Structural priming has been described as a measure of association between constructions. Here, we apply priming as a diagnostic to assess the status of the Chilean second-person singular (2sg)
voseo, which exists in variation with the more standard
tuteo. Despite being the majority variant in informal interactions, Chileans are reported to have little metalinguistic awareness of
voseo and they avoid the
vos pronoun, in some cases using the
tú pronoun with
voseo verb forms, leading to proposals that
tuteo and
voseo are conflated into a single mixed form. The patterning for priming, however, indicates otherwise. Analyses of some 2000 2sg familiar tokens from a corpus of conversational Chilean Spanish reveal that a previous
tuteo or
voseo favors the repetition of that same form, indicating that speakers do treat these forms as distinct. We also observe that invariable forms with historically
tuteo morphology are associated with neither
voseo nor
tuteo, while the invariable
voseo discourse marker
cachái ‘you know’ retains a weak association with
voseo. Furthermore, while
tuteo is favored with a
tú subject pronoun, this effect does not override the priming effect, evidence that, even with a
tú pronoun,
voseo and
tuteo are distinct constructions in speakers’ representations.
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