The European roots of the present-day Americanism su merced

: The allocutive su merced ‘His Grace, His Worship’ is currently regarded as a syntactic Americanism. In certain Hispanic American geolects, su merced is currently used for second person singular (2P su merced ) deixis and may denote respect (V address) as well as intimacy (T address). The traditional hypothesis argues that these uses are only found in American Spanish, and that the allocutive su merced dates back to the Afro-Hispanic varieties of the colonial period. This chapter establishes, for the first time, the evolutionary connections of the current Americanism with the history of su merced usage in Spain. It also explores a new, non-literary database and argues for a new diachronic hypothesis on (2P) su merced , from a Pan-Hispanic perspective.


Introduction
Currently, su merced is a morphosyntactic feature of American Spanish, especially in the Colombian area (see Diccionario de americanismos (DA)). The 21st century, from the pluricentric perspective of the Real Academia Española, has seen two important new developments in the academic status of this second person (2P) form of address. First, the su merced form, which Kany had noted as an Americanism (1963: 92-94), has entered into the official grammar (RAE-ASALE 2009: 1257. Second, a new classification of Hispanic forms of address was proposed, which included (2P) su merced (Bertolotti 2015; Fontanella de Weinberg 1999 does not mention this form).
Contemporary corpora corroborate the relative currency in America of this address form in certain locations. For instance, CORPES XXI offers American Spanish examples of (2P) su merced, which can denote either the maximum (1) or minimum (2) communicative distance: Note: The names of the two authors are mentioned in alphabetical order, without denoting a different level of involvement in this study. The level of authorship credit is totally equitable between the two authors. The research is financed by the reference project HISPATESD, FFI2017-83400-P, MINECO/AEI/FEDER/UE.
(1) Decidí pasar la alambrada que me encerraba, cuando uno de los hombres de machete que me trajo al campamento apareció. Tenga su merced la amabilidad de seguirme. Era un campesino de ojos claros, curtido por el sol. (2003, Venezuela. Pedro Rangel Mora, El enemigo, CORPES XXI) 'I decided to cross the fence that enclosed me, when one of the machetewielding men who brought me to the camp appeared. Would you be so kind as to follow me? He was a light-eyed peasant, weathered by the sun.' (2) Papá, ¿su mercé está seguro de que quiere ir? ¿No es mejor dejarlo para después cuando esté mejor? (2008, Colombia. Triana, Antología de obras de teatro, CORPES XXI) 'Dad, are you sure that you want to go? Is it not better to leave it until later when you are better?' What are the historical roots of these American Spanish uses of (2P) su merced as a respectful (1) and intimate (2) form of address? Currently there is no complete answer to this question, given that a thorough history of (2P) su merced in European and American Spanish remains unfinished. However, it will be shown that the roots of this current Americanism can be found in European Spanish. In fact, (2P) su merced as a respectful form of social address must have been used in the Spanish spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, but today survives only in Hispanic America. The roots of example (1) in today's Venezuela can be traced back to Spain. By contrast, the use of (2P) su merced in the family context can be shown to be a particular evolutionary development of Hispanic America. The Colombian example (2), in which a daughter addresses her father as su mercé, shows a current drift in this use in Hispanic America towards intimacy. In this regard, su merced appears to show a dual function in Hispanic America, analogous to the phenomenon of ustedeo (the overarching use of usted as a single pronoun of respect and intimacy) in Bogota or Costa Rica. The retrodating of this dual function, however, has yet to be determined. Accordingly, today's scientific perspective does not precisely clarify the question as to when (2P) su merced began to be used in Hispanic America as an intimate form of address. Chronologically, the Spanish American history of (2P) su merced is quite imprecise, given that hardly any testimonial evidence has been found of this address form in the colonial era. Previous studies have largely focused on a bicentennial history of the phenomenon, based on literary sources from the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting around 1850, the use of (2P) su merced as a respectful form of address first emerges in Hispanic American costumbrismo (i.e. literature of local customs and manners), especially when Black servants address their masters.
Indeed, one of the main hypotheses posits the origin of the current Americanism in the linguistic contact between Spanish and African languages (Lipski 2005). According to this view, the bozal (or broken-Spanish) sociolect was the first to incorporate the su merced form of address. The label bozal refers to the group of Black African slaves and their descendants, who had difficulty speaking Spanish (Lipski 2005: 7). The bozal change revolves around the fact that su merced is not used to speak of the master (canonical use of the third person [3P]), but rather to speak with him or her ("non-canonical" use of 2P). Accordingly, the Caribbean would be the primary region in the history of this ethnolinguistic feature of Hispanic America.
In short, the current research outlook generally defends this literary history of the (2P) su merced Americanism, as derived from the speech of theatre characters of low socioeconomic status. As a consequence, we still do not know whether non-literary language confirms or refutes this Afro-Hispanic link to the form of address in question, a connection that is found in fiction genres. For this reason, the present study will explore a Hispanic American corpus of historical documents (from the 16th to 19th centuries; see Section 4), and will offer evidence of the non-literary use of su merced. In a diatopic sense, the study focuses on the Caribbean area, given that this was the territory usually chosen by the costumbrista authors to set their literary instances of Afro-Hispanic uses of su merced.
The main objective of this chapter is to trace the entire history of su merced in Hispanic America, and to connect it to its European roots, using as data archival documents that offer a wider social and regional perspective than that of the stereotypical 19th century costumbrista interpretation. It will present the first evidence of (2P) su merced in the colonial era, while chronologically specifying the history of this Americanism.
Section 2 presents the study's epistemological framework, hypothesis and objectives. This is followed by a bibliographical account of the diachrony of (2P) su merced, pointing out the weaknesses of the slavery hypothesis. Section 4 describes the document corpora, and Section 5 offers empirical evidence of su merced in the corpora, from a Pan-American perspective. An analysis of this evidence from the Caribbean region is presented in Section 6, followed by the conclusions.

Epistemological framework, hypothesis and objectives
Conceptually, a form of address is defined as a "linguistic macrostructure, the functioning of which implies the combined use of pronominal, verbal and nominal forms with which the speaker interacts with his or her interlocutor, refers to a third person or signals his or her own reference" (Rigatuso 2008: 354).
The key role played by the nominal element in forms of address is often ignored. It has a decisive function in those cases in which a single pronoun handles all uses of the second person deixis, as with the pronoun you in contemporary English, in the plural of American Spanish (ustedes, example (3)), or in ustedeo, i.e. the use of usted with intimate friends or family members (see example (4)). In all these cases, nominal elements such as chicos 'guys' (intimacy) or señores (respect) codify the type of personal deixis (example (3)). This same pattern of the plural ustedes moves to the singular in Hispanic American regions using ustedeo, an instance of which is seen in example (4): the nominal elements mija (< mi hija) 'my daughter'1 and señor indicate, respectively, intimacy and respect of a grandmother ustedeante 'who uses usted' when speaking to her granddaughter or to a doctor.
(3) ¿Qué sitio prefieren, chicos? ("intimacy")/¿Qué sitio prefieren, señores? ("respect") 'What place do you prefer, kids?/What place do you prefer, gentlemen?' (4) Aquí tiene, mija ("intimacy")/Aquí tiene, señor. ("respect") 'Here you are, little one/Here you are, sir' The examples show that nominals are used to determine communicative distance. In order to research the deixis of the second person in Spanish diachrony, it was especially useful to combine the morphosyntactic dimension of the forms of address with the parameter of communicative distance. This parameter is implicitly stated in the classic theory of power and solidarity of Brown & Gilman (1960). According to this first formulation regarding the listener, connections with a greater level of solidarity (symmetrical relations) are codified into forms of address with minimum distance. On the other hand, connections with a higher degree of power (asymmetrical relations) choose forms of address with maximum distance. This study coined the well-known terms "T forms" (+closeness -power) and "V forms" (+distance +power) (Brown & Gilman 1960: 257-259). The analysis in terms of power and solidarity is appropriate for stable binary pronominal systems, such as that found in the French language: tu/vous (T form/V form). The same theoretic paradigm, however, shows limitations in other Romance language systems that, through evolution, have distanced themselves from this binary prototype (see e.g. Hummel in this volume; Moyna & Rivera-Mills 2016: 2). Spanish ustedeo serves as an example of extreme pronominal simplification. For these cases, Uber (1985) suggests adapting the parameter of communicative distance, such that the same pronoun functions as the V form (maximum distance) well as the T form (minimum distance). In line with Uber's (1985) proposal, in this study we propose that su merced functions as a V address (1) and as a T address (2) in certain areas of American Spanish.
Historically, su merced in solidarity relations (= su merced T ; see (2)) may represent the last evolutionary link of an Iberian-Romance language phenomenon that, from the end of the 16th century (example (6)), affected all honorary pronouns having the "su + abstract name" structure. In this study we propose, for the first time, connecting this Hispanic American link with the Romance language "chain" of the same linguistic phenomenon. Accordingly, here we defend the hypothesis that intralinguistic motivations led to the triggering of the change in (2P) su merced in different Spanish speaking areas, regardless of the fact that there were African migratory flows and bozal speakers in those geographic areas (we will treat this aspect more thoroughly in Section 3).
Before analysing the data, it is important to explain how the "su + abstract noun" structure evolved in the Romance language environment within the honorific address paradigm. As is well known, in Romance languages personal deixis is realised through pronouns and nominal groups (RAE-ASALE 2009: 1256. The latter include the honorific title, composed of a title name (e.g. excelencia, señoría, merced) preceded by the possessives vuestra/su. This subsystem (possessive su/vuestro + abstract noun) specialises in the honorific deixis -in the allocutive (e.g. vuestra señoría) as well as the delocutive (e.g. su señoría) uses. As such, from the end of the Middle Ages, each title has a form with vuestra for the second person (deixis in presence) and another form with su for the third person (deixis in absence). As an illustration, in 16th century Spanish, vuestra excelencia 'Your Excellency' is used to speak with a viceroy (2P), while (3P) su excelencia is employed to speak of or about a viceroy.2 All in all, it is possible to notice movements of the delocutive 3P forms towards 2P allocutives in the diachrony of the Romance languages (Coffen 2002;Mazzon 2010). For that reason, honorifics having the "su + title" structure can function not only as forms of address for the 3P deixis in absence (conservative use), but also as the 2P deixis in presence (innovative use) in the Romance language environment. In the viceroy examples above, at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, su excelencia begins to be used to speak with the viceroy (innovative 2P use), and not only to speak about the viceroy (conservative 3P use). Table 1 shows how the delocutive forms with su (3P deixis in absence) already enter the allocutive environment of forms with vuestra (2P deixis in presence) in the Spanish Golden Age.

Su Merced
This evolution of the honorific paradigm causes forms of address with the "su + abstract name" structure to take on a double personality: they preserve their delocutive (3P) status, while assuming a new allocutive (2P) status. With this double deixis, these honorifics become ambiguous forms of address: only contextual elements serve to disambiguate the delocutive or allocutive character of the "su + abstract noun" forms. The level of ambiguity is still higher in the specific case of su merced, given that historically this form of address has been able to express a triple personal deixis, which we attempt to illustrate in examples (5) to (8).  (5)) is a delocutive form (deixis 1 = 3P su merced) that brings in second person values of respect marked by subscript V (deixis 2 = su merced V ), in the social (stage B1, c. 1599; see example (6)), as well as family domains (stage B2, c. 1762, example (7)). From this position, it could finally foster the definitive movement towards the sphere of maximum intimacy (stage C, example (8), deixis 3 = su merced T , where T marks intimacy. This third deixis can only be found in contemporary Hispanic America, at least since 1950, according to the RAE corpora. Given that conservative (3P) and innovative (2P) uses may have coexisted at certain historical moments, it is not unreasonable to think that some Hispanic geolects simultaneously employed the triple deixis of su merced: "él" (example (5)), "usted" (example 7) and "tú" (example (8)). The history of this phenomenon must be based on these three evolutionary stages. It is important to stress the fact that examples (6) and (7) are evidence of this innovative use (stages B1 and B2) before the 19th century in the non-literary language, and that they all illustrate urban uses by the White elite. Thus, we can cast doubt on the Caribbean slavery hypothesis, which we will describe in the following section, given that it dates the emergence of (2P) su merced to an excessively late period (19th century), while also lacking non-literary evidence from before the 19th century.

From the "external" slavery hypothesis to the "internal" Romance language hypothesis
This section presents two explanatory models covering the origin of the (2P) su merced form of address. We will start by analysing the traditional hypothesis which, as noted above, is based on Afro-Hispanic linguistic contact (external factors), and is exclusively contextualised in American Spanish. We then present our new hypothesis, which interprets the same linguistic change as a development within the Spanish language itself (internal factors), in Spain as well as in Hispanic America.

External factors in the traditional hypothesis
The Hispanic American history of su merced remains enigmatic. Although it is claimed that the su merced V innovation originated with the migratory movements

STAGE C 2P su merced
Deixis 1 "él" (5) Deixis 2 "vuestra merced > usted" (6)-(7) form of addressV Deixis 3 "tú" (8) form of addressT of Africans to vice-regal Hispanic America, empirically this Afro-Hispanic trait is only seen in literature starting from the mid-19th century (Álvarez-López & Bertolotti 2013). Indeed, without furnishing any historical documentation, it is argued that in the present-day countries of Peru (De Granda 2004: 488-489), the Dominican Republic (Pérez Guerra 1988Guerra , 1989, Cuba (Pérez Guerra 1988, 1989) and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Álvarez Narario 1982) su merced V existed due to the slavery system and to the linguistic contact between Spanish and African languages. It is also claimed that in these three countries and commonwealth, the "feudal" form of address su merced V constituted a sociolinguistic marker of the Black slaves subject to severe social abuse in colonial society. For that matter, it is also posited -from this same study perspective, and without any demonstration whatsoever -that this Black African form of address disappeared from common usage upon the end of slavery in those countries, with the exception of the Dominican Republic (Pérez Guerra 1988Guerra , 1989see Hummel 2010: 305-306). Accordingly, the slavery hypothesis implicitly assumes that, before the period of political emancipation, Hispanic America only saw the use of su merced V in markedly asymmetrical relations of power. It is only in the 20th century that new patterns of Hispanic American use of equal power solidarity relations begin to develop (Álvarez-López & Bertolotti 2013: 23). In this way, the old colonial form of address would have "democratised" -a fact that would make it possible to explain the familiar use of su merced T in solidarity relations of equal power, although the geolects of countries currently using su merced T , the so-called "países sumercedeantes" (the Colombian and Ecuadorian Andes, Venezuela), would differ from the abovementioned countries in order to contextualise the Afro-Hispanic linguistic contact hypothesis. The latest formulations of this slavery hypothesis ignore or minimise the most recent documented discoveries of 2P su merced in the last colonial century. We are referring to documented 18th century evidence of the form of address in slavery, as well as non-slavery contexts in such varied Hispanic American locations as Buenos Aires (Rigatuso 2008), Merida, Venezuela (Obediente 2009(Obediente , 2010 Despite these advances, there are currently no documented diachronic studies covering the entire history of (2P) su merced in Hispanic America, from its colonial origins as a reverent form of address -supposedly linked to slavery (su merced V )to the present as an overarching form of address (su merced V + su merced T ).
The main research gap in prior studies can be found in the colonial era: in the 17th and 18th centuries the innovative use of (2P) su merced does not seem to appear in the vice-regal literature. For this reason, the fact that su merced in literature only emerges in the post-colonial era in the speech of Black slaves or mixed heritage (Sp. mulato)3 characters stands out. The hypothesis concerning the slavery origin of the current Americanism is based solely on this Hispanic American contextualisation of the phenomenon, linguistically set in Afro-Hispanic contexts. As previously mentioned, this hypothesis assumes that extralinguistic factors (contact of languages) triggered the change of su merced towards the second person. Accordingly, if this contact of languages occurred only in the New World, the genesis of (2P) su merced would be historically linked with the Afro-Hispanic varieties in Hispanic America. There this phenomenon would have emerged as an ethnolinguistic feature of the language spoken by the Black slave minority.
This slavery hypothesis, which as we have seen has not been empirically confirmed in the colonial era, is a common denominator in diachronic studies of American Spanish in general, and the Caribbean area in particular. These studies ignore the key fact that the mother country Spain also witnessed the use of the form of address (2P) su merced for no less than three centuries (16th to 19th) (Lapesa 2000; García-Godoy 2011).

Internal factors of the new hypothesis
Our hypothesis is based on the fact that the first use of (2P) su merced is historically documented in 16th century European Spanish, which we previously mentioned in the bridging example (6) (García-Godoy 2011). The context for this example is a commercial exchange between two strangers (seller-customer dyad), included in a colloquial Spanish conversation. In this early example from 1599, su merced is used to speak with a customer (deixis in presence). In these first commercial uses of (2P) su merced, there does not appear to be any hierarchical relation between the seller and the customer.
In Spanish Golden Age theatre, however, we begin to see another, different use of (2P) su merced in work contexts with asymmetrical relations (servant-master dyads). This use increasingly appears in Spanish literature in the 18th and 19th centuries as a form of address used by White servants (Lapesa 2000). Similarly, literary evidence of (2P) su merced in analogous contexts can be found in 18th century Sephardic texts (García Moreno 2004). Moreover, 19th century Hispanic American (Álvarez-López & Bertolotti 2013) as well as Portuguese-Brazilian costumbrismo (Alkmim 1996) provide documented examples of the most extreme version of this servitude relation: the slave-master dyad. A look at the wide range of documented examples of the phenomenon in the Spanish speaking world would indicate that in the first stage of the change, su merced V only appears in the social environment between strangers (commercial contexts) or between acquaintances with asymmetrical relations (work contexts of White servitude or Black slavery). This first stage of the change is found exclusively in European Spanish from the 16th to 18th centuries (Lapesa 2000), although in the following century the literary context of servitude will spread throughout the Spanish speaking world.
In short, in this section we have seen that there are two opposing explanations for the movement of su merced towards the second person in the historical map of the Spanish language. As we have seen, in the New World external factors of language contact are invoked. In the Old World, by contrast, intralinguistic factors are brought in. Delocutives of the (3P) "su + title" structure begin to take on their (2P) functional load in the Golden Age, and can also be used as forms of address in a colloquial manner. Consequently, su merced V in Spain is, in our opinion, the history of a colloquialism that emerges in the 16th century and begins to fade away in the 19th. According to the slavery hypothesis, su merced V is the history of a bozalismo used by the Black minority as a slavery form of address in Afro-Hispanic varieties until the 19th century.
In the following sections, we will examine in more detail the corpora upon which we base our hypothesis of the origin and evolution of su merced.

The corpora
In this study we use two corpora of historical Hispanic American documentation, covering the same time span (16th to 18th centuries), and from identical textual genres (administrative and legal documents, and private letters). The main corpus is CORDIAM (Company & Bertolotti 2015), which comprises a new evidence base of historical, non-literary Hispanic American documents. In addition, we have created an additional corpus specifically for this study. This second corpus brings together a set of documents4 which have yet to be incorporated into the current version of CORDIAM (see Section 8 on sources). 4 Similarly to the main corpus, the additional corpus is made up of archival documents, except the "Crónica Perú" (see references for this document in the "Additional Corpus" section at the end of the chapter). This is the chronicle of the Creole Juan Meléndez, printed in 1681. The first edition of this work was included in the corpus for its relevant linguistic interest: this is where the first historical evidence of American Spanish use of su merced at issue was found.

Evidence of su merced in the corpora (16th to 19th centuries)
This section provides an overall Pan-American perspective of su merced in the two corpora (see Section 6 for a specific analysis of the Caribbean region). It opens with a count of all occurrences of su merced in the new evidence base (Section 5.1) -conservative (3P) as well as innovative (2P) uses. It then separately explores the innovative trend in the corpora and shows the first evidence of the innovative pattern (2P su merced, Section 5.2). It closes with an analysis of the proportion of slavery contexts (social and family domains) in which this innovative trend is seen (Section 5.3).

The double personality of su merced: conservative (3P) and innovative (2P) uses
The initial evaluation of the occurrences of su merced in both corpora shows the omnipresence of the conservative delocutive (3P), clearly predominant in the four centuries under study. On the other hand, the (2P) su merced innovation is underrepresented in this new evidence base: in CORDIAM it comprises 2.7 % of the occurrences, although in the additional corpus that figure reaches 7.4% (Table 3).  (1714), associates the use of (2P) su merced with the spoken language: "surquoi il faut remarquer que quand on l'employe dans les Lettres, on dit vuestra Merced, & que quand on l'employe dans la conversation, on dit su Merced" 'whereto it should be added that vuestra Merced is used for writing, whereas su Merced is preferred in conversation' (see García-Godoy 2011: 247). In the previous (17th) century, the grammarian Thus, the Hispanic American history of the phenomenon still remains an enigma. In view of this, these thirty-nine Hispanic American examples represent a true documental discovery for the task of outlining the first non-literary history of (2P) su merced based on corpora data. Note how, empirically, the corpora show that the (2P) su merced change occurs alongside the persistent maintenance of the conservative (3P) su merced pattern. In the period under study, the coexistence of conservative and innovative uses occurs between the 17th and 19th centuries, if we consider the chronology of the two corpora (Tables 4 and 5).  It is striking that, for approximately two hundred and fifty years, the coexistence of the conservative patterns together with the neological uses made su merced a thoroughly ambiguous form of address in large areas of Hispanic America. Table 6 sets out the geographical origins of (2P) su merced in the corpora, which represent nine Hispanic American varieties.
In the history of these nine Hispanic American varieties, the emergence of the innovative (allocutive) form of address does not coincide with a decline in the conservative (delocutive) use of the form-on the contrary. It is logical to think that, in such a prolonged evolutionary state, only the context would provide the keys for disambiguating the personal deixis of su merced -a form that is formally third person, but grammatically has a double personality (delocutive 3P and allocutive 2P). For our analysis, the co-reference of su merced with other linguistic elements has allowed us to identify the predominant conservative (3P) uses Correas had already described the vacillation in the use of vuestra merced/su merced as allocutive second person forms (Lapesa 2000: 321).
vis-à-vis the minority, innovative (2P) uses. The former are found in the corpora, in prototypical form, in duplicate possessive constructions of the su merced del señor alcalde type. Uses of the second person, however, are most often found in direct discourse, and are usually combined with highly disambiguating, vocative nominal enhancements such as su merced + amigo, señor (+provisor, alcalde, padre), mi amo, hermano ('religious'), mamita, etc.

Chronology of the (2P) su merced change in the corpora: first indications of the innovative trend
Hispanic American costumbrista literature systematically shows (2P) su merced as an innovative form of address from 1850, although in the previous century an isolated example of this innovation was already used in the Creole farce El amor de la estanciera (García-Godoy 2011). Thus it would seem that the dramatic representations of the allocutive form constitute a phenomenon of the modern era. Yet the non-literary language allows us to pre-date the same phenomenon to the classic period. Examples (9) to (12) present the first documentary evidence found in the two corpora of the innovative trend:  In the historical documents under analysis, the earliest examples of (2P) su merced date to the 17th century in the additional corpus (Table 5) and to the 18th century in CORDIAM (Table 4). Note how in the main corpus the innovative trend is quite short lived, given that it hardly amounts to a generation (thirty-three years) in the second half of the 18th century (1762-1795). Yet if we look at the chronological indicators in both CORDIAM and the additional corpus, we find evidence of (2P) su merced in Hispanic America from 1681 until 1823. This documented retro-dating of the innovative form of address substantially modifies the status of previous knowledge. This would all seem to indicate that the type of source consulted provides different chronologies of the innovative trend. A look at fiction genres clearly indicates the change occurring only in the postcolonial period. However, the nonliterary genres show the same phenomenon appearing from the 17th century, in chronicles, letters and witness statements from the colonial era until the period of independence. This new, earlier dating of (2P) su merced in Hispanic American usage allows us to venture that the beginning of the change is more synchronised on both sides of the Atlantic than was previously thought. In non-literary language, (2P) su merced is an innovation that begins to take its place in European grammar from 1605, while there is evidence of the same innovation in the New World in the same century.

The innovative trend in Hispanic America: areas of usage and slavery-related contexts
As previously shown, the additional corpus more fully reflects the diachrony of the innovative phenomenon in Hispanic America ( In light of the appearance of the phenomenon in non-literary language, fiction genres could provide a more skewed perspective of (2P) su merced in American Spanish. These literary genres partially represent the "social life" of this form of address in the slave-master dyad, but minimise the "private life" of this innovation in the child-parent relation. As we have seen, the literaturisation of (2P) su merced shows a positive correlation between the use of the new form of address and slavery contexts, limited exclusively to the social environment.
However, the new evidence base under study does not confirm this positive correlation, although it does show the use of (2P) su merced in the slave-master dyad. Indeed, only the additional corpus offers Afro-Hispanic American contexts of su merced (+mi amo), yet they comprise only a small minority in the social context (1/13) and do not exist in the family setting (Table 7). A comprehensive examination of all the occurrences of the new form of address in both the family and social contexts shows that there is only one use of (2P) su merced in the slave-master dyad (1/39, 2.56 %) in the corpora (Tables 7-8).

Diachrony of (2P) su merced in Afro-Hispanic varieties: the Caribbean region
In a diatopic, i.e. geographical, sense, the slavery hypothesis has almost always been contextualised in the Caribbean region. From the pioneering work of Álvarez Nazario (1982) until the most recent work of Álvarez-López & Bertolotti (2013), researchers have stressed that, diachronically, the contact between African languages and Spanish in this geolect triggered some of the morphosyntactic characteristics of this region. These researchers have historically resorted to this extralinguistic process as a linguistic identity element that brings together a region that is dialectally heterogeneous, yet geographically united by the Caribbean Sea.
In the Caribbean region, the development of the institution of slavery and that of the Americanism under study are chronologically quite different, in spite of the fact that earlier studies have magnified the historical parallel between both processes. Moreover, while the historical process covers four centuries (1503-1886), the dialectal phenomenon of (2P) su merced in prior studies is basically documented in the last century of that time period. Regarding the Black African usage of (2P) su merced in the Caribbean, there are few studies that provide evidence of the historical use in Caribbean locations in the 18th century. The Caribbean retro-dating of (2P) su merced is mostly set in the second half of the 19th century, and has a literary source. In this regard, Álvarez-López & Bertolotti (2013) offer the most complete panoramic view of fiction genres (based on Lipski's written legacy), set linguistically in two Caribbean locations -Puerto Rico and Cuba. Evidence is given for a positive correlation in both islands of the 19th century use of su merced (and its variants) + mi amo among the Black slave population.
In short, these literary uses set in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the second half of the 19th century are the first instances of the slave usage of su merced in both islands.7 Note the fact that slavery existed in that region from the 16th century, and that in the same century the (2P) su merced linguistic change appears in the mother country -with no link whatsoever with African migration to the West Indies.
Furthermore, given that the allocutive (2P) su merced has not survived to the present day in the Caribbean geolect, the claim is made that the extinction process in the area must be connected to the abolition of slavery. Yet as we know, abolition movements occurred at a different rate in the Caribbean. Slavery was 7 There are striking differences in the polymorphism of the su merced form of address in Caribbean usage between the examples appearing in literary genres and those in the archival corpora under study. Álvarez-López & Bertolotti (2013: 15) document fourteen formal variants in the literature: su mé, su mecé, su melcé, su mercé, su merced, su mesé, su messé, su miecé, sumasé, sumacé, sumelcé, sumece, sumercé, sumesé. This extensive inventory of literary variants contrasts with the formal stability of the form of address in the non-literary corpora. There, four variants have been documented -two in complete writing forms (su merced, su mercé) and two in abbreviated forms (S md, S mrd). Concerning the phenomenon of literary polymorphism in the diachrony of the merced honorific, see García-Godoy (2016). abolished throughout Hispanic America between 1810 and 1850, except in Puerto Rico and Cuba, where it was not abolished until 1870 and 1873 respectively.
In this section we analyse the twenty Caribbean instances of (2P) su merced appearing in the corpora, for the five locations listed in Table 9. First, we will explore the innovative uses in the social context, and calculate the percentage of Afro-Hispanic American contexts. Secondly, we will analyse the evolution of (2P) su merced in Caribbean family environments. Finally, we will show whether the Caribbean history of su merced in areas of late abolition (Cuba) confirms or refutes the slavery-based history of this form of address.

The social context in the Caribbean history of su merced
In the corpora, the Caribbean region shows the greatest number of innovative instances of (2P) su merced, over a period of 129 years (1700-1829). Surprisingly, however, only a minority of these Caribbean instances are documented in the social context. An examination of Table 10 shows that the most extensive corpus (CORDIAM) does not even reflect this social phenomenon in this geolect. Only the additional corpus, albeit in a minority of cases, offers these five instances of the "social life" of (2P) su merced in the Caribbean (examples (13) to (17)), dated between 1700 and 1763: It should be noted that of the five interlocutors receiving the su merced V form of address, only one fits the slave servitude prototype: "su merced mi amo" (example (15); see Table 10). In the other examples, a governor (White), an ordinary mayor (White), a bishop (White) and a simple neighbour (mulato) are also addressed with su merced V , either as a bare form of reference, or in coreference with other elements.
Regarding the social context, the innovative form of address in the 18th century Caribbean would appear to show a "social life" similar to that described in the mother country Spain and in vice-regal Lima a century earlier -interlocutors with or without a hierarchical relation to the speaker can receive su merced V .

The family context of (2P) su merced in the Caribbean
As mentioned earlier, family usage of (2P) su merced has only been documented in Hispanic America. The first instances of this innovative use as a form of address from children to parents have been located in the Rio de Plata area in the last colonial century. In fact, in Buenos Aires in 1762, within a patrician family, the children address their father as su merced (+ (ilustrísimo) señor padre). This pattern of use among the White population is minimised in fiction genres, in favour of slavery contexts within the Black population.
In the Caribbean region, almost all instances of (2P) su merced in the corpora correspond to the family context (Table 11). This innovative use is documented in the Caribbean thirty years after it appears in Buenos Aires. From 1795 to 1830, su merced (+ taita, madresita, mamita) as a form of address from children to parents is found in three areas of this Afro-Hispanic region: Caribbean Venezuela (Santa Lucia), Cuba (Havana) and Puerto Rico.
As in the Southern Cone,8 family usage of su merced in the Caribbean also develops in urban environments of the White elite. Afro-Hispanic American contexts are not seen in any of the family uses in the Caribbean.
Examples (18) (7) and (10)) and in the Caribbean instances (examples (18) to (20)) from later generations (1830). These idiomatic differences are found, once again, in the nominal enhancements that coappear with (2P) su merced -distant (señor padre) in the mid-18th century, and close (mamita) at the beginning of the 19th. As we know, the change in paternal and maternal appellations (padre/madre > papá/mamá) that dates to the first Spanish modern age (c. 1780-1835) is seen as a direct linguistic manifestation of the socio-educational change that took place during that time. In that period we begin to see a struggle between these two linguistic variants: a) (señor) padre/(señora) madre and b) papá/mamá. This This abandonment highlights the evolution of the family educational model from a pattern that favours the hierarchical parent-child relation towards a new canon that fosters solidarity in the same parent-child relation. This innovation slowly appears in different Spanish speaking areas from the first third of the 19th century: Buenos Aires (Rigatuso 2005: 91-97), New Mexico (Balestra 2008: 82), Spain (Bustos & Iglesias Recuero 2003: 279-280;García-Godoy 2010: 597). In relation to this, there are a number of studies that associate the adoption of the neological nouns papá/mamá with the start of using of T-forms of address in the family context: tuteo (or the use of tú) in Spain (García-Godoy 2010: 604-608) and voseo (or the use of vos) in Argentina (Rigatuso 2005: 94). The first stage of this change can be dated to between 1830 and 1880 in both locations.
Within this perspective, the Cuban uses of mamita + su merced (20) could also be regarded as T-forms of address, given that they represent a similar change in the model of education for children in the Caribbean during the same period. It is the children of the White urban Caribbean elite who address their parents with (2P) su merced in coreference with the appellations that indicate this educational change in the family context (mamita).
Indeed, it is precisely in those areas of the Caribbean that were among the last to abolish slavery where it is possible to document the movement of (2P) su merced towards the domain of intimacy. As such, although Cuba continued with slavery until 1873, and Cuban costumbrismo only portrays the reverent use of su merced V in the speech of Black slaves, non-literary language confirms that 19th century Havana was among those Hispanic American locations in which su merced could have reached the triple deixis ( Figure 2) -(3P) su merced, su merced V and su merced T -although none of the three have survived to the present.
The new evidence base therefore refutes the effect of ethnic factors on the history of (2P) su merced in Cuba. While (2P) su merced acts as a socio-racial marker of Black slaves in the Cuban costumbrismo of 1850, non-literary language in 1830 Cuba reflects the multiethnic character of the same form of address.
Finally, from the chronological viewpoint, the date of the abolition of slavery in Cuba (1873) clearly emerges as a crucial moment in the final stage of the changethe extinction of the form of address due to the extreme social stigmatisation of the bozalismo su merced V . Yet the non-literary corpora provide conclusive evidence for another, different reality: Cuba saw both the social use of su merced V (stage B1) as well as the family usage of su merced T (stage C) before the abolition of slavery. Cuban sumercedeante usage is seen from at least as far back as 1813. These movements of (2P) su merced towards the domain of intimacy have come to be regarded as "liberating" evolutions belonging to the postcolonial era. In Hispanic America, however, the seed of su merced T was crystallising at the same time that the pronouns of respect were also moving towards the domain of informality and intimacy (Calderón Campos 2019; García-Godoy 2015). All of these extreme evolutions, which today distinguish the morphosyntax of American Spanish, begin to be seen at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th (García-Godoy 2012). The unidimensional American Spanish systems of plural (ustedes) and singular (ustedeo and sumercedeo) address seem to have begun in the late colonial period (with slavery still in place), as the last stage of a phenomenon that originated in Iberian-Romance Spanish.

Conclusion
Literary and non-literary genres provide evidence for two distinct views of the Hispanic American history of the su merced form of address. These two views do not share the same chronology of the change from 3P su merced (delocutive) > 2P su merced (allocutive), social stratification of the phenomenon, or geographic area.
Chronologically, the literary history of (2P) su merced in Hispanic America generally falls into the independence period (from the second half of the 19th century), while the non-literary history dates back to the end of the 17th centuryin the midst of the colonial period. From 1681, the corpora offer American Spanish instances of the same change that was occurring in the mother country during the same century: the movement of the delocutive form to the allocutive domain. During the classic period, the use of su merced as the form of address V is a Pan-Hispanic phenomenon witnessed on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this first stage of the change -from the mid-18th century -the allocutive su merced V begins to show certain divergences in colonial Spanish. The differentiating element begins to be seen in the appearance of the same form of address in the family context. From 1762, the corpora used in this study provide instances of how the children of urban patrician families address their parents as (2P) su merced. At that time, children still use this as the V-form of address (señor padre + su merced V ), but starting in the first third of the 19th century, they use it as the T-form of address (mamita + su merced T ). The nominal enhancements are those that historically allow us to identify the seed of this dual deictic of (2P) su merced that distinguishes the current Americanism (respectful as well as intimate form of address). In line with this, we find evidence starting in 1823 of sumercedeo in Hispanic America. This sumercedeo (form of address T ) is a modern and exclusively American Spanish evolutionary trend, representing the last stage of an Iberian-Romance change witnessed since the 16th century. The dating of this sumercedeo as a morphosyntactic Americanism of the late colonial period suggests a new bicentennial history of a phenomenon that has been regarded as contemporary in the literature.
From a diastratic perspective, the American Spanish use of (2P) su merced exhibits opposing profiles in different kinds of contexts. Su merced is an ethnic (Black speech) and rural marker in Hispanic American fiction genres. By contrast, the historical documents reveal that the colonial use of (2P) su merced connects with Pan-Hispanic models of spoken language, as seen from the end of the 16th century in multiracial contexts. The history of the allocutive su merced in literary language is one of an ethno-linguistic vulgarism (mostly bozal). In non-literary language, however, it is the history of a Pan-Hispanic colloquialism. While diastratic factors determine the change in literary language (the ethnicity of the speaker), diaphasic factors (the colloquial communicative situation) are the most relevant in non-literary language. Therefore, in the historical documentation, listeners of any ethnicity can receive the (2P) su merced form of address in commercial and servitude contexts as well as within the family. Literary genres, however, portray only one part of this wide-ranging reality -usage of the form of address by Black slaves in a relation of servitude.
From a Pan-Hispanic perspective, this literary use of (2P) su merced by Black slaves could be regarded as the application of the theatrical rhetorical canon to the Hispanic American context. Masters are addressed as such by White servants in European Spanish from the 17th century onwards, while Black slaves use the same form of address starting in the 19th century. This usage by Black servants does not represent a divergence in colonial Spanish, but rather a mere transatlantic continuity of the same Hispanic literary pattern, which begins in classic comedy and emerges in 18th and 19th century costumbrismo on both sides of the Atlantic.
Diatopically, the historical regions of the (2P) su merced form of address are unknown. Currently, this overarching form of address survives in Andean Colombia (T-and V-form of address). Yet the origin of the phenomenon is not contextualised in this Andean region, but rather in the Afro-Caribbean geolect. The prevailing diachronic hypothesis connects the institution of Caribbean slavery with the birth of su merced V in the speech of bozal Blacks and their descendents in the West Indies. Yet once again, the non-literary corpora refute this traditional hypothesis, because from the 17th century su merced V is documented in numerous Hispanic American locations, and not only in the Afro-Hispanic varieties. Su merced V is evidenced as much in the vice-regal courts of Lima as it is in more peripheral areas (Southern Cone and the Caribbean), in convergence with the innovative trend in the mother country. The corpora also confirm that the Caribbean geolect witnessed the use of su merced T before the abolition of slavery. For example, in the capital of Cuba -the last Spanish-speaking country to abolish slavery -White Creoles were using su merced in 1823, although this phenomenon no longer exists on that Caribbean island.
All this indicates that, in the history of the allocutive (2P) su merced form of address, the Old World witnessed only the first evolutionary link of the change (su merced V , social context), while the New World witnessed the three links of the diachronic chain (su merced V social > su merced V family > su merced T ). The Hispanic American use of su merced, the historical map of which may possibly have included a greater number of locations than it does today, could have taken shape in regions where standardisation was latest to arrive, with less normative pressure.