The dialectalization of Spanish future tense usage

Abstract

The following study looks at the distribution of meanings, and changes of meaning, of the Spanish future structures voy a cantar, cantaré and he de cantar. I will first survey dialect studies with the goal of establishing both general and divergent usage. I will then relate these findings to Fleischman's (1982) model of Romance future tense development with the intention of developing it to accommodate the new data, recent diachronic findings, and critical responses to the Fleischman analysis. I will argue that American patterns of future form usage are adducible originally to an Andalusian dialect base and specific sociolinguistic factors, and ultimately to a different treatment of haber, whose shift from independent verb to auxiliary to future tense suffix was key in the current configuration of Spanish future form usage.