A corpus study of grammatical differences between Uruguayan and Argentinian Spanish

• Main Author: David Ellingson Eddington
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2020-10-01
• Series: Isogloss
• Subjects: corpus linguistics; uruguay; argentina; dialectology
• Online Access: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/90

<p class="western" align="left"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This paper explores five grammatical features in Argentinian and Uruguayan Spanish using the Corpus del español. The goal is to find features that distinguish the speech of the two countries. The features studied are: (1) </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>stress variation in 2</span></span></span>^{<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>nd</span></span></span>}<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> person singular present subjunctive forms (e.g</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>. téngas ~ tengás</em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>), (2) number agreement with </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>había </em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>(e.g. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>habían ~ había muchos </em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>casos), (3) use of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>vos </em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>following prepositions (e.g. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>con vos ~ contigo</em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>), (4) use of present perfect versus preterite (e.g. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>recién he comido ~ comí</em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>), (5) use of the present or past subjunctive in embedded clauses preceded by a matrix clause containing a subjunctive trigger in the past tense (e.g. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>Nos mandaron que rellenáramos ~ rellenemos los papeles anoche</em></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>). Statistical analyses were carried out on the proportion of each variant across the two countries, and significant differences were observed.</span></span></span></p>