Cover not available

In:The Sociolinguistics of Grammar
Edited by Tor A. Åfarli and Brit Mæhlum
[Studies in Language Companion Series 154] 2014
► pp. 117–136

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The expansion of the Preterit in Rioplatenese Spanish

Contact induced?

Published online: 16 April 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.154.06flo
A major morphosyntactic change has taken place in Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, Argentina (henceforth Rioplatense). While the Preterit coexisted with a Perfect until the turn of the 20th century, it is shown that this opposition gradually has been erased in the language of young speakers in this sample. Today, the Preterit functions as a perfective which also encompasses current relevance contexts, previously expressed through the Perfect. Such a finding is discussed in the light of grammaticalization theory (e.g. Bybee et al. 1994), which emphasizes how the expansion of a perfect and replacement of the preterit is typical of grammaticalization and of Romance languages in particular. In addition, it is argued that the change did not occur due to contact, neither (1) as the result of contact with speakers of a language with a similar system (Sicilian Italian) nor (2) as a post-contact phenomenon, despite Buenos Aires being a high-contact society at the time of the initiation of the change.
References (54)
References
Abeille, Lucien (eds.). 1900/2005. Idioma nacional de los argentinos . Colección los raros. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baily, Samuel L. 1999. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise. Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870–1914 . Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bickerton Derek. 1976. Pidgin and creole studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 5: 169–193. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burgos, Daniel. 2004. Anteriority Marking in British English, Standard German and Argentinean Spanish. An Empirical Examination with Special Emphasis on Temporal Adverbials . Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1985. Morphology . Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition . Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World . Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Eddington, David. 2006. A usage-based approach to Spanish verbs of becoming. Language 82: 323–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Colantoni, Laura & Gurlekian, Jorge. 2004. Convergence and intonation: Historical evidence from Buenos Aires Spanish. Bilingualism. Language and cognition 7: 107–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conde, Oscar. 2011. Lunfardo. Un estudio sobre el habla popular de los argentinos . Buenos Aires: Taurus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2004. The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity [Studies in Language Companion Series 71]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen & Hedin, Eva. 2000. Current relevance and event reference. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe , Östen Dahl (ed.), 386–401. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems . Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Di Tullio, Ángela & Kailuweit, Rolf (eds.). 2011. El Español Rioplatense: Lengua, literatura, expresiones culturales . Madrid: Vervuert.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elizaincin, Adolfo (ed.) 1981. Estudios sobre el español del Uruguay . Montevideo: Universidad de la República.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elsness, Johan. 1996. The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English . Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fløgstad, Guro Nore. In preparation. On the Preterit in Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. PhD dissertation, University of Oslo.
. Forthcoming. Forking Paths. The expansion of the Preterit in Rioplatense Spanish. In Verbal Semantics and Syntax in Indo-European and beyond. Empirical Studies in the Behaviour of Predicates across Space and Time , Eystein Dahl (ed.). Leiden: Brill.
. 2007. ‘Si tomaste no manejes’. The Loss of a Verbal Category Distinction in Rioplatense. A Usage-based Approach to the Expansion of the Preterit. MA thesis, University of Oslo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, Beatriz. 1987. El español bonaerense: Cuatro siglos de evolución lingüística (1580–1980). Buenos Aires: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frawley, William. 1992. Linguistic Semantics . Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gobello, José & Olivieri, Marcelo H. 2005. Lunfardo. Curso básico y diccionario . Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libertador.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2007. The Genesis of Grammar. A Reconstruction . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change . Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. On contact-induced grammaticalization. Studies in Language 27: 529–572. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Henderson, Carlos. 2010. El Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto del español de Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay: Aspectos semánticos y discursivos. PhD dissertation, Stockholm University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hernández, José. 1872/2003. Martín Fierro . Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libertador.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Grammaticalization, 2nd edn. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kany, Charles E. 1945. Sintaxis Hispanoamericana . Madrid: Editorial Gredos.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klee, Carol A. & Lynch, Andrew. 2009. El español en contacto con otras lenguas . Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Louro, Celeste Rodríguez. 2009. Perfect Evolution and Change: A Sociolinguistic Study of Preterit and Present Perfect Usage in Contemporary and Earlier Argentina. PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McWhorter, John. 2011. Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity: Why do Languages Undress? Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norde, Muriel. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph. 2000. Variation and Change in Spanish . Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pešková, Andrea, Feldhausen, Ingo & Gabriel, Christoph. 2011. Fraseo prosódico en el español porteño. In El español rioplatense , Ángela Di Tullio & Rolf Kailuweit (eds.), 77–100. Frankfurt: Vervuert.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piñero Piñero, Gracia. 2000. Perfecto simple y perfecto compuesto en la norma culta de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria . Frankfurt: Vervuert.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez, Florencio. 1903/1968. Obras Completas . Buenos Aires: Editorial Schapire.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez-Alonso, Blanca. 2000. Those who left and those who stayed behind: Explaining emigration from the regions of Spain, 1880–1914. The Journal of Economic History 60(3). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. 2001. Linguistic outcomes of language contact. In Handbook of Language Variation and Change, Jack Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), 638–669. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaden, Gerhard. 2009. Present perfects compete. Linguistics and Philosophy 32: 115–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. & Torres Cacoullos, Rena. 2010. Grammaticalization paths as variable contexts in weak complementarity in Spanish. In Aspects in Grammatical Variation [Studies in Language Variation 6], James A. Walker (ed.). 13–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Defaults and indeterminacy in temporal grammaticalization. The ‘perfect’ road to perfective. Language Variation and Change 20: 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1994. Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Squartini, Mario & Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 2000. The simple and compound past in Romance languages. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe . Empirical Approaches to Language Typology , Östen Dahl (ed.), 20–6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Squartini, Mario. 1998. Verbal Periphrases in Romance . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics. Change, Observation,
Interpretation . Malden MA: Blackwell.
Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language Contact. An Introduction . Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena. 2011. Variation and Grammaticalization. In The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics , Manuel Díaz Campos (ed.). 148–168. Malden MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth & Dasher, Richard. B. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whinnom, Keith. 1971. Linguistic hybridization and the special case of pidgins and creoles. In Pidginazation and Creolization of Languages, Dell Hymes (ed.), 91–115. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Fløgstad, Guro Nore & Celeste Rodríguez Louro
2021. Gauging expansion in synchrony. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste
2016. Indefinite past reference and the Present Perfect in Argentinian Spanish. Studies in Language 40:3 ► pp. 622 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue