The Spanish Perfects Pathways of Emergent Meaning
This book considers the role of cross-dialectal data in our understanding of linguistic variability, focusing on the widely discussed dichotomy between past tense forms and relying primarily on spoken language data from different varieties of Spanish.
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In this chapter I will be concerned with developing a description of the cross-dialectal distribution of the periphrastic past in Spanish based on the set of features presented and developed in the previous chapter. It is not my intention to provide an exhaustive list of characteristics for every Spanish dialect concerning their usage of the perfect; instead, I will single out several dialects that are particularly representative of the type of variation observed. For each of the relevant cases, I describe those features that distinguish the use of the periphrastic past and attempt to situate them with respect to a Spanish perfect ‘prototype’. It remains to be seen whether or not the endeavor of describing a ‘pan-Spanish’ perfect will bear fruit since widespread variation makes a generalization of this type problematic. Still, there are distinguishable dialect features that will aid us in our description of the Spanish perfect. The current chapter will explore the following issues: 1. The range of Spanish dialects can be divided into two groups in accordance with (i) the overall frequency of distribution of the periphrastic past in relation to the preterit and (ii) the distribution of the semantic/pragmatic features discussed in Chapter 2. This division reflects not only a geographic division but, more importantly, a semantic distinction. 2. The list of features developed in Chapter 2 and applied to the crossdialectal data from Spanish provide a means of distinguishing the set of dialects whose perfects display increased perfectivity. In section 3.1, I present the range of topics relevant to the description of the periphrastic past across dialects of Spanish, including a discussion of the perfect/perfective distinction (section 3.1.1). Next, I motivate my 47
10.1057/9781137029812 - The Spanish Perfects, Lewis Howe
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2014-02-01
The Spanish Perfects
The Spanish Perfects
selection of representative dialects in section 3.2, basing this decision largely on frequency of use. Following this overview of relative frequencies, in section 3.3 I turn to a discussion of semantic factors that provide additional evidence for the dialect division proposed in section 3.2. Included in this list of illustrative factors is the dialectal behavior of the periphrastic past with (i) different types of temporal adverbials (section 3.3.1), (ii) narrative sequence (section 3.3.2), (iii) ‘Hot News’ uses (section 3.3.3), and finally (iv) Continuative interpretations (section 3.3.4). I end this chapter in section 3.4 with a brief discussion of the implications of the proposed cross-dialectal typology.
3.1
Preliminary observations
With respect to the present perfect across Spanish dialects, there is little variation in terms of the features discussed in section 2.3. Perfects (present, past, and future) across Spanish are consistent in terms of their auxiliary selection, participial agreement, and interpolation of clitic pronouns. In the
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