Forms of address in the south-western Sprachbund of the Iberian Peninsula: One hundred years of evolution in western Andalusian Spanish and European Portuguese

Abstract

South-western Peninsular Spanish (Andalusian) and European Portuguese rely on a single plural pronoun to address a group of people (ustedes/voces respectively). However, this can induce two different agreements in the verb, in the object pronouns and in the possessive: (i) second person plural (2PL) and (ii) third person plural (3PL). This chapter studies the linguistic spread of these agreement patterns during the last hundred years as well as the theoretical aspects that led to this variation in use, and it also confirms the Sprachbund theory that has been recently put forward regarding western Andalusian and southern European Portuguese, since both varieties share a series of linguistic behaviours and developments in phonetics, lexicon and morpho-syntax.