The deep social changes which Spain underwent during the XVI century as a result of the discharge of its troops and the Discovery ofAmerica, brought about the evolution of the pronominal address system. Nonetheless, this evolution was not identical neither in Spainnor in the different Spanish-America regions. In America, all throughout the three centuries that the colonial period lasted, diverselinguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena emerged as a result of that evolution.In this paper the pronominal address system in the territory now known as Venezuela is addressed. In the introduction of this paper,a summary of the linguistic and extralinguistic causes which triggered the changes is offered. Following the Introduction, the first sectionis devoted to the analysis of the pronominal address system as well as other address forms as they are reflected in the corpus. The differentaddress systems are analysed as follows: first, in their social contexts of occurrence; then, the pragmatic and textual factors are examinedand, finally, the factors related to the participants' presence are accounted for. The second section deals with the historical evolutionof the address systems in each century, highlitghting two factors: the intimate and the reverential forms of address, a distinction whichallows a better understanding of the changes undergone by the pronominal address system and other address forms. In the analyzed material, the evolution of the reverential vos towards the Americanintimate vos as well as the loss of vuestra merced and the emergence of usted, and the obsolence of vosotros can be clearly observed.The evolution of the second person both in the singular form with the retention of vos, and in the plural form with the loss of vosotrosare traits that mark a fundamental difference between the Peninsular and American Spanish.
Keywords:
evolution of the address pronominal system, Venezuelan Spanish, sociolingüistics, pragmatics
Tejera, M. J. (2004). La segunda persona en el nuevo corpus histórico del español de Venezuela. Boletín De Filología, 40, Pág. 233–261. Retrieved from https://boletinfilologia.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/18009
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