In:Spanish Sociolinguistics in the 21st Century: Current trends and methodologies
Edited by Cecilia Montes-Alcalá and Miguel García
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 42] 2025
► pp. 131–147
Chapter 6Does increased grammaticalization yield decreased
duration?
Testing vamos a variants in Spanish
Published online: 15 May 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.42.06riv
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.42.06riv
Abstract
This study employed naturalistic data to provide
a descriptive overview of the patterns of reduction in the Spanish
[ir (present) a + infinitive]
construction (the default future marker). A durational analysis of
N = 158 tokens of vamos (‘we
go’) confirms faster rates of articulation across the [vamos
a] construction when followed by an infinitival form
than when followed by an allative complement. Results reveal that
the phonological reduction of vamos a occurs
regardless of the meaning it conveys (future, hortative, habitual).
We suggest shorter durations may not reflect the meaning of
futurity, but rather may be associated with those constructions in
which vamos a has undergone a process of
auxiliarization as it becomes part of the infinitival periphrastic
form.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Data
- 4.Methods
- 5.Results
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusion
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