The microvariation of the Spanish perfect in three varieties

Abstract

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.

Target Variation as a Contributing Factor in TAML2 Production

“…De Jonge ( 2001), for his part, has found that in Argentina the Present Perfect highlights a situation within a narration and is used to refer to remote events and, according to Howe (2006), this form is used to refer to both recent and remote events in Perú. González, Jara Yupanqui and Kleinherenbrink (2019) also shown in a study that examines three different Spanish varieties (Peninsular, Peruvian and Argentinian Spanish) that for native speakers of European Spanish and Latin American Spanish the past tense forms are preferred differently in multiple contexts illustrated in a binary contextualized questionnaire. There were, indeed, significant differences in the uses of the studied past tense forms among the three varieties, which strengthens the idea that there is no linguistic consistency within the different Spanish varieties.…”

“…Even though the examples in (1a-1c) seem to have a straightforward temporal interpretation, as supported by the adverbials used in them, temporality in Spanish has an incredible range of variation in its verbal paradigm; actually, it is in the use of its past tenses that Spanish shows most of its variation. Variation in Spanish TAM is a well-studied phenomenon (Howe, 2006;Schwenter & Cacoullos, 2008;Azpiazu, 2015;González, Jara Yupanqui & Kleinherenbrink, 2019). The Spanish Royal Academies (RAE & ASALE, 2009) points out that, currently, the Present Perfect is the verbal form that shows more geographical variation in its usage, as it seems to be taking over perfective meanings in particular contexts in several Spanish varieties.…”

“…As previously outlined, the Spanish language shows a great amount of geographic variation in the use of past time references in various contexts (Schwenter & Caucoullos, 2008;González, Jara Yupanqui & Kleinherenbrink, 2019). The Spanish spoken in Spain (Peninsular Spanish) is traditionally and prescriptively seen as the target norm of educational input.…”

Perfect-Perfective Variation across Spanish Dialects: A Parallel-Corpus Study

“…For instance, the Real Academia Española-the institution that intends to ensure the stability of the Spanish language-points out that the PPC is the verbal form that shows most geographical variation in its usage (NGRAE 2009). Variation in Spanish temporo-aspectual representations has been a well-studied phenomenon and is still a current research focus in variation studies (Howe 2006;Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2008;Azpiazu 2013Azpiazu , 2014Azpiazu , 2015González et al 2019;Fuchs 2020;González and Kleinherenbrink 2021;among others).…”

“…In any case, most of this research has been carried out in Peninsular dialects, with specific attention to Central ones, which are spoken by only one tenth of the Spanish speaking population, while constraints on tense-aspect marker variation have been shown to reflect large dialectal differences (e.g., Howe 2006;González et al 2019;Fuchs 2020). A few studies have analyzed the distribution of these forms in Latin American dialects in comparison to their (Central) Peninsular use.…”