The polyfunctionality of cantara and hubiera cantado in the Spanish spoken in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

This paper addresses the uses of the Spanish verbal forms cantara and hubiera cantado in the oral discourse of speakers from the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The goal is to account for the tapestry of non-standard values of the tenses above in this variety and to unveil geographical patterns informing not only about their distribution, but also about their grammatical links in dialectal Spanish. To this end, 150 interviews gathered by the Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish in enclaves of Galicia, Asturias, Leon and Zamora will be analysed. The study will show how and under which circumstances the subjunctive forms cantara and hubiera cantado are used with indicative pluperfect and preterit values, for which they vie with canté, and how their areas of vitality draw a coherent map that spotlights the interrelation of these phenomena, often treated separately. Emphasis will be so given to the necessity of adopting a global perspective to evince relationships between the oral uses of certain verbal forms that are not always evident.