Abstract
<p>As part of a widespread inclination in languages that draws attention to particular chunks of information over others, the variation of Present Perfect (PP) and Preterit (Pret) in Spanish provides speakers with an effective mechanism that projects one particular past event over others in narrative. In oral data from El Salvador and written data from colonial Mexico, the use of PP in narrative clauses is a practical device that speakers exploit to make certain events stand out to the interlocutor. And just as languages use special components -such as intonation, word order, and morphology- to make chunks of information more prominent, these varieties use PP and Pret variation to make temporal and psychological degrees of proximity and remoteness evident to the interlocutor. The breach of PP into narratives seems to be the product of a stylistic recourse with notable cognitive consequences that enhance the speaker's involvement in discourse. Through a grammaticalization process in which PP acquires readings more reminiscent of the Pret's function as a perfective gram, the PP form is reinterpreted as a valid form in those contexts previously reserved for Pret. In short, PP draws attention to greater speaker's affective closeness to the event, while Pret enhances detachment and dissociation.</p>
Highlights
Cross-linguistic analyses of past form variation have confirmed that non-related languages worldwide codify relative distances in the past (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994; Comrie 1985; Dahl 1985; Fleischman1989), as in the immediate vs. distant pastJosé Esteban Hernández
Our results suggest that the use of subject expression in combination with Present Perfect (PP) seems to add 'pragmatic weight' to the narrated utterances, increasing speaker involvement in particular points of the narrated chain of events: those that are perceived as closer by the speaker
The idea is that the varieties under study make use of the variation of PP and Pret to make temporal and psychological degrees of closeness and distance evident to the interlocutor, just as intonation, word order, and morphology can perform similar purposes The encroachment of PP into narratives seems to be the product of a stylistic recourse with notable cognitive consequences that enhance the speaker's involvement in discourse
Summary
Cross-linguistic analyses of past form variation have confirmed that non-related languages worldwide codify relative distances in the past (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994; Comrie 1985; Dahl 1985; Fleischman1989), as in the immediate vs. distant past. That throughout the rest of the narrative this correlation is maintained almost systematically: he sentido una cosa yo 'I felt something', yo he dejado tal cosa 'I have left something'; and me Ø vine 'I came', Ø amaneció 'dawn broke', Ø salí 'I left', Ø les indiqué 'I indicated to them', and Ø jallaron 'they found' In this neatly laid out pattern, the use of PP and overt subjects, mostly in the first person singular, strikingly stands out against the evident use of Pret and null subjects. (7) Y le pareçe aver sido esta narraçion a la puerta de su casa désta, porque se acuerda bien que, cabadas de volver de la iglesia, estuvieron alli un ratillo en pie antes de despedirse, diciendo ésta: “buen confesor es el padre Rengel”, respondio la dicha mulata: “no lo es porque en la confesión
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