The Loss of Final Dental in Spanish Voseo Imperatives

In modern Spanish, singular imperatives the vocalic final stress assignment is the morphological marker of familiar vos. Historically, these imperatives are marked with a –d. The loss of –d has been regarded as a pure phonetic reduction (De Souza, Menéndez Pidal, Penny) which morphologizes in the singular (Rini 1999). This paper provide 95 examples of vos imperatives from 1555 to 1858 in Hispanic America to show that morphological distinction of informality plays a role in the maintenance of –d until the 19th century, while inverse standardization triggers the definite loss of –d in all Hispanic American dialects, since the more prestigious form (with –d) is eliminated from a less prestigious address such as vos.