Chapter 4. Diatopic variation as evidence for diachronic changes in the 20th and 21st centuries

Abstract

In Latin American varieties of Spanish there is a series of pragmatic markers that fulfil similar functions. Tipo, onda and como are mitigators, but they also express approximation, exemplification, focalisation, discourse structuring and quotation. Pragmatic functions arise in the 20th century, although approximating como goes back to Old Spanish. Corpus data, metalinguistic comments and cross-linguistic observations point to the countercultures of the 20th century as a probable trigger leading to pragmaticalisation. We propose a comparative study of acceptability judgements of the three markers in their Argentinian and Mexican varieties, contributing to a semantic map showing different stages of pragmaticalisation which, combined with other data, offers insights into diachronic processes that emerged in the 20th century.