Vuestra atención, por favor 'your attention, please'. Some remarks on the usage and history of plural vuestro/a in Cusco Spanish (Peru)

This chapter documents and explains the use of the possessive form vuestro/a 'your-PL' in Cusco Spanish. This phenomenon, which has gone mostly unnoticed by scholars so far, is very unusual in Latin American Spanish. We distinguish between a formulaic use (e.g. vuestra atención, por favor )and a highly productive strategic one, which highlights a contrastive relationship between the actions/states of the plural addressee and those from the group in which the speaker positions himself. We then discuss three hypotheses on the origins of vuestro/a in Cusco Spanish related to colonial and early post-independence Spanish, examine the role of a "notional transfer" (Quechua → Spanish) and contextualize this development within the frame of the cusqueño society and its idiosyncratic mestizo identity.