Convergence and divergence in the use of third-person atonic pronouns in Madrid and Malaga

Abstract This paper describes the linguistic situation of pronominal clitics used as direct objects (DO) in two Spanish speech communities, Malaga and Madrid, which use, respectively, the etymological system and referential system, the two basic clitic systems that have been described for Spanish. The initial hypothesis is that both communities are undergoing a process of convergence with the educated pan-Hispanic model, which permits leismo (use of le) with a masculine, singular person. Thus, the analyses successively restricted the corpus of clitics with the aim of determining how linguistic and social conditions affect each type of leismo: apparent and real leismo, leismo with things, leismo with a feminine person, leismo with animals, leismo with a masculine, plural person, and leismo with a masculine, singular person.