Chapter published in:
Hispanic Linguistics: Current issues and new directions
Edited by Alfonso Morales-Front, Michael J. Ferreira, Ronald P. Leow and Cristina Sanz
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 26] 2020
► pp. 119–136

The Progressive-to-Imperfective shift

Contextually determined variation in Rioplatense, Iberian, and Mexican Altiplano Spanish

| Yale University
| The Ohio State University
| Yale University
Spanish has two markers (claimed to be in free alternation) to convey that an event is in progress at reference time: the Simple Present (e.g., canta, ‘sings’) and the Present Progressive (e.g., está cantando, ‘is singing’). Based on evidence from sentence acceptability studies in three different Spanish dialects, we show that the distribution of the two markers is not random, but sensitive to contextual modulation. Specifically, results show that the (ambiguous) Simple Present is more acceptable in contexts where interlocutors share perceptual access to the event at issue. Otherwise, participants favor the (unambiguous) Present Progressive. We conclude that this variation reflects and is constrained by the well-attested grammaticalization path in which progressive markers gradually generalize to become imperfective markers.
Keywords: grammaticalization, variation, progressive, imperfective, context modulation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphosemantic considerations of the Progressive-to-Imperfective shift
    • 2.1A synchronic characterization of the Progressive and Imperfective meanings
    • 2.2The grammaticalization path from prog to impf
  • 3.The Spanish Progressive and Imperfective markers
  • 4.An experimental study in three dialects of Spanish
    • 4.1Methods
      • 4.1.1Materials
    • 4.2Procedure
    • 4.3Subjects
    • 4.4Predictions
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.26.06fuc
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