The Use of Third Person Pronouns in the Formative Period of Chilean Spanish (1541-c. 1650)

Abstract

We analyze the use of the etymological and referential 3rd person pronominal schemes in texts from the early history of Chilean Spanish (1541 - c.a. 1650), identifying instances of leísmo, laísmo and loísmo. We find that the authors of these texts use mainly the etymological scheme, although there are also occurrences that match the referential scheme (leísmo and laísmo). We propose that the formality of the texts in which these occurrences appear, a formality associated with the use of prestigious forms belonging to the norm of Spain, explain the use of the referential scheme in our corpus.