Re: CHAT: I need help with the concept "New World Spanish"

Josh Roth wrote:


>In a message dated 8/31/02 11:51:40 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:
>
>>The only real grammatical departure I can think of is the Argentine
voseo--
>>but that again is found in Spain and occasionally elsewhere in the New
>>World.
>
>I was recently surprised to hear from a coworker about another Argentinean
>grammatical departure. Verbs are conjugated a bit differently for 'vos':
>basically, the stress goes on the end, so you have things like 'vos comés'
(I
>don't know how if an accent is written) rather than 'tú comes'.
You are correct; sorry if I wasn't clear:  by "voseo" I meant the whole
schmeer--
vos as 2sing., plus the accented verb form.  Historically if I'm not
mistaken, vos was 2plur., consequently the 2pl. verb form was dragged along
with it and simplified:  older 2 pl. "vos amáis" > 2sg. vos amás. (The
pronoun, of course, is not required.) I assume French vous is cognate with
vos, and it also requires the 2pl. form of the verb, vous aimez.
Interesting that the change of vos from pl. to sing. parallels that of Engl.
you.

>Likewise for
>commands - 'sentáte' is used instead of 'siéntate'. Note, there is no stem
>change (this may be true for present tense too, but I don't know)...
Yes--pensar >  pienso, pensás, piensa (pensamos, Vds. piensan, piensan).....
IMO it's a nice change in the language-- all-purpose and democratic.  We
were always cautioned against using the tú/vosotros forms except with
intimate friends or children.  I note that most of the writers on Ideolengua
hardly ever use Usted, so it seems Penisular Span. is also getting away from
the formal/informal distinction.

, and, he
>tells me, the accent is actually written there (even though it seems
>unnecessary, since stress would naturally fall on the penultimate syllable
>anyway). Anyone else heard of this?
That is the case, and yes, the written accent is redundant in the
imperative.  The thing is, one doesn't often encounter these forms in
written work, except in novels etc. recording colloquial speech (IIRC
Mallea-- 40s, 50s-- doesn't use the voseo; more modern writers do. I suspect
in Mallea's day it was considered too slangy, or perhaps he was writing
about "a better class of people" :-) ).


Interesting question for your friend, or Pablo Flores if he's reading this--
do vos forms occur in other tenses?  (I think I've hear pres. subj. amés,
comás etc; but how about the imperfect, the preterit, the future, the 2 past
subjunctives etc.???)

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