Linguistic convergence: a possible delayer of the grammaticalization process?

Abstract

In different areas of Latin America, the tendency to substitute the synthetic future form in Spanish “-rá” (cantaré, lloverá) with the construction ir a + infinitive (voy a cantar, va a llover) is becoming increasingly more evident (Bauhr, 1989; Troya, 1998; Almeida & Díaz, 1998; Blas Arroyo, 2005; Sedano, 2006). Although this trend can also be seen in monolingual regions of Spain, it appears that in the bilingual areas where Spanish is in contact with Catalan, the trend is quite the opposite. This paper aims to confirm this trend, starting from the assumption that the periphrastic construction ir a + infinitive to express prospective time values is used to a lesser extent, particularly among L1 Catalan speakers. This use is justified by the particular verbal paradigm of Catalan itself, such as confusion with the periphrastic past (vaig cantar) and the articulatory effort, as well as the fact that anar a + infinitive has not grammaticalized the same values as ir a + infinitive in Spanish but rather upholds its etymological values. To analyse this, we use the RESOL corpora; a corpora of data consisting of 94 semi-structured oral interviews with sixth-grade children, and repeated interviews with the same children a year later, during their first year of secondary education, in the schools of Mataró and Manlleu. The data reveals that indeed, in bilingual areas, L1 Catalan informants tend to use the synthetic form to a greater degree than the analytical form. In contrast, L1 Spanish speakers chiefly use the construction ir a + infinitive, although this use is not as predominant as it is in other monolingual areas of Spain. In a word, having Catalan as L1 appears to be one of the primary factors that determine or hinder the spread of the ir a + infinitive construction in the Spanish spoken in Catalonia; however, it is the convergence of several different linguistic factors that determines the particular use of this periphrastic verb form in the area described.

Key words: linguistic convergence, grammaticalization, language contact, future expressions, Catalan, Spanish.