Article published in:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 31:2 (2018) ► pp. 605–637

Variable past-time expression across multiple tasks in Tucumán, Argentina

| University of Pittsburgh
| University of Pittsburgh

We examine variable past-time expression in urban Tucumán, Argentina, an understudied region representative of the set of Andean varieties included in Northwestern Argentinean Spanish. We analyze the present perfect (PP) and preterit in two contexts of data collection: a sociolinguistic interview and a contextualized preference task across a range of linguistic and social factors, such as temporal reference and speaker age. Oral results indicate that Tucumán has a higher frequency of use of the PP than has yet been documented in Latin American varieties and even Peninsular Spanish, previously argued to have the highest rate. Preference task results yielded somewhat lower PP rates, confirming that the PP is preferred in speech, whereas the preterit is more viable in written language. The current study documents the highest rate of use of the PP to date across a number of linguistic contexts, contributing to our knowledge of the processes of grammaticalization and task-related differences.

Keywords: sociolinguistic variation, grammaticalization, present perfect, Argentina
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The linguistic context: Tucumán Spanish
  • The route of evolution of the perfect
  • The present perfect and the preterit in LAS and PS varieties
  • Method
    • Research questions
    • Participants
    • Data collection
      • Sociolinguistic interview
      • Contextualized preference task
      • Language background questionnaire
    • Data coding for the sociolinguistic interview
      • Identification of tokens
      • Independent linguistic variables
        • Aktionsart
        • Temporal adverbials
        • Temporal reference
        • Clause type
        • Object number
      • Social variables
        • Age
        • Gender
        • Educational level
    • Data analysis
  • Results
    • Rates of use across Spanish varieties
    • Statistical analysis
      • Binomial, mixed-effects logistic regression: Oral data
      • Significant independent variables: Oral interview
      • Binomial, mixed-effects logistic regression: Contextualized preference task
      • Significant independent variables: Contextualized preference task
    • Overview of oral and preference data
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions and future research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.16013.ter
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