The genesis of voy en el mercado: The preposition en with directional verbs in Paraguayan Spanish

Abstract

As a result of an extended and intense linguistic contact situation, many of the linguistic peculiarities found in Spanish spoken in Paraguay have been previously described as a direct transfer from a homologous structure of Guaraní. The present study analyzes a syntactic phenomenon of Paraguayan Spanish, the use of the preposition en ‘in’ with verbs of movement, such as voy en el mercado (I'm going in the market) ‘I'm going to the market’. The data collected from Paraguay indicates that this particular feature is accepted only by Spanish-Guaraní bilingual speakers, favoring the substatum theory. However, the existence of the same phenomenon in other Spanish dialects, as well as in other Romance languages, where Guaraní influence is impossible, shows that this linguistic construction should be analyzed as a combination of two causal factors, the Guaraní influence and the tendency toward simplification within the Spanish linguistic system.