Operationalizing the Role of Context in Language Variation: The Role of Perspective Alignment in the Spanish Imperfective Domain

Abstract

Abstract We present a cognitively grounded analysis of the pattern of variation that underlies the ​use of two aspectual markers in Spanish (the Simple-Present marker,Ana baila‘Ana dances’, and the Present-Progressive marker,Ana está bailando‘Ana is dancing’) when they express anevent-in-progressreading. This analysis is centered around one fundamental communicative goal, which we term perspectivealignment: the bringing of the hearer’s perspective closer to that of the speaker.Perspective alignmentoptimizes the tension between two nonlinguistic constraints: Theory of Mind, which gives rise tolinguisticexpressivity, and Common Ground, which gives rise tolinguisticeconomy. We propose that, linguistically,perspectivealignment capitalizes on lexicalized meanings, such as theprogressivemeaning, that can bring the hearer to the “here and now”. In Spanish,progressivemeaning can be conveyed with the Present-Progressive marker regardless of context. By contrast, if the Simple-Present marker is used for that purpose, it must be in a context of shared perceptual access between speaker and hearer; precisely, a condition that establishes perspectivealignmentnon-linguistically. Support for this analysis comes from a previously observed yet unexplained pattern of contextually-determined variation for the use of the Simple-Present marker in Iberian and Rioplatense (vs. Mexican) Spanish—in contrast to the preference across all three varieties for the use of the Present-Progressive marker—to express anevent-in-progressreading.

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