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Part of
Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics: Selected papers from the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium 2015
Edited by Jonathan E. MacDonald
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 15] 2018
► pp. 169–190

Chapter 8
The past persists into the present

A multivariate analysis of present perfect and preterite in Southern Arizona Spanish narratives

| Georgetown University

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, adopting a variationist approach, it examines the relative frequency of the present perfect and preterite alternation and the particular conditioning factors that might favor the use of the PP in Southern Arizona Spanish; secondly, it attempts to situate the use of Southern Arizona PP in the scope of the typology of periphrastic pasts proposed in Harris (1982). A multivariate analysis reveals that frequency and approximate adverbs, stative predicates, and indeterminate reference favor the PP in this variety, meaning that the PP shows characteristics of a continuative perfect. This in turn suggests that the PP in this variety situates at stage II in Harris’s developmental stages.

Keywords: tense & aspect, present perfect, Southern Arizona Spanish narratives
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.The distribution of PP in Spanish varieties
  • 3.Methodology and data
    • 3.1The envelop of variation
    • 3.2Data coding
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Analysis & discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.15.09cru
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