Sociolinguistic ISSN: 1750-8649 (print)

Studies ISSN: 1750-8657 (online)

Review

Desarrollo sociolingüístico del voseo en la region

andina de Colombia (1555–1976)
Ana María Díaz Collazos (2015)

[Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 392]

Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
ISBN 978-1-118-29496-3. Pp. 329

Reviewed by Daniel M. Sáez Rivera

Voseo or the use of an originally reverential form (vos) in solidarity or familiarity

(‘confianza’) contexts is one of the most remarkable features of American
Spanish. The complexity of voseo is great: voseo can manifest itself both in
address pronouns and verbal forms derived from the 2pl or from 2sg persons with
multiple solutions and different degrees of mingling in a mixed paradigm. Its
dialectology is diverse, with huge areas that choose the pronominal T form tú
(like most of Mexico and the Spanish Caribbean), the original V form vos
(Argentine) or both, depending on region and social class, as well as even gender
and other social factors; its sociolinguistic value is also therefore manifold from
stigmatized to covertly or overtly prestigious, and the history of voseo, albeit
having led to an extensive bibliography, is not yet clear and complete.
Collazos’ study on the ‘Sociolinguistic development of voseo in the Andean
region of Colombia (1555–1976)’ – Desarrollo sociolingüístico del voseo en la
region andina de Colombia (1555–1976) – is thus a priori a promising reference
which fills the lack of diachronical monographic studies on the history of voseo
beyond the work of Páez Urdaneta (1981) on all America, focusing on a particular
and quite forgotten region. The study by Collazos includes a critical update of the

Affiliation

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

email: [email protected]

SOLS VOL 10.4 2016 643–648 https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.30895

© 2017, EQUINOX PUBLISHING
644 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

state of the art and a fine-grained analysis due to the employment of both
qualitative and quantitative methods (multivariable analysis of linguistic and
social factors with the help of GoldVarb X), as well as data triangulation
(different kinds of sources: epistolaries like Otte’s 1993 collection of private
letters of travellers to the Spanish West Indies, literature – especially costumbrista
literature – and legal archive documents). It is no surprise that examples are
carefully quoted and classified marking the Colombian region of the token, title,
year of the first edition and page, and in the case of archival documents the
acronym of the archive and the year of writing.
The structure of the work is as follows. After the usual items of the dedication
(p. [v]) and the ‘Acknowledgements’(‘Reconocimientos’) (pp. vii–ix), the outline
of the book can be easily followed with the help of the initial tables: the ‘Table of
contents’ (‘Tabla de contenido’) (pp. xi–xv), ‘List of tables’ (‘Lista de tablas’)
(pp. xvii–xviii), ‘List of illustrations’ [‘Lista de figuras’] (p. xix) and ‘List of
abbreviations’ (‘Lista de abreviaturas’) (p. xx). The body of the text is split into
seven chapters: ‘Introduction’ (‘1. Introducción’) (pp. 1–35), ‘2. Origins and
evolution of the pronoun vos until the 15th century’ (‘2. Orígenes y evolución del
pronombre vos hasta el siglo XV’) (pp. 36–60), ‘3. The use of vos in the Golden
Age’ (‘3. El uso de vos en el Siglo de Oro’) (pp. 61–106), ‘4. The Latency Period’
(‘4. Período de latencia’) (pp. 107–157), ‘5. Voseo in contemporary times’ [‘5. El
voseo en el período contemporáneo’] (pp. 158–226), ‘6. Reverential vos’ [‘6. El
vos reverencial’] (pp. 234–260), and ‘7. Conclusions’ (‘7. Conclusiones’) (pp.
261–278). References follow, divided into critical bibliography (‘Bibliografía’)
(pp. 279–295), and primary sources (‘Apéndice: Listado de fuentes primarias’
(pp. 296–300). Final indexes allow an easier perusal through the book, including
the words and affixes under study (‘Índice léxico y morfológico’) (pp. 301–311)
and the concepts under consideration (‘Índice temático’) (pp. 313–329).
The introduction (first chapter) charts the structure of the study and places
voseo in the ethnographic and linguistic geography of Colombia as of great
vitality in the Andean region in the southwest of the country in an isogloss
connecting the area with Ecuador. The complex morphology of vos is here briefly
but clearly introduced and the theoretical frame is presented: mainly the
pragmatic speech act theory and the classic proposal by Brown and Gilman
(1960) on the expression of power in T/V address forms; Goffman’s concept of
face is also employed and sociolinguistics fuels the adopted concept of linguistic
change and key concepts like prestige, stereotype, stigmatization etc. stemming
from Labov (1972). Methodological considerations are here carefully explained:
following the theoretical framework of variationist sociolinguistics, it is observed
how a linguistic trait (voseo) in its variation (with the variants V-V, T-V, and V-
REVIEW: SÁEZ RIVERA 645

T, being the first letter the subject pronominal vos o tú, and the second letter a
verbal form coming from 2pl [V] or 2sg [T]) is promoted by linguistic and social
factors in the various sources already mentioned (costumbrista literary works with
dialogues closer to the actual speech of the time, and archival documents,
especially legal documents dealing with verbal or physical violence like riots,
defamation, murder or abuse). On the one hand, the linguistic factors coded are
the following: nominal address, standard/nonstandard traits linked to the speaker
and the hearer, time-aspect-mood features (mainly indicative vs. subjunctive/
imperative), lexical traits of the verbs, polarity (affirmative vs. negative), kind of
clause (main/subordinated). On the other hand, the social factors under consid-
eration are the respective status of speaker and hearer, social class, public/private
domain, race and rural/urban origin.
The second chapter acts as a good state of the art on the ‘Origins and evolution
of pronoun vos until the 15th century’. Using previous works by other researchers
on the history of vos before its arrival in America and therefore the timespan of
the study, Collazos clearly explains the origin of vos as pluralis majestatis in the
late Roman Empire, its use in the Middle Ages first as a court form typically
employed to address superiors in the public domain (12th and 13th centuries) and
then also as a familiarity and even low class pronoun in the late Middle Ages (14th
and 15th centuries), when vuestra merced (the origin of Golden Age usted) is
promoted as a power address and vosotros arises as a 2pl pronoun substituting
vos, the use of which begins to be limited to an individual address form. The
morphological changes in the 2pl verbal forms with the loss of -d- in the present
(amades > amáis/amás) and other tenses, as well as alternations in the 2pl
imperative like cantad/cantá, tened/tené, dezid/dezí, are also accounted for.
In the third chapter on ‘The use of vos in the Golden Age’, the state of the art
turns out to be more critical, spotting possible problems or flaws in previous
studies, such as the tendency to consider the Spanish Golden Age (16th and 17th
centuries) as a single period, fragmentary and qualitative results without a
thorough and quantitative variationist study, some inconsistencies in the data
regarding status, social class and relationship between spouses, lack of interest in
the linguistic factors and the debate regarding which is the address form system
that enters America in the sixteenth century (likely a tripartite system with tú, vos
and vuestra merced and its derivatives). To overcome these problems, Collazos
proposes to analyze two kinds of texts from the American Golden Age as repre-
sentative of two consecutive generations: Otte’s familiar letters of passengers to
the West Indies from the 1557–1601 period and El Carnero (1638) by Juan
Rodríguez Freyle, born in Bogotá in 1566. As far as sources are concerned, it can
be criticized that Collazos does not use the more recent, corrected and better
646 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

edited transcription of Otte’s documents made by Fernández Alcaide (2007).

Yet, some results stand out, especially the linguistic ones: vos is preferred as
linked to proper names, appellatives and insults but not honorifics such as
señor/señora; negation and blame favor vos and vos is used by superior to inferior
without stigmatization marks. As tú is better valued by the end of the sixteenth
century, it is used as a mitigator of the authoritarian verve of vos, which can
explain the forging of the mixed paradigm of voseo with T forms like te, tu as
clitic and possessive pronouns and some verbal forms arising from the 2sg person
(like amábades > amabas).
After the Golden Age, a ‘period of latency’ (studied in the fourth chapter)
arises. This period is defined by Collazos as ‘the time lapse in which speakers get
rid of the use of vos in the writing of literary works as a vernacular pronoun’ (p.
107). It comprises mainly the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century,
until the first literary documentation ca. 1787 in the Riverplate (Argentina), as
well as part of the nineteenth century when voseo reappears in the literature of
several areas and is proscribed in prescriptive grammar and lexicography. The
scarce documentation of voseo in the latency period can mislead into thinking that
it disappears from American Spanish. But this is not the case, as other researchers
have proved. This chapter is therefore especially valuable for furnishing new data
on voseo in the area from archive documents found and perused by Collazos
herself, fifteen of which, spanning from 1669 to 1818, show cases of voseo. In the
documents voseo is maintained by the low class, but also by local elites. Collazos
finds four kinds of voseo: power vos from superior to inferior, familiarity vos,
insulting vos, redressing vos (as a reply to an insult). Three phenomena stand out
in the verbal morphology: the arising of homomorphic forms with the 2sg, the
maintenance of the diphthong (amáis) vs. the monophthong (amás) which also
begins to appear more frequently from the beginning of the nineteenth century on;
imperatives without -d (amá < amad) increase. Regarding nominal morphology,
the 2pl forms of clitics (os) and possessive pronouns (vuestro) disappear from the
voseo paradigm in the corpus; vos is preferred after prepositions, and the T form
ti, previously normal after prepositions, is increasingly being used as a derogatory
subject.
After the latency period, the contemporary period is studied in Chapter 5. The
period covers the time since its first literary appearance in Colombia in 1828 to
our days (1976), with two subperiods. The first subperiod is constituted by a
transitional phase (1828–1890) in which the presence of voseo is still limited and
occasional; henceforth only a qualitative analysis is performed. The second one
spans from 1890 to 1976, a time period in which voseo appears frequently. This
frequency allows a quantitative analysis regarding the three Andean regions of
REVIEW: SÁEZ RIVERA 647

Colombia, i. e. the Southwest, Antioquia and Cundiboyacense regions (in the last
one, where Bogotá is situated, voseo has disappeared nowadays as vernacular, the
causes of which are subsequently discussed). As it happened with the Golden
Age, Collazos signals some critical points in previous studies: lack of variationist
analyses like the one performed by herself, treatment of the twentieth century as
a homogenous period, use of literary sources as representative of a linguistic
reality when they actually reflect linguistic stereotypes (above all social), and not
real speech. Some interesting results show how already in the transitional phase
voseo is reassigned as a rural and low class prononun in the Bogotá region, the
verbal voseo forms being the first to be stigmatized and tuteo being promoted in
the capital. It is difficult to highlight any of the many findings of the second
subperiod: there exists a tendency for the preference of voseo in private domains
and in intra-group address by the middle and low classes using the V-T cluster
(vos + 2sg verb form) like in the Andean area of Ecuador; voseo is frequently
reassigned as a stereotype of rural/regional origin, gender (mainly feminine), and
race (of mixed-blood individuals or mestizo speakers). The linguistic correlations
reveal an association of voseo with non-standard traits, with nominal forms of
solidarity or familiarity – but also insults – and with concrete verbs, especially of
physical perception, as typical of appellative use, which is also connected with the
abundance of voseo in imperatives (but also present indicative). Morphological
data of voseo display the disappearance of diphthongized forms and of final -d in
imperatives, verbal forms which are homomorphic – or not – with 2sg alternates
depending on tense and region.
A reverential vos occurs in America along with familiar vos or voseo without
any kind of latency period, spanning from the colonial times to the twentieth
century. Nevertheless, previous studies have not focused on this kind of vos, so
Chapter 6 of Collazos’ book on reverential vos should be highlighted as greatly
innovative. The analysis is performed using three literary works as the main data:
Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias by Juan Castellanos (1501–1601), El
desierto prodigioso y prodigio del desierto by Pedro de Solís y Valenzuela
(1650), and Rhytmica sacra, moral y laudatoria (1703) by Francisco Álvarez de
Velasco y Zorrilla; several complementary sources are used for the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. In these texts, Collazos labels two kind of vos. The first one is
called courtly vos (‘vos cortesano’), as found in Castellanos, for trying to
represent the old literary uses of chivalric epic and with mainly honorific use. The
second kind of vos is called by Collazos sacramental vos, registered, for instance,
in Solís and Álvarez de Velasco. The denomination is due to the fact that here vos
is used to address superior spiritual entities like God, Jesus Christ or the Virgin
Mary. The difference with voseo is found not only in the reverential function of
648 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

vos but also in the morphology: 2pl forms in their original form are maintained as
well as clitic os and possessive vos. As verbal forms of reverential vos are
identical with the vosotros or 2pl forms of European Spanish (in America ustedes
+ 3pl forms are used instead), this can explain the linguistic myth found in Latin
America which considers that this kind of vos is maintained in Spain (p. 260).
Finally, some complete conclusions summing up those already presented in
this review are furnished in Chapter 7, focusing on social and linguistic factors –
as well as reverential vos – and offering this work as a substantial contribution to
a general history of voseo.
Although it is maybe too daring to assert that Collazos’ book is a turning point
in the studies on diachronical voseo, it doubtless establishes an advance in the
field for many reasons. The quite complete and critical up-to-date state of the art
offers a solid ground for the improvement of previous works on the issue, the
methodology can be easily replicated, brand new data bring new perspectives on
the matter and the careful analysis performed sheds a clear light on the history of
voseo. This study provides therefore new insights to those interested in the history
of address forms, especially Spanish vos, and it contributes to the renewal of
diachronical studies on voseo with Bertolotti (2015).

References
Bertolotti, V. (2015) A mí de vos no me trata ni usted ni nadie. Sistema e historia de
las formas de tratamiento en la lengua española en América. México, D. F.:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Universidad de la República.
Brown, R. and Gilman, A. (1960) The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Th. A. Sebeok
(ed.) Style in language 253–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fernández Alcaide, M. (2009) Cartas de particulares en Indias del siglo XVI: edición y
estudio discursivo. Madrid and Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana and Vervuert.
Labov, W. (1972) Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Otte, E. (1993) Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias 1540–1616. Mexico: Fondo de
Cultura Económica.
Páez Urdaneta, I. (1981) Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo. Caracas: La
Casa de Bello.

(Received 18th May 2016; accepted 16th June 2016)