Cover not available

In:The Perfect Volume: Papers on the perfect
Edited by Kristin Melum Eide and Marc Fryd
[Studies in Language Companion Series 217] 2021
► pp. 241–258

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

Chapter 10
Gauging expansion in synchrony

The periphrastic perfect in nineteen century Rioplatense Spanish

 | University of South-Eastern Norway
 | University of Western Australia
Published online: 9 July 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.10flo
Abstract
One of the hallmarks of present-day Rioplatense Spanish is the highly specialised use of the periphrastic perfect or Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto (PPC). Most perfect nuances are instead encoded in this dialect through the synthetic past or Pretérito Perfecto Simple (PPS). Exploration of a novel corpus of historical media and theatre plays shows that, in nineteenth century Rioplatense, the PPC was productively used to encode hot news, hodiernality and hesternality. These nineteenth century uses are in line with a cross-linguistic perfect-to-perfective grammaticalization pathway but the path is halted in present-day Rioplatense. We draw on cognitive grammaticalization theory to argue that there is no determinacy in grammaticalizing constructions: a source meaning does not uniquely determine the path a grammaticalizing construction may take.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Rioplatense Spanish
    • 2.2The perfect
    • 2.3Grammaticalization and source determination
    • 2.4Micro-step expansions
  • 3.Data and analysis
    • 3.1 M’hijo el dotor
    • 3.2Newspapers and magazines
    • 3.3Abeille (1900[2005])
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (31)
References
Abeille, Lucien. 2005. Idioma nacional de los argentinos. Buenos Aires: Colihue, Biblioteca Nacional.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bailey, 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
Brinton, Laurel & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1985. Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form [Typological Studies in Language 9]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambrige: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Colantoni, Laura & Jorge Gurlekian. 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
Colantoni, Laura & Rodríguez Louro, Celeste (eds). 2013. Perspectivas teóricas y experimentales sobre el español de la Argentina. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1985. Tense. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Di Tullio, Angela & Kailuweit, Rolf (eds). 2011. El español rioplatense: Lengua, literatura, expresiones culturales. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fløgstad, Guro Nore. 2014. The expansion of the preterit in Rioplatense Spanish: Contact induced? In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in Language Companion Series 154], Tor A. Åfarlí & Brit Maehlum (eds), 117–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Preterit Expansion and Perfect Demise in Porteño Spanish and Beyond. A Critical Perspective on Cognitive Grammaticalization Theory. Leiden: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. Form-frequency correspondences in tense, aspect and modality. Plenary talk at 12th International Conference on Actionality, Tense, Aspect, Modality/Evidentiality (Chronos). Caen, France, 15–17 June.
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Howe, Chad. 2013. The Spanish Perfects: Pathways of Emergent Meaning. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindstedt, Jouko. 2000. The perfect-aspectual, temporal and evidential. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Östen Dahl (ed.), 365–383. Berlin: Mouton 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. 1991. A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana & Malvar, Elisabete. 2007. Elucidating the transition period in linguistic change: The expression of the future in Brazilian Portuguese. Probus 19: 121–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ritz, Marie-Eve. 2010. The perfect crime: A study of illicit adverbial combinations with the present perfect in Australian police media releases. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3400–3417. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste. 2009. Perfect Evolution and Change: A Sociolinguistic Study of Preterit and Present Perfect Usage in Contemporary and Earlier Argentina. PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne.
. 2012. Los tiempos de pasado y los complementos adverbiales en el español rioplatense argentino: Del siglo XIX al presente. Signo y Seña 22: 215–234. <[URL]> (1 November 2020).
Sánchez, Florencio. 1880 [1996]. M’hijo el dotor. Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul.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
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vincent, Nigel. 2014. Similarity and diversity in the evolution of Italo-Romance morphosyntax. In Diachrony and Dialects, Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway & Nigel Vincent (eds), 1–21. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Nore Fløgstad, Guro
2024. Desvíos semánticos: cuando los cambios lingüísticos no ocurren. Visitas al Patio 18:2 ► pp. 308 ff. DOI logo
Torres, Susana Azpiazu
2021. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Xiqués, Teresa M.
2021. More on hodiernality. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 181 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