Time for Change. A Theory-driven, Corpus-based Study of Tense and Aspect in La Paz Spanish

1. INTRODUCTION 4
2. STATE OF THE ART 6
2.1 The ontological status of language 7
2.1.1 Language as a cognitive phenomenon 7
2.1.2 Language as a supra-individual phenomenon 9
2.2. Methodological repercussions of the linguist’s view of language 16
2.2.1 Approaching language as a cognitive phenomenon 16
2.2.2 Approaching language as a social phenomenon 19
2.3 Making use of a linguistic corpus 22
2.4 Corpus-based research projects on Spanish in Latin-America 24
2.5 The situation of the Latin-American corpus-based research in the landscape of
corpus linguistics 29
2.5.1 Corpus-driven linguistic research 29
2.5.2 Corpus-based, theory-driven linguistic research 36
3. METHODOLOGY 40
3.1 A theory-driven, corpus-based approach to the analysis of
the Spanish verb tenses 40
3.2 The Corpus - El habla de la ciudad de la Paz 45
3.3 Quantitative and qualitative analysis 47
3.4 The interaction between form and context 49
4. THEORY 53
4.1 Tense and Aspect 53
4.1.1 Time and tense 55
4.1.1.1 Theories about tense 59
4.1.1.1.1 Hans Reichenbach 59
4.1.1.1.2 Bernard Comrie on Reichenbach 63
4.1.1.1.3 Norbert Hornstein 66
4.1.2 Aspect 71
4.1.2.1 Why is it problematic to define aspect? 71
4.1.2.2 Defining aspect 73
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4.1.2.2.1 Aspect as a grammatical category 75
4.1.2.2.2 Aspect as a semantic category 77
4.1.2.2.3 Delimiting the category of aspect 86
4.2 Tense and aspect of the Spanish verb forms 87
4.2.1 William E. Bull 88
4.2.2 Guillermo Rojo 91
4.3 Summary 100
5. ANALYSIS 102
5.1 Preliminary considerations 102
5.1.1 Markedness 102
5.1.2 Temporaltm adverbials (TADVs) 105
5.1.3 Sequence of Tenses (SOT) 109
5.1.3.1 SOT: a problem of definition 109
5.1.3.2 SOT in Spanish: la consecutio temporum 115
5.1.4 Systemic vs. nonsystemic functions 123
5.2 Simple past perfective ( ) and imperfective past (cantaba) 125
5.2.1 The simple past perfective (canté) 128
5.2.1.1 TADVs with canté 129
5.2.1.2 Systemic and nonsystemic functions
of the simple past perfective (canté) 132
5.2.2 The imperfective past ( antaba) 136
5.2.2.1 TADVs with cantaba 137
5.2.2.2 Systemic and nonsystemic functions of the imperfective past (cantaba) 140
5.2.2.3 The imperfective past (cantaba) and SOT 147
5.2.3 The systemic opposition the simple past perfective (canté) –
the imperfective past (cantaba) 148
5.3 The simple past perfective (canté) and the composite past (he cantado) 152
5.3.1 The composite past (he cantado) 153
5.3.1.1 TADVs with he cantado 156
5.3.1.2 Systemic and nonsystemic functions of the composite past (he cantado) 167
5.3.2 The systemic opposition the simple past perfective (canté) –
the composite past (he cantado) 176
5.4 Summary 179
c
canté
3
6. CONCLUSIONS 181
Works cited 185