Shana Poplack (University of Ottawa): A shared future? Tracing grammaticalization through variation in Romance.

A shared future? Tracing grammaticalization paths through variation in Romance

Shana Poplack

University of Ottawa

Grammaticalization theorists predict that grammaticalizing forms deriving from the same source should follow the same course of change.  This paper tests that claim by comparing the evolution of future temporal reference in three closely related Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese and French.  Contemporary spoken varieties share the three same major variants (synthetic, periphrastic and futurate present), all inherited from the same (Vulgar Latin) source.  In each, the majority variant, the go- or periphrastic future, co-exists with older layers, but is gaining ground, albeit at different rates.  The diachronic correlate of these facts is that the languages should display parallel if not identical grammaticalization paths.

Adopting a variationist approach, and especially the principle of accountability, I assess this possibility through quantitative diachronic comparison of the factors contributing to variant choice in 19th- and 20th-century varieties of each language.  Results suggest that the pathways by which go- verbs grammaticalize into future markers are not parallel, even in closely related languages.  We draw on detailed analyses of variation over time to explore why this should be.