Tense & Aspect

[Rick Mc Callister]

	My wife, who is from Costa Rica, uses the periphrastic perfect
pretty much like English present perfect as well as an emphatic form of the
preterite corresponding to English "did you?" "have you ever?"  And this is
the usage I've run into among most people.

>Miguel said:

>>In Spanish America, the periphrastic perfect has been abandoned in favour of
>>the preterit.

>Interesting - it seems the opposite of what we see in the sprach-bund of
>France, South Germany, Northern Italy, where the preterit is being abandoned
>in favour of the periphrastic perfect.

>What does North American Spanish do, and what does Canadian French do?

>Peter