Abstract
This study investigates the variability in the use of the Preterit cante (‘I sang’) and the Present Perfect he cantado (‘I have sung’) across three Spanish dialects: Peninsular (PEN), Peruvian (PER) and Argentinian (AR). For this purpose, we analyze the effect of type of context and temporal adverbials on the selection of these two forms. The corpus has been obtained through online questionnaires, comprising a total of thirty-two exercises that evaluate the use of the two verb forms in the following contexts: continuative, relevance of present, life experience, prehodiernal context and without temporal adverbs. The results of this research seek to contribute to the description of dialectal differences with respect to the use of the Preterit and the Present Perfect from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective.
Highlights
Grammaticalization processes have been argued to present a striking cross-linguistic consistency (Hopper and Traugott 1993)
González and Verkuyl (2017) discuss the difference between the Spanish Pret canté as a tense form derived from the synthetic Latin Present Perfect cantavi, and the form he cantado as an analytical form which developed from habeo cantatum
Our results show that there is a general gradation in the use of the perfects, where the Peninsular Spanish appears as the variety that shows traces of the grammaticalization path, followed by the Peruvian speakers and the Argentinian variety, exhibiting a considerable difference in the spread of the PP in comparison with Peninsular Spanish
Summary
Grammaticalization processes have been argued to present a striking cross-linguistic consistency (Hopper and Traugott 1993). González and Verkuyl (2017:126) hypothesize that the evolution of Spanish haber from main verb to auxiliary “(...) is part of the development of Romance tense systems into a system which can be described in terms of three tense oppositions: (i) Present vs Past, (ii) Synchronous vs Posterior, and (iii) Perfectum vs Imperfective” Such a system provides room for eight Spanish tense forms: This binary system puts the Pret in a peripheral position because it does not participate in systematic oppositions distinguishing it from the others. In Peninsular Spanish, it seems that the Pret is being pushed back and becoming obsolete, as already has happened in some of its dialects (cf Schwenter 1994, Hurtado González 1998, Howe 2006), because, as in other surrounding languages, two past tense forms seem to suffice
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