General Session - Morphology/Syntax
Guro Fløgstad (University of Oslo)
Alternate paths:
The expansion of the preterit in Rioplatense Spanish
A major morphosyntactic change has taken place in the Spanish variety spoken in Buenos
Aires, Argentina (henceforth Rioplatense) during the last 100 years. At the turn of the 20th
century, the anterior/preterit distinction was alive in Rioplatense. The distribution of the two
resembled e.g. English, in which the anterior expressed a past with current relevance, as in (1)
and (2).
My data show that the opposition between the two is no longer alive in the Rioplatense
variety. Through field interviews of 27 informants, distributed into 4 age groups, I show that
the preterit has expanded during the last 4 generations, completely replacing the anterior in
the speech of young speakers. The data show a gradual increase in the use of preterit where an
anterior would be expected. The numbers were calculated identifying tokens expressing
current relevance (anterior´s proto meaning, cf. Comrie 1976), and to the extent this function
was expressed with anterior or preterit (cf. table 1).
The current system is one in which the preterit has taken on the functions earlier expressed
through anterior, and expresses past with and without current relevance in the language of
adolescent speakers, as in (3) and (4).
Grammaticalization theory (e.g. Traugott & Dasher 2002) typically emphasizes the way in
which the opposite development of that taking place in Rioplatense, the expansion of an
anterior and replacement of the preterit, is typical of grammaticalization changes, and that it
instantiates the existence of predictable grammaticalization paths. Allegedly, this regularity
provides evidence that the true universals of language are diachronic (Bybee 2008), and
enables the reconstruction of previous stages of language (Heine & Kuteva 2007). Such
changes are seen to be typical of grammaticalization and to be particularly frequent in
Romance languages (Bybee et al. 1994:86). The anterior is thus an unstable category: it tends
not to disappear, but to become something else; in the Romance languages, it tends to become
a perfective (Lindstedt 1995).
While the existence of a perfective path is undisputed in certain languages (e.g. French), the
present paper identifies an alternative development for the anterior/preterit domain in
Romance. In the Rioplatense variety, the grammaticalization of the anterior halted at the
anterior stage; the anterior did not become something else; it disappeared. It is the preterit
which now conveys both hodiernal and current relevance meanings, taking on the prior
functions of the anterior, and now functions as perfective. Semantically, we are dealing with a
generalization of meaning, which is typical of grammaticalization. However, we do not
observe the loss of specific semantic components, as expected: rather, we observe the addition
of such components (current relevance etc.) to the preterit´s scope.
This development is far from unique (cf. Torres-Cacoullos 2011 for overview). Tendencies
for the expansion of a preterit has been identified in Mexican Spanish (Lope Blanch 1972),
and Brazilian Portuguese (Squartini & Bertinetto 1995), to mention some, suggesting great
heterogeneity in the development of anterior and preterit in the Romance languages.
Table 1
Old:
Middle aged:
Young:
Adolescent:
51, 7 %
67, 7 %
94, 4 %
100 %
(58 tokens; 30 preterit, 28 perfect)
(62 tokens; 42 preterit, 20 perfect)
(195 tokens; 184 preterit, 11 perfect)
(23 tokens; 23 preterit, 0 perfect)
(1) He hablado con ella muchas veces así que la conozco bien
talk-1.SG.PFCT to her many times so that I know her well
‘I have talked to her many times so I know her well’
(2) Hablé con ella ayer
talk-1.SG.PRET with her yesterday
‘I talked to her yesterday’
(3) Hablé con ella muchas veces así que la conozco bien
talk-1.SG.PRET with her many times so that I know her well
‘I have talked to her many times so I know her well’ (Lit: ‘I talked to her many
times so I know her well’)
(4) Hablé con ella ayer
talk-1.SG.PRET with her yesterday
‘I talked to her yesterday’
References
Bybee, Joan (2008): “Formal Universals as Emergent Phenomena: The Origins of
Structure Preservation”. In Jeff Good (ed.): Linguistic Universals and Grammatical
Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca (1994): The Emergence of Grammar.
Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.
Comrie, Bernard (1976): Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva (2007): The Genesis of Grammar. A Reconstruction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Lindsted, Jouko (1995): ”The perfect – aspectual, temporal and evidential”. In Östen Dahl
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Gruyter.
Lope Blanch, Juan M. (1972): Estudios sobre el español de México. Mexico City:
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Squartini, Mario & Pier Marco Bertinetto (1995): “The Simple and Compound Past in
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Europe”. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Wiley-Blackwell.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs og Richard B. Dasher (2002): Regularity in Semantic Change.
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