The Paradoxical Survival of Spanish ¡Vamos! in the Face of Old Spanish ¡Vayamos! and the Loss of Old Spanish imos
Summary Although Spanish philologists have long been aware of the origin of the first person plural imperative of the verb ir, ¡Vamos!, (as well as reflexive ¡Vámonos!), none has even remarked on the synchronic irregularity of the affirmative-negative pattern vamos ~ no vayamos vis-à-vis that of all other verbs, e. g., cantemos ~ no cantemos, comamos ~ no comamos, salgamos ~ no salgamos, etc., in which the same form appears in both the affirmative and negative. Nor has anyone recognized that the original pattern was indeed regular, i. e., vayamos ~ no vayamos (and vayámo(s)nos ~ no nos vayamos). It therefore remains to be explained how, when, and why this original, regular affirmative-negative structure was replaced by the irregular structure now found in Modern Spanish. The present study will attempt to answer these questions through a detailed diachronic morphosyntactic analysis.