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Spanish Socio-Historical Linguistics: Isolation and contact
Edited by Whitney Chappell and Bridget Drinka
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 12] 2021
► pp. 77–102

Language variation and change through an experimental lens

Contextual modulation in the use of the Progressive in three Spanish dialects

| Utrecht University
| Yale University

Spanish exhibits two markers to convey a progressive meaning: the Simple Present and the Present Progressive. The use of these markers is contextually biased: the Simple Present requires contexts where speaker and addressee share perceptual access to the situation at issue, while the Present Progressive does not require such support. We test this generalization through real-time comprehension: the Simple Present marker in contexts without shared perceptual access should elicit slower reading times than within shared perceptual access contexts. A self-paced reading study (n = 176) in three different varieties of Spanish (Mexican, Rioplatense, and Castilian) bears this prediction out. Additionally, we find that the Mexican variety appears further advanced in the Progressive-to-Imperfective diachronic shift than its dialectal counterparts.

Keywords: Spanish, Progressive, dialectal variation, shared perceptual access, real-time methods
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Communicative situations, context and linguistic markers
  • 3.The meanings of the Progressive and the Imperfective
  • 4.Spanish diachronic and synchronic facts
  • 5.A questionnaire study on the event-in-progress reading
  • 6.Real-time interpretation of an event-in-progress reading: An SPR study
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Behavioral results
    • 7.2Reading time results
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.12.c04pin
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