Resumen de tesis doctoral: AARON, Jessi. Variation and Change in Spanish Future Temporal Expression. University of New Mexico

Tue Nov 14 17:47:55 UTC 2006

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Resumen de tesis doctoral:
AARON, Jessi Elana. 2006. Variation and Change in Spanish Future
Temporal Expression.
University of New Mexico.
Información: Jessi Aaron <jeaaron at ufl.edu > y Linguist List
http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-3188.html
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1. Autora:
    AARON, Jessi Elana

2. Título:
    Variation and Change in Spanish Future Temporal Expression

    2.1. Palabras clave: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax,
                                  Text/Corpus Linguistics
    2.2. Número de págs.:

3. Fecha de lectura o defensa:
    2006

4. Departamento, centro o laboratorio en el que se ha desarrollado:
    University of New Mexico, USA

5. Directores de tesis:
    Melissa Axelrod, Joan L. Bybee, Concepción Company Company, Rena C. Torres
    Cacoullos, Catherine E. Travis

6. Proyecto o línea de investigación en el que se incluye:

7. Resumen e índice

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.

Índice:

List of Figures
List of Tables

1 Introduction
1.1 The Spanish future
1.1.1 Two constructions
1.1.2 Romance futures: two questions
1.1.2.1 Semantic differences and speaker choice
1.1.2.2 Epistemic modality and SF semantics
1.2 A usage-based approach
1.2.1 Grammaticization
1.2.2 Linguistic correlates of grammaticization
1.2.3 Methods in a usage-based framework
1.3 Variation theory
1.3.1 Structured variability and competition
1.3.2 Frequency and language change
1.4 The present study

2 Methodology
2.1 Corpus
2.2 Data extraction and exclusions
2.3 Coding and hypotheses
2.3.1. Verb class
2.3.2 Temporal modification and specificity
2.3.3 Grammatical person and animacy
2.3.4 Clause type
2.3.5 Sentence type
2.3.6 Polarity
2.3.7. Lexical type
2.4 The variable context
2.4.1 Neutralization of meaning in discourse
2.4.2 Defining the envelope of variation
2.5 Variable rule analysis

3 The Synthetic Future
3.1 Origins and development
3.2 Changes in form: Increased fixedness and syntactic variability
3.2.1 Increased fixedness
3.2.2 Syntactic variability I: cantar lo hé
3.2.3 Syntactic variability II: cantarélo
3.3 The functions of SF
3.3.1 Futurity and epistemicity
3.3.2 Distinguishing meanings
3.4 Characterizing the SF
3.4.1 Temporal uses of SF
3.4.2 Epistemic SF
3.4.3 Other proposed SF functions
3.5 Differentiating temporal and epistemic SF
3.5.1 Grammatical person and subject animacy
3.5.2 Clause and sentence type, polarity
3.6 Summary

4 The Periphrastic Future
4.1 Origins
4.2 Changes in form: Increased fixedness
4.3 The functions of PF
4.3.1 Temporal PF
4.3.2 Other proposed PF functions
4.3.3 Non-temporal PF
4.4 The grammaticization of the PF
4.4.1 Verb class
4.4.2 Lexical diffusion
4.4.3 Subject
4.4.4 Locatives
4.5 Temporal adverbials
4.6 Summary

5 Forms in competition
5.1 Language variation in use
5.1.1 Grammaticization and language change
5.1.2 Form-function asymmetry in the Spanish future
5.2 Results: Frequency
5.3 Variable rule analyses
5.3.1 The 17th century
5.3.2 The 19th century
5.3.3 The 20th century, written data
5.3.4 The 20th century, spoken data
5.3.5 The face of the two Futures: 300 years
5.3.5.1 Subject: measuring volition and intention
5.4 Summary and discussion
5.4.1 Semantics and variant choice: a diachronic perspective
5.4.2 (In)stability and renewal

6 Synchronized change
6.1 Unresolved questions
6.1.1 Beyond the variable context
6.1.2 Semantic generalization and functional space
6.2 Frequency
6.3 Changing magnitudes of effect
6.3.1 Stative verbs
6.3.2 Interrogatives
6.3.3 Temporal adverbials
6.4 Overall tendencies: grammaticization, variation and
divergence
6.5 Summary of results and implications: shifting defaults

7 Summary and conclusions
7.1 The approach
7.2 The analysis
7.2.1 Form-based studies
7.2.2 Function-based study
7.3 Explaining change
7.4 Recommendations for further research
7.5 Choosing a future

Appendix: Corpus
References

8. Correo-e de la autora:
    Jessi Aaron <jeaaron at ufl.edu >

9. Cómo obtener la tesis:
    Contactar con la autora

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