17.3188, Diss: Historical Ling/Morphology/Syntax/Text&Corpus Ling: Aaron: 'V...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-3188. Tue Oct 31 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.3188, Diss: Historical Ling/Morphology/Syntax/Text&Corpus Ling: Aaron: 'V...'

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1)
Date: 28-Oct-2006
From: Jessi Aaron < jeaaron at ufl.edu >
Subject: Variation and Change in Spanish Future Temporal Expression 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:41:44
From: Jessi Aaron < jeaaron at ufl.edu >
Subject: Variation and Change in Spanish Future Temporal Expression 
 


Institution: University of New Mexico 
Program: Spanish 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2006 

Author: Jessi Elana Aaron

Dissertation Title: Variation and Change in Spanish Future Temporal Expression 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Morphology
                     Syntax
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Melissa Axelrod
Joan L. Bybee
Concepción Company Company
Rena C. Torres Cacoullos
Catherine E. Travis

Dissertation Abstract:

This quantitative, diachronic study of variation between the Spanish 
Synthetic Future cantaré (SF) and the Periphrastic Future voy a cantar (PF) 
tackles the development of these two expressions within and outside the 
realm of future temporal reference in Spanish since Old Spanish through 
the early 21st century. Working within the framework of grammaticization 
and variation theory, this study begins with a qualitative and quantitative 
form-based analysis of each form, based on over 5,500 tokens extracted 
from a 935,000-word written and oral corpus. 

In the case of the SF, the relationship between SF occurrences in future 
temporal contexts and those in non-future epistemic contexts is 
addressed, and it is shown that these two contexts of use have statistically 
significant differences in distributional tendencies. In the case of the PF, 
which appeared with a relative frequency of just over 10% in the 17th-
century data, it is argued that very few uses are not subsumed under future 
temporal expression. 

The form-based analyses are followed by four independent function-based 
analyses for each time period spanning the 17th through the 20th 
centuries, in which the factors conditioning SF-PF variation are examined. 
A comparison of these analyses reveals, first, a contextual generalization of 
the PF into erstwhile SF territory beginning in the 17th century, and second, 
a shift in the division of labor in future temporal expression as the SF loses 
and the PF gains default future status in the 20th century. A return to the 
form-based study offers insight into this shift, suggesting that the 
increased use of SF in epistemic modal contexts (e.g. ¿dónde estará María 
ahora? 'Where might María be now?') perturbed the division of labor 
between the SF and PF, thereby altering the linguistic conditioning on the 
two future temporal expression variants in Spanish today. 

The form-based analyses offer a diachronic portrait of each expression and 
the particular contexts in which each expression occurs. The fuction-based 
analyses give a snopshot of the division of labor between these two variants 
at each time period, while comparison of these analyses reveals the details 
of the dynamic process of the side-by-side grammaticization of these 
variants. 




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