16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse?
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Nydia Flores-Ferrán
Abstract
This sociolinguistic study investigates the production of verb tenses in the Spanish of thirty Puerto Rican residents of New York City (NYC). It discusses how verb tense production is conditioned by the narrative unit, conflict narrative style and foreground and background information within the narrative. Two social factors are also analyzed: gender and age. The verb forms with the highest rate of production in this study are the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative, findings also documented by other scholars (Pousada & Poplack 1982; Torres 1997). With regard to foreground and background information, the results show that speakers recount stories mainly using the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative forms in the main skeleton of the storyline. Narratives that contain conflict however, had the tendency of being recounted with past tense verbs. As expected, age and gender did not show a significant difference in the verb tense production of these NYC residents.
Abstract
This sociolinguistic study investigates the production of verb tenses in the Spanish of thirty Puerto Rican residents of New York City (NYC). It discusses how verb tense production is conditioned by the narrative unit, conflict narrative style and foreground and background information within the narrative. Two social factors are also analyzed: gender and age. The verb forms with the highest rate of production in this study are the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative, findings also documented by other scholars (Pousada & Poplack 1982; Torres 1997). With regard to foreground and background information, the results show that speakers recount stories mainly using the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative forms in the main skeleton of the storyline. Narratives that contain conflict however, had the tendency of being recounted with past tense verbs. As expected, age and gender did not show a significant difference in the verb tense production of these NYC residents.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction ix
-
Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
- 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
- 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
- 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
-
Part II. Education and policy issues
- 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
- 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
- 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
- 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
-
Part III. Pragmatics and contact
- 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
- 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
- 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
- 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
- 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
-
Part IV. Variation and contact
- 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
- 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
- 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
- 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
- 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
- 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
- 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
-
Part V. Bozal Spanish
- 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
- 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
- Index 395
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction ix
-
Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
- 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
- 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
- 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
-
Part II. Education and policy issues
- 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
- 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
- 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
- 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
-
Part III. Pragmatics and contact
- 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
- 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
- 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
- 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
- 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
-
Part IV. Variation and contact
- 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
- 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
- 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
- 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
- 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
- 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
- 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
-
Part V. Bozal Spanish
- 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
- 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
- Index 395
