Time expression in Hispano-American variations of Spanish

Abstract

Not with standing the diffusion of standard Spanish as a multinational and multicultural language, it still shows many differences on all linguistic levels. This is especially true in its vocabulary and phonetics, which reflect more intensively than other levels of the language the characteristics of the various Hispano-American variations. Nevertheless, in both diatopic and diastratic differentiation, the morphosyntactic phenomena that appear, for instance, in the system of grammatical tenses or of pronominal paradigms connected to modes of address addressing people and that off er a series of peculiarities, must not be omitted. Not all phenomena connected to the use of different tenses in Hispano-American variants have been thoroughly examined. The language is also in a process of constant development, so changes do occur. The variability of the Spanish language is the cause of a marked polycentric distinction that impinges upon numerous geolinguistic, sociolinguistic and extralinguistic aspects. Various criteria concerning the category of time in Hispano-American variations are analysed in this paper. They represent the most important questions with regard to pluricentric standards and use of geolinguistic variations, while taking into consideration both the diachronic and synchronic dimensions.