Structural autonomy in grammaticalization: Leveling and retention with Spanish hacer + time

Spanish time constructions withhacer

“…When analyzing the morphological form of hacer (present hace vs imperfect hacía) it can be found, as expected and in agreement with Howe (2011), that the present tense is overwhelmingly the most frequent one, accounting for 96% (N=740) of the tokens whereas the imperfect constitutes a mere 4% (N=31) of the total. The distribution of present and imperfect forms across the two constructions is, however, very remarkable.…”

“…According to him, "older" more clausal properties are retained better in non-present forms of hacer while the most frequent hace has advanced further along the grammaticalization path. Howe (2011) found that, on his corpus, present hace constituted an impressive 96% of the total instances of temporal hacer while imperfective hacía, future hará or past hizo contributed a mere 3%, 0.6% and 0.3% of the total respectively. This shows, in his opinion, that hacer+time is not a normal verbal construction, which I believe few linguists would be willing to suggest.…”

“…It is time to ask how this competence translates into usage. Howe (2011), with a corpus-based approach to present-day spoken Spanish, attempted to show that the hacer+time construction in the Spanish of Spain is neither purely clausal nor adverbial but rather displays mixed features. According to him, "older" more clausal properties are retained better in non-present forms of hacer while the most frequent hace has advanced further along the grammaticalization path.…”

“…Because of these interesting properties, there has been a fair amount of research around these Spanish expressions (e.g. Rasmussen 1981, Pérez Toral 1992, Rigau 1999, Howe 2011, Brucart 2015, Fábregas 2016 but disagreement still prevails concerning both the nature (i.e. grammatical category) of hacer in these constructions, as well as the relationship between the two constructions where temporal hacer can appear.…”

The diachrony of Spanishhaber/hacer + time

“…The Spanish temporal constructions with hacer+time-NP are also quite idiosyncratic and have accordingly been the object of abundant research (e.g. Rasmussen 1981;Pérez Toral 1992;Rigau 1999;Howe 2011;Brucart 2015;Fábregas 2016). They are challenging because of the existence of two variants of that construction, the so-called clausal (1) and adverbial (2) constructions, and because of their ability to express different time relations, so-called distance-past (1)-(2) and upto-now (3) meanings:…”