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.
Amaral, P., & Howe, C. (2010). Detours along the perfect path. In S. Colina, A. Olarrea, & A. M. Carvalho (Eds.), Romance Linguistics 2009 (pp. 387–404). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: The grammaticalization of tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chambers, J. K. (2002). Patterns of variation including change. In J.K. Chambers, P. Trudgill, & N. Schilling-Estes (Eds.), The handbook of language variation and change (297–324). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect: an introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dahl, O. (1985). Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Donni De Mirande, N. (1992). El español actual hablado en la Argentina. In C. H. Alonso (Ed.), Historia y presente del español de América (pp. 383–411). Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León.
Dumont, J. (2013). Another look at the present perfect in an Andean variety of Spanish: Grammaticalization and evidentiality in Quiteño Spanish. In J. C. Amaroet al. (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 16th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 279–291). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Escobar, A. M. (1997). Contrastive and innovative uses of the present perfect and the preterite in Spanish in contact with Quechua. Hispania, 801, 859–870.
Fløgstad, G. N. (2016). Preterit expansion and perfect demise in Porteño Spanish and beyond. A critical perspective on cognitive grammaticalization theory. Oslo: Brill.
García, R., & Caracoche, M. R. (1977). Frecuencia de uso del pretérito simple y el pretérito compuesto en el habla de San Miguel de Tucumán. Estudio exploratorio y anotaciones sociolingüísticas.
Geeslin, K. L., & Gudmestad, A. (2008). Comparing interview and written elicitation tasks in native and non-native data: Do speakers do what we think they do? In J. Bruhn de Garavito & E. Valenzuela (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp.64–77). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Harris, M. (1982). The “past simple” and “present perfect” in Romance. In M. Harris & N. Vincent (Eds.), Studies in the Romance verb (pp.42–70). London: Croom Helm.
Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C. (2003). Grammaticalization (2nd ed.). UK: Cambridge University Press.
Howe, C. (2006). Cross-dialectal features of the Spanish present perfect: A typological analysis of form and function. The Ohio State University: Ph.D. Dissertation.
Howe, C., & Schwenter, S. (2003). Present perfect for preterit across Spanish dialects. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 91, 61–75.
Howe, C., & Schwenter, S. A. (2008). Variable constraints on past reference in dialects of Spanish. In M. Westmoreland & J. A. Thomas (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 100–108). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Jara Yupanqui, I. M. (2006). The use of the preterite and the present perfect in the Spanish of Lima. University of Pittsburgh: PhD Dissertation.
Johnson, D. E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass, 31, 359–383.
Kanwit, M., Geeslin, K. L., & Fafulas, S. (2015). Study abroad and the SLA of variable structures: A look at the present perfect, the copula contrast, and the present progressive in Mexico and Spain. Probus, 27(2), 307–348.
Kempas, I. (2006). Estudio sobre el uso del pretérito perfecto prehodiernal en el español peninsular y en comparación con la variedad del español argentino hablada en Santiago del Estero. University of Helsinky: PhD Dissertation.
Labov, W. (1981). What can be learned about change in progress from synchronic description? In D. Sankoff & H. Cedergren (Eds.), Variation Omnibus (pp. 177–200). Edmonton: Linguistic Research, Inc.
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Legendre, G., & Sorace, A. (2010). Auxiliaries and intransitivity in French and in Romance. In D. Godard (Ed.), Fundamental issues in the Romance languages (pp.171–220). Stanford, Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Martorell de Laconi, S. (2001). Algunos aspectos sintácticos y morfosintácticos del español hablado culto de la ciudad de Salta. Departamento de publicaciones, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán.
Martorell de Laconi, S., & Soto de Matulovich, E. (Eds.). (1995). Valores de los pretéritos perfectos en el español y en Salta en particular (pp. 722–738). Proceedings from The Fourth International Conference on Latin American Spanish. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Piñero, G. (2000). Perfecto simple y perfecto compuesto en la norma culta de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Madrid-Frankfurt: Iberoamericana – Vervuert.
Poplack, S. (2011). Grammaticalization and linguistic variation. In H. Narrog and B. Heine (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (pp. 209–224). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Poplack, S., & Tagliamonte, S. (2000). The grammaticization of going to in (African American) English. Language Variation and Change, 111, 315–342.
Real Academia Española. (2010). Nueva gramática de la lengua española, Manual Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Rodríguez Louro, C. (2009). Perfect evolution and change: A study of Preterit and Present Perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina. The University of Melbourne: PhD dissertation.
Sankoff, D., & Thibault, P. (1981). Weak complementarity: Tense and aspect in Montreal French. In B. B. Johns & D. R. Strong (Eds.), Syntactic change (pp. 205–216). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Schwenter, S. A., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2008). Defaults and indeterminacy in temporal grammaticalization: The “perfect” road to perfective. Language Variation and Change, 201, 1–39.
Shirai, Y. (1991). Primacy of aspect in language acquisition: Simplified input and prototype. University of California: PhD dissertation.
Squartini, M., & Bertinetto, P. (2000). The simple and compound past in Romance languages. In Ö. Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (pp. 403–439). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Traugott, E. C. (1995). Subjectification and grammaticalization. In D. Stein & S. Wright (Eds.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation (pp. 31–54). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wardhaugh, R. (2010). An Introduction to sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Mastrantuono, Anna & Brendan Regan
2024. Present perfect and preterit variation in the Spanish of Lima and Mexico city: findings from a corpus analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 20:2 ► pp. 375 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.