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ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on variation in the use of verbal voseo and verbal tuteo in Uruguayan border Spanish, a variety in daily contact with Portuguese in bilingual communities on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border. It aims at exploring the factors that determine speakers' choices between second-person verbal forms in Spanish through the identification of the social, linguistic, and discourse conditioners that underlie current variation and change in the second person verbal system in this border dialect. Quantitative analysis of general distributional patterns is complemented by a qualitative analysis of interactional strategies revealed by second-person verbal form alternations during sociolinguistic interviews. This analysis points to quotation as a site of frequent alternations in address form, where verbal voseo co-occurs with verbal tuteo, depending on the reported interlocutor. Thus, in addition to offering a purely quantitative approach to the study of second-person verbal forms, this paper discusses how speakers use this variable when representing themselves and others in a single discourse turn, and how this use mirrors social identities revealed by group linguistic behavior. 1. INTRODUCTION. This paper focuses on variation in the use of verbal voseo (sos, 'you are') and verbal tuteo (eres, 'you are') in Uruguayan border Spanish, a variety in daily contact with Portuguese in the bilingual town of Rivera, on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border. By exploring the forces that determine speakers' choices between second-person verbal forms in Spanish, this study seeks to identify and explain the social, linguistic, and discourse conditioners that underlie current variation and change in this border dialect. Based on transcribed conversations with locals, it presents, first, a quantitative analysis of general distributional patterns that reveals linguistic and social conditioners underlying the output of this variable, shedding light on the systematic nature of this variation. Secondly, it develops a qualitative analysis of interactional strategies revealed by second-person verbal form alternations during sociolinguistic interviews. This analysis explores quotation as a site of frequent alternations between verbal voseo (or v-forms) and verbal tuteo (t-forms), depending on the reported interlocutor. Thus, in addition to presenting a detailed account of the general distributional patterns of second-person verbal forms in this variety of Spanish, this paper discusses how speakers use alternations between these variants when representing themselves and others in quotation marks, and how these alternations are indexical of social-cultural identities revealed by the quantitative analysis that detected group linguistic behavior. By capturing this relationship, this analysis elucidates, at a micro level, the macro-level sociolinguistic distribution of this variable. In addition, this study compares current use of second-person verb forms in border Spanish to patterns found by previous scholars in the speech of the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. More specifically, it investigates whether the realization of this variable departs from the norm in the capital, as Rona (1967) suggested when he identified the border region as a zona tuteante where t-forms were categorical; or alternatively, whether this border dialect is in a process of dialect leveling and has adopted verbal voseo, which is more commonly associated with the speech of the capital. Evidence of incorporation of v-forms would support the hypothesis of dialect leveling as a result of recent urbanization of border dialects of both Portuguese (Carvalho 2003a, 2004, 2006a) and Spanish (Carvalho 2006b, 2006c). The data for this study were collected during five months of fieldwork in Rivera, a bilingual town of approximately 80,000 people on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border. The largest urban center of the area and the capital of the Department, Rivera is located 500 kilometers from the nation's capital, Montevideo. …
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