have clear intuitions to share, and these were the second type of comments. Speakers stated that they "never" use ustedes, that it is restricted to formal or classroom situations, or even that it was typical of Latin American speakers, and by implication not identifiable as a "native" Peninsular feature. Vosotros in Latin America has even less currency than ustedes in Spain, of course, but the parallels are noteworthy. While verb conjugations corresponding to the former are simply not productive, speakers are still exposed to them. Not surprisingly, speakers evaluate these pronominal and verb forms as elegant, deferential, and archaic (Morgan et al. 2017)—quite the opposite of their value in Spain (but ironically aligning with Peninsular reactions to modern voseo, in spite of the etymological and even phonological overlap of the two forms). Possessive vuestro does enjoy some very limited productivity in Latin American Spanish, but accompanies ustedes and its 3PL morphology rather than the erstwhile vosotros (or os). This one morphological relic of an otherwise obsolete 2PL system thus takes its place beside European Portuguese possessive vosso, which similarly outlived its historical 2PL paradigm and was recast to accompany vocês. Our findings buttress the argument that 2PL pronominal forms are not mirror images of their 2SG counterparts. Indeed, all modern Ibero-Romance varieties show a strong preference for just one 2PL pronoun in spite of the shared history of an apparently symmetrical paradigm (Morgan and Schwenter 2018). Nevertheless, they reserve a space in their grammar for other forms that, while limited in productivity, never quite disappear.