Una nueva hipótesis diacrónica sobre su merced como tratamiento informal

Resumen

The allocutive su merced is currently regarded as a syntactic Americanism. In certain Latin American geolects, su merced is presently used for the second person singular (2ps su merced) deixis and may denote respect (V address) as well as intimacy (T address). The latter usage (T su merced) represents the latest evolutionary link of a linguistic change that has been occurring in Spain since the sixteenth century. The traditional hypothesis on the history of this Americanism posits that su merced usage dates to the twentieth century, while identifying the Afro-Caribbean use of su merced (V address) as the sole historical precedent of this phenomenon, the colonial dating for which is unknown. This article establishes, for the first time, the evolutionary connections of the current Americanism with the history of su merced usage in Spain. The article also explores a new, non-literary database, presents the first colonial evidence of su merced (sixteenth century) and argues for a new chronological hypothesis on su merced usage