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Part of
The Perfect Volume: Papers on the perfect
Edited by Kristin Melum Eide and Marc Fryd
[Studies in Language Companion Series 217] 2021
► pp. 241–258

Chapter 10
Gauging expansion in synchrony

The periphrastic perfect in nineteen century Rioplatense Spanish

| University of South-Eastern Norway
| University of Western Australia
One of the hallmarks of present-day Rioplatense Spanish is the highly specialised use of the periphrastic perfect or Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto (PPC). Most perfect nuances are instead encoded in this dialect through the synthetic past or Pretérito Perfecto Simple (PPS). Exploration of a novel corpus of historical media and theatre plays shows that, in nineteenth century Rioplatense, the PPC was productively used to encode hot news, hodiernality and hesternality. These nineteenth century uses are in line with a cross-linguistic perfect-to-perfective grammaticalization pathway but the path is halted in present-day Rioplatense. We draw on cognitive grammaticalization theory to argue that there is no determinacy in grammaticalizing constructions: a source meaning does not uniquely determine the path a grammaticalizing construction may take.
Keywords: Argentinian Spanish, aspect, diachrony, grammaticalization, perfect meaning, source determination, tense
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Rioplatense Spanish
    • 2.2The perfect
    • 2.3Grammaticalization and source determination
    • 2.4Micro-step expansions
  • 3.Data and analysis
    • 3.1 M’hijo el dotor
    • 3.2Newspapers and magazines
    • 3.3Abeille (1900[2005])
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.10flo
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Azpiazu Torres, Susana
2021. Chapter 9. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 214 ff. DOI logo
Xiqués, Teresa M.
2021. Chapter 8. More on hodiernality. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 182 ff. DOI logo

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