Spears worked as long as you could keep your opponent far enough, get closer and you are screwed against a sword (especially if it cuts the pole of your spear in half). As the blade is fully made of metal, it could serve as both an offensive and a defensive tool (master cuts in the early-Liechtenauerian tradition are pretty much for that, block and hit with the exact same move). Same goes for knives, get close enough that even swords are useless and they come into play during wrestling. Because of this you can't clearly define which was the primary or secondary because they worked for different ranges. On top of that, as there existed polearms of different sizes (pike, spear, etc), there were also swords of different sizes (one-handed sword, one-and-half-handed/bastard sword or longsword, montante, two-handed sword, etc.).
Though I can mostly speak for European martial arts, I can say that out of many kinds of melee weapons, swords were used the most widely. In battles, in duels, 'blossfechten' or in full armor. Status symbol? Nah, rather if somebody had a horse or a shiny armor, or maybe both, I'd say a full set would be a status symbol, but swords only? Or just to point at things while looking cool on a white horse? Naaah. They were weapons. They are weapons.
EDIT: Having a pointy thing in your face all the time can also be achieved against a sword (have experienced that a few weeks ago in a duel), but then whether it's a spear or a sword, it can be hit away, at which point all it matters is how quick you can swing your weapon. And at that, the sword beats the spear.
Also you can't do much else than stab with spear, while with sword you can also slice.