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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 20:1 (2023) ► pp.154–177

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Variation in Andorran Spanish past perfectives

Insights from the Portuguese diaspora

ORCiD logo with link | University of Bristol
Published online: 14 February 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.21012.haw
Abstract
Romance varieties differ in their usage of preterit and present perfect verb tenses. Both are past perfectives, but whereas Portuguese uses the preterit in most contexts, spoken French prefers the present perfect. Peninsular Spanish lies between the two, though evidence indicates that the present perfect is becoming the default past perfective (Schwenter, Scott, and Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2008. “Defaults and indeterminacy in temporal grammaticalization: The ‘perfect’ road to perfective.” Language Variation and Change 201:1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) in a process of ‘aoristic drift’ (Squartini, Mario, and Pier Marco Bertinetto. 2000. “The simple and compound past in Romance languages.” In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, ed. by Östen Dahl, 189–226. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). How does speaker multilingualism affect this? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with second-generation members of the Portuguese diaspora in Andorra. We might expect native competence in Portuguese to inhibit aoristic drift in Spanish, since contact has been shown to affect past perfective verb tense in other Romance varieties (Gili Gaya, Samuel. 1993. Curso superior de sintaxis española (fifteenth edition). Barcelona: Vox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Hawkey, James. 2020. “Language attitudes as predictors of morphosyntactic variation: Evidence from Catalan speakers in southern France.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 24 (1): 16–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Contrary to expectations, participants demonstrated aoristic drift. Dense and multiplex migrant networks are, however, shown to favour the maintenance of vernacular norms (Milroy, Lesley. 1980. Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), including generalising the function of the present perfect.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research context: The Portuguese community in Andorra
  • 3.Theoretical background: Contact, LVC and migration
  • 4.Linguistic background: Preterit and present perfect in Ibero-Romance
    • 4.1Peninsular Spanish
    • 4.2Catalan
    • 4.3Portuguese
  • 5.Hypothesis and Methods
    • 5.1Research Hypothesis
    • 5.2Sampling
    • 5.3Coding of tokens
    • 5.4Statistical Analysis
  • 6.Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by one other publication

Hawkey, James
2024. La política lingüística i les experiències d’integració de les persones amb orígens migratoris: el cas de la comunitat portuguesa a Andorra. Revista de Llengua i Dret :81 ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo

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