The expression of the immediate past in buenos aires and San Miguel de Tucumán

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the behavior of the pretérito perfecto forms in the expression of the immediate past in Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires and San Miguel de Tucumán. The interest comes from the deficiency observed in studies, which, at the most, identify two oppositional tendencies of use of these past tenses in Argentina, without considering, however, the extent of the use or the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that determine the variable phenomenon. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, we compiled a corpus of radio interviews of both diatopic varieties. Using Goldvarb Yosemite, we execute a multivariate analysis that allowed to identify an absolute use of the perfecto simple in the expression of the immediate past in Buenos Aires and a variable use in San Miguel de Tucumán. In this variety, it was possible to observe the use of the perfecto compuesto presents a prestige and characterizes a more innovative use, besides recurring more with factors that allow a continuous reading.