This study investigates the variability in the use of the Preterit canté ('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.

In this paper we analyze the Preterit (e.g. Estudié toda la noche) and the Present Perfect (PP) (e.g. He estudiado toda la noche) in the Lima variety of Peruvian Spanish (PER) and in Argentinian River Plate Spanish (ARG). PER and ARG have been described as "pretérito-favoring". We revisit this proposal and show thatalthough the Preterit is widespread in both these dialects -the use of the PP and the tendency for the Preterit to appear in PP contexts is crucially dissimilar. Based on a thorough analysis of a corpus of oral data (125,352 words), we argue that the different patterns of development in PER and ARG are best explained by the disparate PP usage in continuative and same day/ recent past contexts. We contend that conflating PER and ARG under the umbrella term "Latin American Spanish" does not account for observed usage in oral interaction.Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/18/15 9:02 AM

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ResumenEste artículo se centra en los usos del pretérito perfecto compuesto (PP) en el español peruano amazónico. Con este propósito, se analizan los valores semánticos del PP en narrativas de experiencias personales por hablantes de español del pueblo de Jeberos (región Loreto). Este estudio ofrece evidencia del proceso de incursión del PP en contextos del pretérito perfecto simple en narraciones orales. Dentro de este marco, discute la relación del PP con adverbios temporales y con otros tiempos verbales. Asimismo,sugiere que los usos descritos se relacionan con el intenso contacto lingüístico de esta variedad de español, así como con el sexo, el nivel de escolaridad y el grado de exposición a variedades urbanas de los participantes.AbstractThe present article focuses on the uses of the present perfect (PP) in Amazonian Peruvian Spanish, by analyzing the semantic values of the PP in personal narratives by Spanish speakers from the town of Jeberos (Loreto region). The study provides evidence of the process of incursion of the PP incontexts of the preterit in oral narratives. In addition to this, the relationship of the PP with temporal adverbs and other verbal tenses is discussed. It is suggested that the uses of the PP described here might be related to the situation of intense linguistic contact in the region, as well as the participants’ sex, level of schooling, and degree of exposure to urban varieties of Spanish.Keywords: present perfect – grammaticalization – Amazonian Spanish –language contact