Expressing future tense in Spanish: A comparative corpus analysis of Caracas, Malaga, and Mexico City
The present investigation examines corpora from Caracas, Malaga and Mexico City with the goal of comparing the linguistic factors that constrain the variation between two competing future expressions (i.e., morphological vs. periphrastic future). The results indicate that, in the Caracas and Mexico City data, the PF has become more generalized than in Malaga as the default future expression. A variable rule analysis reveals that, while they share similar constraints, the magnitude and direction of effect differ. The change patterns seem more advanced in Mexico, and to some extent in Caracas, with diction and volition verbs and non-specific temporal contexts favoring PF. Malaga, however, favors the PF in contexts associated with its earlier stages of grammaticalization such as with verbs of movement, which indicates its association with meaning of movement or trajectory to a goal, and highly subjective contexts as it is favored in first person and exclamatory and interrogative contexts.
