LINGUIST List 20.2411
Mon Jul 06 2009
Diss: HistLing/Morphology/Socioling/Spanish: Louro 'Perfect...'
Editor for this issue: Di Wdzenczny
<dilinguistlist.org>
1. Celeste
Rodriguez Louro,
Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of preterit and present perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina
Message 1: Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of preterit and present perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina
Date: 06-Jul-2009
From: Celeste Rodriguez Louro <celesterunimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of preterit and present perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina
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Institution: University of Melbourne
Program: Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2009
Author: Celeste Rodriguez Louro
Dissertation Title: Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of preterit and present perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Morphology
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)
Dissertation Director:
Nicholas Evans
Jean Mulder
Barbara Kelly
Dissertation Abstract:
This thesis is a sociolinguistic study of Preterit and Present Perfect (PP)usage in contemporary and earlier Argentinian River Plate Spanish (ARPS).The data analyzed stem from a 244,034-word corpus collected for thepurposes of the study, including contemporary casual conversation,sociolinguistic interviews, participant observation, writtenquestionnaires, and newspapers spanning the 19th-21st centuries.
The study is motivated by previous claims that in Latin America the PP isrestricted to contexts that extend into the present time, resemblingPeninsular medieval and Renaissance usage (e.g. Lope Blanch 1972: 138;Harris 1982: 50; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413). I challenge thisproposal showing that (1) ARPS has undergone its own development, and (2)Latin American varieties do not represent earlier frozen developmentalstages akin to earlier Peninsular Spanish.
Although low in overall frequency, the contemporary ARPS PP is used inexperiential settings to express indefinite past (a vernacular use).Moreover, multivariate analysis of the contemporary oral data reveals thatthe ARPS PP is not aspectually restricted to repetitive and iterativecontexts extending into speech time - contrary to Schwenter and TorresCacoullos' (2008) findings for contemporary oral Mexican Spanish. Indeed,the data show that the ARPS continuative PP is losing its link-to-presentrequirement. The ARPS PP also features minimally in resultative andcontinuative settings, supporting layering of old and new grammaticalizingstructures (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994: 21). Present relevance does notdetermine ARPS PP usage and is instead encoded through the Preterit andtemporal adverbials (TAs).
Historically, the PP has dwindled in usage frequency since the 19th centuryand the Preterit has invaded the spaces erstwhile occupied by the PP. PPfunctions like result, continuity, current relevance, and hot news arecurrently fulfilled by the Preterit, in combination with TAs (TA +VERB-PRET). I argue that the TA + VERB-PRET construction has emerged as aperiphrastic encoder of PP nuances, a development reminiscent of perfectperiphrases in languages such as Yoruba and Karaboro (Niger-Congo) (Dahl1985: 130). A contemporary example of this construction includes thewidespread temporal marker ahà 'at this point in time (lit. 'there') incombination with the Preterit to indicate temporal immediacy.
The contemporary ARPS PP is sociolinguistically constrained; men use itsignificantly more often than women. The PP is also employed by youngerspeakers, challenging the position that this form is on the verge ofextinction (Kubarth 1992a: 565; Burgos 2004: 103). In contrast to thecontention that the PP occurs more frequently in written media (e.g. DeKock 1989: 489; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413), the contemporary oraland newspaper corpora show similar distributional tendencies. Only in thequestionnaire is the PP used more readily in ways unattested in oralinteraction (i.e. in current relevance and past perfective settings). ARPSambivalent use of the PP represents the essence of the so-called 'actuationproblem'; that is, the contention that the process of linguistic changeinvolves stimuli and constraints from both society and from the structureof language (Weinrech, Labov & Herzog 1968: 186).
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