R: Re: Tense & Aspect

[Frank Rossi]

> Miguel said:

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

1)
In the Castilian spoken in *Galicia* ("Castrapo"), the usage is as in
Argentinian Spanish
See Pilar Va'quez Cuesta, "Grama'tica Portuguesa", Ed. Gredos, Madrid,
1971, p. 95, who speaks of "..the preference for the "pret. indefinido"
instead of the "perfecto compuesto", i.e. "vi" instead of "he visto".
Also,
Alonso Zamora Vicente , "Dialectologia espan~ola", Ed. Gredos, Madrid,
1979, p. 208, says that in some *Asturian* regions, the periphrastic perfect
is not used and that even in the cultured speech of some families, in
Castilian, the use of the composed forms is rejected, e.g. " ? oiste lo que
digo? "; " hoy llovio' todo el di'a ".
North-West Spain, Galicia and Asturias, is considered, rightly or wrongly,
the most Celtic area of Spain.

Question 1:
Could the enormous number of Galician emigrants have influenced the Spanish
of Argentina?
I also read elsewhere (Bertil Malmberg, "La Ame'rica hispanohablante",
ISTMO, Madrid, 1966, p. 196) that the Argentinian usage is not considered
correct elsewhere, for example in Mexico.

Peter wrote:

> 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.

2)
a) The predominant substrate of Latin (and Latin later replaced by High
German) in all these areas is Celtic, associated with speakers of La Te'ne
iron age culture.
b) In Occitan, the language of southern France, the preterit is (or was,
considering the present state of the language) still used alongside the
periphrastic perfect..
However, as far as I know, the substrate of Southern France was less
uniformly and less unquestionably Latenian Gallic, and I have read
somewhere that there was probably only a dominant Gallic element
co-existing with pre-Gallic (Ligurian?, Iberian?, Vasconic? Aquitanian?)
subject masses.

Question 2:
Could there be a parallel influence of the Celtic substrate both in
North-West Spain and in the Sprachbund area in the sense of a rejection of
two forms for the past tense, i.e. either the preterit or the periphrastic
perfect, but not both?
What do the Celtic experts think?

Regards

Frank Rossi
Bergamo, Italy
iglesias at axia.it