Linguistic Society of America

Tense and Aspect in Oral Spanish Narrative: Context and Meaning

Author(s): Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Source: Language, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 760-780
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/413372
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 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE: CONTEXT
AND MEANING

CARMEN SILVA-CORVALAN

University of Southern California

This quantitative and qualitative study of the distribution of tense and aspect in oral
Spanish narrative shows that the meaning of certain verb forms is in part delimited by
the narrative structural context in which they occur. The historical present/preterit al-
ternation, an issue that has attracted recent controversy (Wolfson 1979, Schiffrin 1981)
is examined, and the results show that the Spanish historical present functions as an
internal evaluation mechanism.*
This paper deals with the distribution of tense and aspect in oral Spanish
narrative, focusing specifically on the function of the simple present tense.' I
adopt as starting point the tense-aspect system proposed for Spanish by the
Real Academia Espafiola (1979).2 which is almost identical with that of Gili
* Earlier and shorter versions of this
paper were presented at NWAVE X, at the University of
Pennsylvania, and at LSRL XII at the Pennsylvania State University. I am grateful to conference
participants for their helpful comments. I am particularly indebted to Deborah Schiffrin and Nessa
Wolfson for their willingness to discuss with me, at length, their work and my work on narrative.
I also wish to express thanks to Leland McCleary, Marisa Rivero, Joel Sherzer, and Sandra Thomp-
son for useful suggestions and criticism.
Only narratives which contained at least one occurrence of the historical present were included.
The Chilean data were selected from transcripts of conversations recorded by me in Santiago in
1978, and include narratives from a variety of speakers. The Mexican narratives were selected
from the transcribed and published materials for the study of Mexico City speech (UNAM 1971).
The sample includes a total of 30 narratives, 27 from the Chilean data and 3 from the Mexican
data, selected on the basis of the same methodological consideration: the occurrence of pres-
ent/preterit alternation. With respect to this feature, I found no differences between the Mexican
and Chilean narratives.
2
The system proposed by the Real Academia includes three non-finite forms-infinitive (cantar
'to sing'), gerund (cantando 'singing'), participle (cantado 'sung')-and three moods: indicative,
subjunctive, imperative. Below I illustrate the finite forms with the 2sg. form of the verb cantar
'to sing' (the independent pronoun tu 'you' is not expressed):
INDICATIVE MOOD(simple tenses)
Present: cantas 'you sing'
Imperfect: cantabas'you sang'
Preterit: cantaste 'you sang'
Future: cantards 'you will sing'
Conditional: cantarias'you would sing'

SUBJUNCTIVEMOOD(simple tenses)
Present: cantes
Imperfect: cantaras or cantases (these two forms are almost interchangeable)
Future: cantares
IMPERATIVE MOOD
Present: canta
'sing!'
The corresponding compound forms are constructed with haber 'to have' + the participle (e.g.
has cantado 'you have sung'). The progressive forms are constructed with estar 'to be' + the
gerund (e.g. estds cantando 'you are singing').
760
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 761

Gaya 1961, and is followed by most Spanish grammarscurrentlyin use (e.g.

Alcina & Blecua 1980). In the analysis of narrativestructure,I use the frame-
work proposed by Labov 1972and by Labov & Waletzky 1967,and show that
the simple present tense occurs more frequentlyat certaincriticalpoints in the
narrative. It is the thesis of this paper that this co-occurrence of form and
context determines in large part the meaningof the verbal form.
The point that meaningresults from a relationshipbetween form and context
is not new. Thus Firth 1957explicitly proposed the need to apply the concepts
of COLLOCATION (i.e. syntagmaticassociations of lexical items) and CONTEXT
OF SITUATION (which includes both verbal and non-verbalcontext) to the study
of linguistic meaning. He suggested that part of the meaningof a word is given
by its collocation with immediatelypreceding and/or following lexical items.
In a narrowerdefinition of CONTEXT, closer to Firth's notion of collocation,
Davison (1978:35)demonstratesthat the context is crucialto the interpretation
of negative scope and indefinitenoun phrasesin certainconstructionsof Hindi-
Urdu. Similarly, in a study of the meaning of the Spanish preterit, Bolinger
(1963:133)concludes that the preterit'refersto a SEGMENTof anteriority',while
the more specific inceptive or terminativemeaningof this form is 'imposed by
particular verbs in PARTICULAR
CONTEXTS' (emphasis added). In a similar vein,
Garcia 1975has stated, following A. G. Hatcher, that 'the controllablecontext'
(xxi) is a prerequisiteto our understandingof the relationshipbetween form
and meaning. In this paper, CONTEXT is used to refer to the naturaldiscourse
(specificallyoral narrative)in which the verbalforms occur. This methodology,
which considers the syntax and semantics of sentences in naturalspeech, has
recently been followed by numerouslinguists.3
Verbal forms relevant to my discussion include the progressive and non-
progressiveforms of the present, the preterit,and the imperfectin the indicative
mood. I propose that each verbalform has a generalmeaningwhich determines
its possible patternsof occurrencein discourse. However, this generalmeaning
may in part overlap with that of anotherform; only in the context of a speech
event (e.g. the various sections of a narrative)do form-specific meanings be-
come evident-blocking the possibility of replacing a form, and at the same
time retainingthe speaker's communicativeintent.
The generalmeaningor functionassigned by the Real Academiato the verbal
forms underconsiderationmay be summarizedas follows: The presentfocuses
on an event, which may co-exist with the moment of speaking, without con-
siderationof its temporal limits. The historical present is used in narrationto
present past events as if they were occurringat the moment of speaking. The
preteritfocuses on the inception or terminationof an event in a time anterior
to the moment of speaking. The imperfect also presents events in the past-
as durative, iterative, or habitual, but without reference to their point of in-
ception or termination.The presentand the imperfecthave imperfectiveaspect,
while the preterit is perfective; i.e., it indicates that the action has been com-

3
See, among others, various contributions in the collections edited by Giv6n 1979 and by Klein-
Andreu 1983.
762 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

pleted. The correspondingprogressiveforms focus on the durationand/orpro-

gression of the event.
Labov (359-60) has defined narrativeas 'one method of recapitulatingpast
experience by matchinga verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events
which (it is inferred)actually occurred'. The verbal sequence consists of in-
dependentnarrativeclauses which are temporallyordered;i.e., they matchthe
order of the events. Other syntactic means of recapitulatingthe same experi-
ences-e.g. embeddingand the use of the past perfect, which reverse the order
of the events-are not considered as constitutingnarrativeclauses. However,
other types of narrativeclauses exist: the restrictedand the coordinatedtypes,
which may be displacedover partof the narrativewithoutalteringthe semantic
interpretationof the order of the events.
A fully developed narrative may show the following elements (Labov
1972:363):abstract, orientation, complicatingaction, evaluation, result or res-
olution, and coda. With the exception of the coda, these are illustratedin ex.
1, a narrativetold by a 16-year-old:4
(1) a. Por ejemplo, en sociales, For example, in social
jamas. No podemos. sciences, never. We
can't.
b. Ese profesor las sabe That teacher knows all the
orientation
todas. tricks.
Se llama el De la Fuente. His name is De la Fuente.
Se sabe todo, todo. He knows everything,
everything.
c. Lo pill6 a uno He caughtone
abstract
y lo dej6 paralizado and left him speechless.
d. Esos profesores que, nunca Those teachers that,
le vai a tomar mala you're never going to
dislike him
porque - eh - es como because - eh - he's like,
quien dice, a ver, let's see
si te pilla haciendo algo if he finds you doing
malo, somethingwrong,
te liquida, pero de una he'll bust you, but in a
forma simpdtica, iah? nice way, eh?
Por ejemplo, uno - mm -
orientationand For instance, one - mm -
se sentaba delante mio,
evaluation sat in front of me,
e. no sabia nada, ;ah? he didn't know anything,
eh?
f. Yo no le podia soplar I couldn't tell him the
answers
porque me iban a pillar, because they were going
nada. to catch me, nothing.
Ese profesor me pilla, That teacher catches me,
yo se que me pillaba. I know he'd catch me.

4 Some of the clauses in the examples are lettered for ease of reference in the discussion. In-
formationabout the speakeris presentedwithinparenthesesat the end: first-nameinitial,sex, and
age. A shortdash (-) indicatesa briefpause;an ellipsis (...) indicatesthat some languagematerial,
irrelevantto the discussion, has been omitted. A diagonalline (/) is used to indicateinterruption
either by oneself or by another speaker. A subscriptedletter (i) markscoreferentialitybetween
arguments.The Mexican narrativesare identifiedby page number.
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 763

g. Entonces boto el, el, el Then he dropped the, the,

cuaderno de sociales al narrative clause the social sciences
suelo, ? notebook on the floor,
h. y con el pie lo daba vuelta, c and with the foot he'd
CZ
la hoja, 9o turn it over, the page,
i. y miraba de arriba p'abajo and he'd look from top to
asi .~ bottom like this -
restricted clauses
j. y estaba copiando lo mds g and he was copying so
feliz v contento. E happily.
k. Ya iba en la sexta ya. He was in the sixth one
already.
1. El profesor estaba en la The teacher was in the
orientation
otra esquina. other corner.
m. Y a esto que el profesor le, And suddenly the teacher
le hace asi (gesture) goes, goes like this
(gesture),
salta un banco, narrative clauses he jumps a desk,
salta otro, jumps another,
salta una fila, * jumps a row,
corre, ct runs,
n. va corriendo asi, de esto a he goes running like this,
lo 'lolo' asi C) like a teen-ager
el profesor, de una esquina restricted clause the teacher, from one
a la otra, E corner to the other,
0
o. lo pilla catches him
y le dice, and tells him,
'Te pille,' narrative clauses 'I caught you,'
le dice asi. he tells him like this.
Y el gallo se congela asi And the guy freezes.
p. Todo el mu-, todo el curso Everyone, the whole class
muerto de la risa, was cracking up,
porque en una forma le because he said it in such
dijo, a way,
evaluation
';Ah! iTe pille!' 'Ah! I caught you!'
le dijo asi. he said it like this.
Mira, See,
el gallo se congel6 asi. the guy froze.
q. Le dijo, He told him,
'Pdseme la hoja.' 'Pass me your test.'
Le hizo asi (gesture), c He went like this
chistosamente. 0'
(gesture), very funny.
r. Entonces el gallo queda, Then the guy goes,
'Pero senor, es que yol' narrative clauses .1 'But sir, see, I/'
s. 'No. Usted son6. 'No. You lose.
El que puede copiar, copia . If you can cheat, you
pues, E cheat,
0 but if I catch you, I'll bust
y el que lo pillo lo liquido,
pues, you up,
dice he says.
t. Asi que le puso un uno. So he gave him an F.
resolution
(L,m,16)

1. TENSEANDASPECTDISTRIBUTION.
The elements which Labov calls ab-
stracts are not very frequent in the conversational narrativesexamined (i.e.
narrativeswhich arise in conversation, without being purposely elicited). Of
764 LANGUAGE, VOLUME59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

the 30 narrativesstudied, only 6 have an abstract;in all instances, it is encoded

in the preterit.The abstractsummarizesthe story, as seen in lc; i.e., it conveys
the most salient events in a nutshell. The clauses in the abstract are thus se-
quentialand foregrounded(in the sense definedby Hopper& Thompson 1980);
one expects them to be coded in the preteritratherthan the imperfect.
In the narratives where abstracts do occur,5 the series of events is presented
in a tight form; the various actions occur in a chain-likefashion, with no long
time lapses between them. In conversational narratives,the abstract may be
created interactively by the speakers:
(2) V: ... pienso yo que uno se siente mds se- ... I think that one feels safer saying, 'See.
gura diciendo, 'Mira. Estoy polo- I'm going steady with him.' Because/
leando con el.' Porquel
I: e Y cudndo entonces empiezan a polo- So when do you start going steady, that is,
lear, o sea, que establece que ya what determines that you're going
estdn pololeando? steady'?
V: La iinical - El hecho de decir, 'Estoy The only/ - The fact that you say, 'I'm
pololeando,' nada mcis. going steady,' nothing else.
I: gPero quiMnlo dice, tu o el? But who says that, you or him?
V: Bueno. En este casofuimos los dos. Me Well. In this case both of us. He told me/
dijol Un dia esttbamos, el veinti- One day we were, the twenty-fourth,
cuatro, que es dia feriado ... (V, f, which is a holiday ...
16)
The above passage illustrates how conversation leads up to a narrative.The
summarymay be reconstructedin the interactionthat precedes it; thus, when
V starts narrating(Un dia estabamos 'One day we were'), the listener already
knows the outcome of the events.
Informationabout the time, place, participantsin the events, and situation
may be given in separate orientationsections (e.g. Id-f) or as part of the nar-
rative clauses (Ig). The most frequent tense in the orientation sections is the
imperfect, illustratedin 11.Of a total of 135 orientationclauses, 94 (70%)are
in the imperfect, 16 (12%)are in the present, and 10 (7%)are in the imperfect
progressive. Other forms used, with frequencies below 5%, are the preterit
(progressive and non-progressive),the present progressive, and the periphras-
tic construction with ir a + infinitive 'going to', both in the present (Id) and
in the imperfect.6
This distributionof verbalforms accords with the correlationbetween back-
groundedclauses and imperfectiveaspect suggested by Hopper & Thompson,
and also with the functionsassignedto verbalforms in the grammarsof Spanish.
Thus Alcina & Blecua (1980:795), Bello & Cuervo (1977:221), and Ramsey
(1956:317)agree that, in narration,the imperfectis used mainlyto describe the
places, persons, things, and conditions necessary to orient the listener/reader.
5 A statement
announcingthat the ensuingspeech event is a narrative,e.g. I'm going to tell you
something, does not constitute an abstract here (cf. Lavandera 1981 for an opposite view).
McCleary(p.c.) notes that this is an initial counterpartof the coda; he suggests calling it the
PRELUDE.
6 In an
analysis of one narrativeby a Chicanospeaker, Lavandera(59) notes that the 'imperfect
seems to be specialized for the contexts that providethe orientation.'I show later in this paper
that the imperfectalso occurs in restrictedclauses, which are partof the complicatingaction.
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 765

In my data, 48% of all imperfect forms occur in orientation sections, 38% in

evaluation sections (which are also in part descriptive), and only 13% in the
complicating action.
The data show that other verbal forms also have this orientation function.
The present is used to describe the participants when the features described
are INDEPENDENTof the events described in the narrative (cf. Ib, d)-and, of
course, when what is described co-exists with the time at which the narrative
is told (i.e. speech time).7
The imperfect, however, describes entities, states, actions, and conditions
that existed both before and during the time of the narrative (reference time
being prior to speech time); and it also describes narrative-specific conditions,
i.e. THOSE THAT WERE TRUE ONLY AT THE TIME WHEN THE NARRATIVE EVENTS TOOK
PLACE (simultaneous with event time, e.g. le-f). Given that one function of
the imperfect is identical with that of the orientation (to present a background
to an event), it is not surprising that the imperfect occurs in orientations. In
this context, the imperfect frequently conveys the meaning of co-existence with
narrative events, rather than that of repeated or habitual actions (e.g. le,l).
What is important, then, is that the orientation context cancels out the meaning
of repetition, although this (plus co-existence) is a possible interpretation in
other contexts.
Labov (364) observes that, in English narratives,
'it is quite common to find a great many past progressive clauses in the orientation section-
sketching the kind of thing that was going on before the first event of the narrative occurred
or during the entire episode.'

But in Spanish, which has a oinary formal distinction between imperfective

and perfective past, the progressive forms are not called to do double duty for
imperfect aspect; thus the imperfect progressive is not common in orientation
(7%), and the preterit progressive even less so (about 1%). Rather, progressive
constructions occur in restricted clauses as part of the complicating action, as
illustrated by lj.
The coda and the resolution appear to have partly overlapping functions in
Labov's definition (365-6, 369-70). Thus it may be both the resolution (be-
cause it answers the question 'What finally happened?') and the coda (because
it shows the effects of the events). However, codas have a more general func-
tion-namely, indicating that the end of the narrative has been reached, by an
overt expression like Y eso fue todo 'And that was it' or Y eso fiue lo que nos
cont6 'And that's what he told us.' This type of coda occurs in only 2 of the
30 narratives; i.e., it is as infrequent as abstracts in conversational narratives.
Just as a narrative frequently flows into the conversation without a formal
abstract, so the end of a narrative may not be marked by any formulaic expres-

7 Reichenbach 1947
proposes three notions of time for temporal specification: REIFERENCE TIME,
established in relation to the time of speaking; EVENT TIME, established in relation to other events;
and SPEECH TIME, the actual time of speaking. I follow this framework in my analysis: the reference
time is understood to be the time at which the narrative events took place, prior to the speech
time.
766 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

sion. The resolution then leads to other narratives or other types of speech
events.8
The coda-resolution, by contrast, occurs in all the narratives: in 22 cases in
the preterit (76%), and in 7 cases in the historical present (24%).9 Exx. 3-6
will illustrate:
(3) Narrative about premonitions:
Y a las seis de la tarde Ilega (hist. pres.) mi papd con los gringos. (V, f, 16)
'And at six in the evening my dad comes home with the gringos.
(4) Narrative about father's illness:
Lo llevan, y le sale (hist. pres.) limpio el pulm6n. (H, m, 33)
'They take him, and the lung comes out clean.'
(5) Narrative about meeting future husband:
Y con ese me case (pret.) (Mexico, p. 142)
'And that one I married.'
(6) Narrative about cheating at school:
Nos pusieron (pret.) un uno coma cinco. (T, f, 16)
'They gave us a grade of 1.5.'

2. COMPLICATING THE ACTION WITH THE HISTORICALPRESENT. The complicat-

ing action in narrative 1 begins with clause Ig. This clause initiates a series of
narrative events which are continued in lh-k, lm-o, and lq-t.'?
Note that preterit (P), imperfect (I), and present verb forms occur in this
section of the narrative in specific types of clauses. Narrative clauses reca-
pitulate past experience in the order in which events presumably occurred: thus
Ig occurred before lh-k and before lm; and the events in lm occurred in a
temporal sequence, one before the next. However, the clauses in lh-k are
not temporally ordered with respect to one another; i.e., they may be reshuffled
without altering the semantic interpretation of the order of the events. This
effect is achieved by using the I, which indicates extended or continuous action.
Thus a series of events in the I are interpreted as overlapping, or as occurring
repeatedly in turns (cf. Lavandera). Encoded in the P, the events in lh-k could
only be interpreted as occurring in a sequence with temporal juncture."
The time reference of the P and the I is the same, viz. the point of the event;
and the point of reference is prior to the point of speech. The difference between
these two forms is aspectual; they correspond to different ways of viewing the
flow of processes and states in the narrative-perfective and imperfective.
Events reported in the perfective P are viewed 'as a single whole' (Comrie
1976:16); thus two consecutive verbs are interpreted to refer to two consecutive
events, because the P does nowdistinguish between the separate phases which
make up a situation.
By contrast, because the imperfective allows for a breakdown of the internal
8
Labov & Waletzky observed the same in their study of English narratives.
9 The total does not add
up to 30 because a case of morphological neutralization between preterit
and present was left out (see fn. 11).
10 Note that the result
(It) is here considered part of the complicating action clauses, since it
also constitutes a narrative event.
1 TEMPORAL JUNCTURE exists between two clauses when a change in their order results in a
change in the temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation (Labov, 360).
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 767

temporal structure of a situation (Comrie, 16), events reported in the I cor-

respond to what Labov & Waletzky call COORDINATE
and RESTRICTED
CLAUSES,
i.e. ones which may be interchangedwith no change in temporal sequence.
Note that clauses lh,i,k are coordinate(they can be displacedover themselves
to the left or the right);but lj is restricted, because it may be displaced over
a larger number of clauses (before Ih to the left and before lo to the right).
This difference of clause type corresponds to another aspectual difference in
Spanish, the progressive (lj) vs. non-progressive(lh,j,k). Of two possible in-
terpretationsof the I, habitualityand continuousness,only the latteris possible
in the context of coordinate and restricted narrativeclauses, which refer to
narrative-specificconditions; but both are possible in the orientationand eval-
uation sections. THE CONTEXT, then, DETERMINES THE SPECIFIC MEANING OF THE
FORM.
English lacks a morphologicalform correspondingto the Spanish I, though
the same meaning may be conveyed by periphrasticconstructionswith would
or used to, or by the past progressive. Of these, we would expect wouldand/or
the past progressive to occur frequentlyin restrictedclauses. This expectation
is confirmedby the reportsof Labov (387)and Schiffrin,both based on studies
of English narratives. Progressive forms are not so frequent in Spanish.12In
the total numberof restricted and coordinate clauses, the percentage of pro-
gressives is extremely low-2% (13/476), as compared to the 9% (73/784) re-
ported by Schiffrin(57) for restrictedclauses in English. Clauses 7b-d further
illustratethe use of the I in restrictedclauses:
(7) a. Entonces la lnes empez6 a golpearle las Then Ines began to slap his two cheeks
dos mejillas asi fi.erte, pretty hard,
b. y el Hernan hacia 'Ja, ja,' and Hernan went 'Ha, ha,'
pero no soltaba el llanto. but he didn't start crying.
c. iOy! La Ines rezaba Gee! Ines was praying
d. y decia, and saying,
'Por mi ignorancia que se vava a morir 'Because of my ignorance a child may
un nifo.' (D, f, 68) die.'
The other verbal forms which occur in the complicatingaction are the P and
PRESENT
the present. This latter usage, referred to as the HISTORICAL (HP), and
its alternationwith the P, are examined in detail in what follows. In the nar-
ratives analysed, P and HP alternatein simple narrativeclauses to refer to the
events whose reference time is prior to the moment of speaking. Of 476 nar-
rative clauses, 156 (32.7%)verbs are in the HP.'3
12
In addition to the canonical progressive construction with estar + V-ndo 'be + V-ing', I have
coded as progressive the periphrastic construction ir + V-ndo 'go + V-ing', e.g. .... va iiendo que
el balcon estaba forcejeado '... she goes seeing that the balcony was forced.' This decision was
made because the verb ir 'go' has here lost its lexical meaning of movement; it is used as a marker
of person, number, and tense. These are the only types of progressives which occur in narrative
clauses; they should be examined in depth by a further study.
13 This percentage is very similar to the result obtained by Schiffrin for English (30% of HP out
of 1,288 clauses)-which seems to indicate that the two languages use the P/HP alternation in a
similar way, and that this cross-linguistic similarity may respond to a universal pragmatic function.
The totals in my study include only simple narrative clauses, i.e. no restricted or coordinate
768 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

Observe that, in narrative1, the P occurs in lg,q,t, and the HP in lm-o,r,s.

In other sections of the narrative,the P and the HP are not in variation.Thus,
if the P used in the abstract(Ic) is replacedby a presentform, then the resulting
clauses are interpretedas a statement of general truth, not as the abstract of
a narrative:
(8) Lo pilla a uno y lo deja paralizado.
'He catches you and leaves you speechless.'
Other uses of the present, as in orientation clauses (la-b), or in reported
speech (9), have as their axis of reference the moment of speaking, and could
not be replaced by the P:
(9) Entonces dije yo, '; Y esta cuesti6n que Then I said, 'So what is this thing?'
es?' (pres.)
'Que estoy (pres.) embarazada, pues,' me 'That I am pregnant,' she said to me.
dijo. (H. m, 33)
In oral narrative, then, the P/HP alternationis possible only in narrative
clauses with zero displacementsets, i.e. in clauses that are strictly orderedby
temporal sequence and cannot be displaced over any other clauses. IN THE
CONTEXT OF THE COMPLICATING ACTION, THE HP THUS TAKES ON A PERFECTIVE
ASPECT.This implies that the simple present cannot alternate with the I in
restricted clauses: if the switch were made, the clause sequence would be
interpretedas parallelto the temporalsequence of the events. This is illustrated
by replacingthe I with the present in lh-i:
(10) g. Entonces bot6 el, el, el cuaderno de so- Then he dropped the, the, the social sci-
ciales al suelo, ences notebook on the floor,
h. y con el pie lo da (pres.) vuelta, la hoja, and with the foot he turns it over, the
page,
i. y mira (pres.) de arriba p'abajo asi - and he looks from top to bottom like
this -
Here 10h-i could only mean that the student turned one page over, and then
looked at that page from top to bottom. In restrictedclauses, then, we would
expect only the progressive form of the HP to occur, which is what I find in
the data.'4
Studies of the Spanish verb assign a rhetoricalfunction to the HP, that of
makingrecollections more vivid. However, the source of data for these studies
and for most of the grammarscurrentlyin use (e.g. Alcina & Blecua, Bello &
Cuervo, Bull 1960, Gili Gaya, Ramsey, Real Academia) is written Spanish;
thus the rules they propose may not be automaticallyextended to speech.

types. Furthermore,12 narrativeclauses were excluded because they correspondedto cases of

morphologicalneutralizationbetween presentand preterit,occurringin the Ipl. forms of first and
thirdconjugationverbs (i.e. with infinitivesin -ar and -ir): e.g.
V-ar nosotros cantamos 'we sing' / 'we sang'
V-ir nosotros subimos 'we go up' / 'we went up'
Schiffrin(p.c.) did not exclude neutralizedforms (put, cut etc.) from some of her statistics. This
appearsto be a methodologicalweakness.
14 The
non-progressiveHP/I alternationoccurs, thoughrarely,in the orientationsection of some
narratives.
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 769

Indeed, in a study of conversationalnarratives,Wolfson (1978:216)points out

that the EnglishHP is used in genres that may use writingor speech as channels,
'but when spoken ... [the differentgenres] constitute speech events which have
rules of their own, not shared by the rules for the speech events in which
conversationalnarrativesoccur.' Likewise in Spanish, the exclusive use of the
HP in 11, below, does not makethe narrationmorevivid, but simplyreproduces
the rules for the use of the present in the description of events in a novel-
which are not necessarily the same as in speech. (None of the features of
performednarrativesdiscussed by Wolfson are present in the account of this
novel: no direct speech, no asides, no repetition, no expressive sounds, no
sound effects, and no motion or gestures.)
(11) Pasa (pres.) en Massachusetts. Y las, se It happens in Massachusetts. And the, she
viene (pres.) ella a vivir a Maryland. En- comes to live in Maryland. Then when
tonces cuando se cambia (pres.), hay she moves, a big change takes place in
(pres.) un cambio bastante grande en herbecause she meets a girlthat she, she
ella porque conoce (pres.) a una nihia thoughtshe wasn't addictedto drugsbut
que ella, que pensaba que no era adicta she was. And they start to re-sell drugs
a las drogas pero tambien le hacia. Y and, and at the end this girl dies, dies of
empiezan (pres.) a revender drogas y, y too many, consuming too many drugs.
al final esta nitia muere (pres.), muere
(pres.) por demasiadas, ingerir dema-
siadas drogas. (V, f, 16)

Contraryto the traditionalview, in which the HP is assignedthe metaphorical

function of makingpast events more vivid or dramatic,by presentingthem as
if they were occurringin front of our eyes,15Wolfson 1978, 1979proposes that
the conversationalHP has no significance in itself; rather,it is the ALTERNATION
of P and HP which is said to constitute an expressive feature.16Furthermore,
the switching of tenses is found to function as a device that separates events
from one another. I investigateWolfson's analysis in what follows, and present
Spanish evidence to show that the switching is neither a necessary nor a suf-
ficient condition to separate events. Furthermore,this evidence supports the
expressive function of the HP in Spanish. The markingof separate events is
discussed first.
It has already been shown that different sections of the narrativecorrelate
with differentverb tenses. Narrative I startswith an orientationin the present.
The switch to P in Ic signals a differentsection, the abstract.The switch back
to present correlates with a returnto orientation;and a furtherswitch to I in
le indicates that the orientation is now directed to the time of the narrative
events. It thus seems possible that the switch between P and HP may also
function to separate sections or types of narrativeclauses. However, I have
also shown that these two tenses may alternateONLYin the simplest narrative
clauses which occur in the complicating action section. Therefore it is clear
15
In addition to the Spanish studies already mentioned, this view has been upheld in analyses
of the HP in Englishby Jespersen 1931, Joos 1964, and Leech 1971,amongothers.
16
In an earlier study, Wolfson 1974 proposed an opposite analysis, namely that the HP is a
stylistic device used to bringthe audience into emotionalproximitywith the story and with the
story-teller.However, Wolfson (p.c.) no longer maintainsthis earlieranalysis.
770 LANGUAGE, VOLUME59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

that the P/HP switch does not markdifferentsections of the narrative-which

makes it crucial that we scrutinize and define explicitly the notion EVENT
as
used by Wolfson.
Wolfson 1979implies that the following are DIFFERENT EVENTS:
(a) Actions that occur in differentscenes of a story (e.g. action on shore, and then action on
a boat).
(b) The variousactionsassociatedwithdifferentactors(e.g. 3rdpersonvs. 1stpersonactions).
(c) Actions occurringafter the expression all of a sudden.
(d) The conditionsdescribedin a when clause + main clause (sometimes;see (i) below).
The following are proposed to constitute A SINGLE EVENT:
(i) The conditionsdescribedin a when clause + main clause (sometimes;see (d), above).
(ii) The events describedin coordinatesentences, especiallyverbof motion + verbof saying.
Wolfson assumes that the separatingfunction of tense-switch is supportedby
the fact that two out of ten occurrences of the phraseall of a sudden preceded
a switch; this phrase suggests, she says, 'that somethingnew and unexpected
is about to occur' (174). If all of a sudden precedes unexpected events, then
it may also be said to precede dramaticevents, since what is unexpected is
usually dramatic. Therefore, if all of a sudden correlates with switches from
P to HP, this would supportan analysis of the HP as at least co-occurringwith
dramaticevents. However, Wolfson regardsthe directionof the switch as un-
important,and gives no quantitativeinformationon this topic.'7 Of her three
examples, however, two of the switches are from P to HP after the adverbial
all of a sudden.
My data contain seven occurrencesof de repente 'all of a sudden'and similar
expressions like y a esto que (e.g. im above), y en eso/esto que; and ALLSEVEN
PRECEDE A CHANGE INTOTHEHP. However, only six of these precede a change
of subject/actoror of scene, the features which have been offered as evidence
for a change in the events. Ex. 12c illustrates a switch into the HP after de
repente:
(12) a. Y mi mamd estaba lavando - unas toal- And my mother was washing - some tow-
las, els,
b. entoncesfue - la - mamt empez6 a pen- then she went - my - mother started to
sar, think,
'iPucha! La Blanca podria traer las 'Gee! Blanca could bring the sweaters,
chombas,
pero como es tan chica but since she's so little
que no tiene idea que chombas -' and she doesn't know what sweaters -
c. Yde repentemi hermanaaparece (pres.) And all of a sudden my sister shows up
en la puerta del baho at the door of the bathroom
d. y le dice, and tells her,
'Mamd, 6querias esto?' 'Mother, did you want this?'
e. Las chombas. (V, f, 16) The sweaters.

What is importanthere is the fact that de repente, which introduces an un-

expected or dramaticevent, co-occurs with the HP. In 12c, the sister's showing
up at the door of the bathroomwith the sweaters is highly dramaticand high-
17Schiffrin(56) has presentedquantitativeevidence indicatingthat the directionof the switch
is important,since only the switch from HP to P appearsto separateevents in the narrative.
TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 771

lights the point of the story,'8 which is to show that the membersof the speak-
er's family possess extrasensory perceptions.
Wolfson furtherclaims that the retentionof the same tense between a when
clause and its head, and the absence of the HP in the when clause, result from
the fact that when locates the action in time, providinga backgroundfor the
events to follow; thus the two clauses constitute 'a single event.' Since when
clauses are orientation clauses, it is not surprisingthat they do not provide a
context for the occurrence of the HP.
The weakness implicit in Wolfson's argumentbecomes apparentwhen she
discusses exceptions like these (her examples 11-12):
(13) And when she came home that night, she goes to insertthe key and the door goes open.
(14) When we drove up, I see all these kids ...
These, she says, result from 'the strengthof the CHP [conversationalhistorical
present] alternationrule, which uses the switch in verb forms to focus attention
on a new event in the story' (175). One wonders whether when clause + main
clause is 'a single event', or whether the when clause is a backgroundfor (and
not part of) the event. Consider the following Spanish examples:
(15) Cuando yo me di vuelta para mirarla, la Viviana ya habia llegado abajo, pues. (E, f, 34)
'When I turnedaroundto look at her, Vivianahad alreadyreachedthe first floor.'
(16) Cuando se muri6 mi tio, mi hermana chica fue y dijo ... (V, f, 16)
'When my uncle died, my youngersister went and said ...'
(17) Y cuando saliamos, que - habiamos terminado de los rosarios, me dice en el corredor
... (Mexico, p. 143)
'And when we were going out, that - we had finishedthe rosaries, she tells me in the
corridor...'
(18) Y cuando volvimos, le dije ... (V, f, 16)
'And when we returned,I told him ...'
(19) Cuando nos vinimos, nos regal6 una docena de huevos a cada uno. (G, m, 51)
'When we left, she gave us each a dozen eggs.'
Recall that Wolfson identifies as different events the various actions asso-
ciated with differentactors, as well as the actions that occur in differentscenes.
Accordingly, we should consider the sequences of when clause + main clause
as representingdifferent events in 15-19, because the subjects/actorsof the
verbs are different, and in 15-16 the scenes are also different. But the tense
is switched in 17, and is retained in 15, 16, 18, and 19. There is, however, a
change in 15, from simple preteritin the whenclause to past perfect in the main
clause. This evidence invalidatesthe proposalthat whenclauses and theirheads
favor tense retention BECAUSE they constitute a single event. The when clause
is not strictly an event, but the backgroundor scene of an event; hence the
switch or retention of tense is, in principle, different from the phenomenon
that occurs in sequences of narrativeclauses.
Nevertheless, it is true that the when constructionfavors tense retention in
my data (in 7/11 cases, the verbs in both clauses are in the P).'9 Furthermore,

18 See
Polanyi 1979 for a discussion of the POINTof a story.
19 Schiffrin
reportsthat, in 18/19Englishclauses, both verbs are in the past. The highpercentage
of verb-formretentionmay result from the lack of a morphologicalpast imperfectin English.
772 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

the HP rarely occurs in the when clause (once in the data); but this probably
results from the backgroundingfunction of this type of clause. For instance,
just as the HP is infrequentin orientationsections, so also is it infrequentin
when clauses which give this type of information.However, HP in the when
clause and tense-switch both occur when requiredby the communicationsit-
uation, as illustratedin 15 and 17, and in
(20) Pero se asom6 a la calle la Ines y gritaba And Ines looked out into the street and
y les decia, 'dSon ustedes, son uste- shouted and said, 'Is that you, is that
des?', cuando ve (pres.) que viene la you?', when she sees thatthe midwifeis
matrona. (D, f, 68) coming.
Note furtherthat the scene and the actor here are the same-a strongindication
that this should be a single event; but the tense switches from I to HP in the
when clause.20
Wolfson furtherproposes that tense retentionprevails in coordinate senten-
ces because they form part of the same event, especially when the conjuncts
include a verb of motion followed by a verb of saying. This appearsto be true
for Spanish. In fact, a verb of motion which accompaniesa verb of saying often
lacks its lexical meaningof movement (cf. fn. 10), and thereforedoes not con-
stitute an event; nor is it separate from the act of saying. Consider these ex-
amples:
(21) Lleg6 y dijo ... (F, m. 70)
'He came and said ...
(22) Un dia llega la Queta y le dice ... (H, m, 33)
'One day Queta comes and tells her ...
Here the person who spoke was, at all times, at the place where the act of
saying was performed. The function of the verb of movement is not clear to
me; however, it is likely that it and the verb of saying are viewed by speakers
as a single complex verb, in a mannersimilarto serial verb constructions, and
that this holistic view motivates the use of the same tense for both forms.
The tense agreementrule in Englishcoordinatesentences is apparentlymore
often broken when the second sentence has an expressed subject-a fact in-
terpretedby Wolfson to indicate differentevents. Schiffrin(53) quantifiesver-
bal and full-clause conjunction, and shows that verbal conjunction strongly
disfavors tense-switch (4% switch in verbal conjunction vs. 22% in clausal
conjunction).However, she argues convincinglythat conjunctionis NOTa nec-
essary condition to unite acts into one event-if, by one event, we understand
either 'an act which gains relevance only when the second act occurs' or actions
that occur almost simultaneously. For Spanish, observe that no conjunctions
occur in 23a-f (from narrative 1):
(23) a. ... salta un banco, ... he jumps a desk,
b. salta otro, jumps another,
c. salta una fila, jumps a row,
d. corre, runs,

20 Schiffrin
(52) has arguedthat, even if the whenclause + mainclause representsa singleevent,
the barringof the tense-switchis not caused by this phenomenon,but by the fact that the clauses
reportmaterialwhich is not sequentiallyordered.Note, however, that in Spanishthe switch may
still occur in such clauses; cf. ex. 20.
 TENSE AND ASPECTIN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 773

e. va corriendo asi ... he goes running like this ...

f. lo pilla catches him
g. y le dice ... and tells him ...
The relationshipbetween tense-switchingand conjunctionin English is dis-
cussed in detail by Schiffrin. Her quantitativeanalysis shows that clausal con-
junction does not inhibit tense-switching; and that even though verbal con-
junction does create an inhibition,this depends not on discourse function, but
on more general syntactic and semantic restrictions. Her analysis in terms of
verbal and clausal conjunction cannot be extended to Spanish, however, be-
cause the two languages behave differently with respect to constraints on
expression of the subject.2' Note, for instance, that Schiffrin'sexamples 15-
16, here numbered 24-25, have no parallel pair in Spanish, which does not
allow a coreferential subject in the second conjunct in non-contrastivesitua-
tions:
(24) He suddenlyturnedaroundand punchedme.
De repente el se dio vuelta y me peg6.
(25) He suddenlyturnedaroundand he punchedme.
De repente eli se dio vuelta y *eli me peg6.
To limit the scope of the adverb to the first conjunct, Spanish would have to
use another adverb in the second conjunct:
(26) De repente el se dio vuelta y {ahi, luego, entonces} me pego.
'He suddenlyturnedaroundand {there, then] (he) punchedme.'
The results of the quantificationof differenttypes of verbal conjunctionby
tense-switching are not statistically significantin Spanish.22But tense-switch-
ing is restricted when the subject is NOT expressed, REGARDLESSOF WHETHER
THE CLAUSES ARE CONJOINED, as shown in Table 1.

SUBJECT EXPRESSED SUBJECT UNEXPRESSED TOTAL

Switch 55 (36%) 63 (22%) 118
Retain 98 219 317
TOTAL 153 282 435
TABLEI. (X2 = 9.29, p < .002)

Table 1 shows that switching is favored by full as opposed to subjectless

clauses. In Spanish, the expression of the subject is an indicationof some kind
of topic discontinuity (Bentivoglio 1981, Silva-Corvalan1977)-and therefore
a different chain of events, as illustrated below, where the tense-switch co-
occurs with a change of subject referent:
(27) Levanto (pres.) la baranda, la voy (pres.) I lift up the railing,turn to lean it against
a poner a la pared afirmdndola, y ishuh! the wall, and shuh! down went Viviana.
sali6 (P) p'abajo la Viviana. (E, f, 34)

These facts of Spanishnicely match Schiffrin'sobservationthat Englishtem-

poral conjunction favors tense-switching, and that 'the subject of a clause is
more likely to differfrom that of the priorclause if it is precededby a temporal
21
In Silva-Corvalan 1982, I discuss these constraints.
22 Out of 105
conjoined verbal clauses, 18%contain a tense-switch(p < .58). Cf. the result of
Schiffrin(53) for English:4% (p < .001).
774 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

conjunction'(55). Thus I propose that expression of the subjectin Spanish and

temporalconjunctionin English both favor tense-switchingbecause both cor-
relate with subject/topicdiscontinuity.Furthermore,even thoughthe relation-
ship between switching and coordinatedsentences is statisticallynot very sig-
nificant (p < .16), the raw percentages show that temporalconjunctionfavors
switching over both no conjunction and coordinate conjunction (37%, 26%,
25%respectively).
Even in the presence of temporalconjunctionor expressed subject, the same
Spanishtense is retainedin most cases. My results, then, agreewith Schiffrin's.
They also partiallysupportWolfson's hypothesis, insofaras they indicate that
tense-switching TENDSto separate events; but this correlation is weak, and
could not be postulated as the main function of the P/HP alternation.What is,
then, the function of the HP in oral Spanish narrative?I proceed to examine
the traditionalproposalthat the HP is a mechanismused to make the past more
vivid. To do this, I must turn to a considerationof the structureof narratives
and the role of evaluation.
THE'So WHAT?'An important component of a nar-
3. MAKINGINFELICITOUS
rative is its evaluation-the means by which the narratormakes the story in-
teresting, highlightingthe relative importanceof the various narrativeevents.
The evaluation conveys the informationthat the story is worth reportingbe-
cause the events were dangerous, wonderful, hilarious, weird, amusing, or
unusual (Labov, 371). In other words, the evaluation makes infelicitous a re-
mark like 'So what?' by the listener. If, then, the HP occurs in the narrative
clauses that report events that respond to these conditions, we may say that
it has an evaluative function.
Let us observe where the HP occurs in narrative1. Note that the sequence
of HP forms occurs precisely in the report of the events which are unusualor
hilarious, and which highlight the point of the story: you cannot cheat this
teacher, because he always catches you, but he does it so nicely that you cannot
help liking him. Thus the teacher's jumping desks, runningacross the room,
and catching the student, as well as the student's freezing, are relayed in the
HP-just as a sports commentatoruses the present tense to relay actions oc-
curringalmost simultaneouslywith their verbalization.23By using the present

23 This correlationhas also been observedby Schiffrin

(57), who upholdsthe traditionalrhetorical
functionof the EnglishHP. Partof her analysisis based on the fact that, in restrictedclauses, the
HP occurs more frequentlythan the P in the progressiveform. Since the preferredreadingfor the
progressivewith verbs of actionincludesthe momentof speaking,the progressiveHP is interpreted
as a way of presentinga past event as if it were occurringin speech time. Schiffrinquantifies
restrictedclauses because this is the only context for the occurrenceof progressivesin the com-
plicatingaction. But in Spanish,whenthe HP occursin these clauses, it is alwaysin the progressive.
This must be so in order to allow the intendedmeaning-given that the non-progressivepresent
mayonly be a narrativeclause with zero displacement,set in the contextof the complicatingaction.
Grantingthat Englishand Spanishdo not share identicaltense-aspect systems, it is possible that
the higherfrequencyof progressiveHP in Englishresultsfroma similarsemanticconstraint,rather
than from a rhetoricalreason. In any case, the HP/progressivecorrelationmay not be used to
examine the expressive function of the HP in Spanish.
 TENSE AND ASPECTIN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 775

to describe events which occurred in the past, the speakerpresents them as if

they were occurringin front of his eyes. This creates the effect of immediacy
and makes the narrativemore vivid and dramatic.The HP is, then, an internal
evaluation device.24
Further support for this conclusion is offered by the co-occurrence of the
HP with the most climacticevent of the story, the point where the complicating
action has reached a maximum and after which the narrativemoves to the
result (Labov & Waletzky, 35). Examples 12 above and 28 below illustratethis
co-occurrence:
(28) a. Despues, un dia - yo hago atletismo y Then, one day - I do athletics and
hockey. Un dia estaba sentada - es- hockey. One day I was sitting - the
taba la barra de salto alto aqui, yo es- highjump bar was here, I was looking
taba mirando pa' otro lado, in the opposite direction,
b. y dije, 'Me tengo que dar vueltas porque and I said, 'I have to turnaroundbecause
la nina que va a saltar ahora, que tiene the girl who's going to jump now,
buzo rojo, se va a pegar con la varilla who's wearinga red warm-upsuit, is
en la espalda'. going to hit her back againstthe bar.'
c. Yme estoy (pres.) dando vuelta asi, pero And I'm turningaroundlike this, but I
iba demasiado lenta, was going too slowly,
d. y en esto la nina viene (pres.) corriendo andjust then the girl comes runninglike
asi, izaz!, se pega (pres.) en la espalda this, bang!, she hits her back against
con la barra. the bar.
e. Asi es que llegue asi a la casa pero So I was scaredto deathwhenI got home.
muerta de susto. Me ha pasado dos It's happenedto me twice this year.
veces este anio. (V, f, 16)
Exx. 12 and 28 were told duringa conversation about premonitionsand ESP
experiences. Note that, in both, the HP predictablyoccurs at the point of the
climax: the sister shows up at the door with the sweaters, the girl actuallydoes
what the speaker had foreseen. Both events prove the point that the narrator
wants to make: that everyone in her family has extrasensoryperceptions.
One narrativein the data contains only a single example of an HP form; and
just as my analysis predicts, this form occurs precisely at the point of the
climax:
(29) a. 'Ya', le dije, 'yo te - nos encontramos en 'Okay', I told her, 'I - we'll meet here in
un rato mts acd. Yo voy acd, nos en- a while. I'll come here, we'll meet.'
contramos.'
b. Llegamos a almorzar, me acuerdo. We got home for lunch, I remember.
c. Cuando llegamos a almorzar, me pasa When we got home for lunch, she hands
(pres.) el papelito.25 (I: GA Gorbea o me the little piece of paper..
acd?) (I: In Gorbeaor here?)
d. (Estdbamos en Grecia ya.) (We were living on Grecia [Street] al-
ready.)
e. Me pasa el papelito She hands me the little piece of paper
f. y decia, 'Pregnostic6n, positivo.' (H, m, and it said, 'Pregnancytest, positive.'
33)

24 The type of evaluative materialwhich breaks the flow of narrativeclauses is defined as EX-
TERNAL EVALUATION (Labov, 372).
25
Llegamos is morphologicallyneutralized(see fn. 13). I have intuitivelytranslatedit with the
past ('got'); an alternativepresenttense translation('get') appearspossible, thoughless probable.
776 LANGUAGE, VOLUME59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

This narrates the events that occurred on the day when the speaker learned
that his wife was pregnant-a most importantmoment, after four years of
marriagewithout children. The moment when the wife handed him the 'little
piece of paper' is most dramatic,and this event is the only one in the narrative
which uses the HP.
Later in the conversation, the speaker told me about his child's birth. Most
of the actions which occurred duringa long and nerve-rackingwaiting period
are narratedin the P. Then a nurse is asked to go to the operatingroom to find
out what is happening.This is the startingpoint for the most dramaticpassage:
(30) a. Entra (pres.) a ver esta cabra. This girl goes in to find out.
b. i Y no la vimos mds! iNo la vimos mdcs! And we never saw her again!Never saw
her again!
(I: dNunca mds?) (I: Never again?)
0 sea, yo, no la vi mds, pues. Si, si la vi That is, I never saw her again. Yes, I did
esa noche ahi y despues no supe mds see her againthat nightand then never
de ella, porque ya nadie la, mds la heardof her again,because no one, no
infli, y nunca mds. iDebe haber creido one paid any attention to her, never
que eramos locos, porque no se apa- again. She must have thoughtthat we
recid ni por la pieza! were crazy, because she didn't even
show up aroundthe room!
c. Y sale (pres.), y dice (pres.)/ And she comes out, and says/
(I: iAh! Pero ella volvi6 a avisar.) (I: Oh! But she did come back to tell
you.)
d. (Si. Volvi6 a avisar.) (Yes. She came back to tell us.)
e. Vuelve (pres.) a avisar, She comes back to tell us,
f. abre (pres.) la puerta, opens the door,
g. y dice (pres.), and says,
'Estd todo bien. Es hombre.' Ya? 'Everythingis fine. It's a boy.' Okay?
h. Y todos salimos corriendo de ahi. (H, m, And we all left running.
33)
Note the detailed description of the events here-e.g. opens the door in 30f,
and the skillful suspension of the action in 30b. Most of the events are coded
in the HP (7/11). It is clear, then, that the HP describes the most dramatic
events, those which build up the suspense which is resolved in 30g, when the
birth of a baby boy is announced.
In 22 of the 30 narrativesstudied, the HP co-occurs with the most dramatic
events, i.e. the climactic events immediately preceding the resolution. In 5
narratives, it appears to be used randomly, and in 3, the point of the climax
cannot be identified very precisely. More data may need to be analysed, but
it appears that the feature shared by these last 8 narrativesis that they report
events occurringover relatively long periods of time, such as illnesses or trips.
By contrast, narrativesof fights, cheating at school, ESP experiences, births
etc., in which the events occur in relatively shorter periods of time, show
successions of sequentialevents which build up to a climax; and these events
are relayed in the HP.
This difference in the types of narrativesmay account for the differentcon-
clusion drawnby Wolfson (1979:174),who states that 'the most dramaticevent
is often recounted in the past tense.' But her example (And I said, 'Mister,
 TENSE AND ASPECT IN ORAL SPANISH NARRATIVE 777

you're not gonna get any gas in front of me') is not quite felicitous, since what
is in the past is the reportingverb, which mighteven be unexpressed;but what
was said by the speaker, in fact the most dramaticevent, is encoded in direct
speech in the present.26Direct quotes are frequent in narrative;in my data,
97% (180/186) of the reporting verbs introduce such quotes. It is generally
agreed that direct quotes increase the immediacyof an utterance by allowing
the speaker to re-create it in its originalform, as if it were being said at speech
time (Hymes 1977, Schiffrin1981,Wolfson 1978).Indirectreports,by contrast,
do not create the same effect of immediacy. Thus it is the reported material
itself which conveys the effect of simultaneity.Examples31-32 illustratedirect
quotes without a reportingverb. Who says what is not identifiedlexically, but
ratherby means of prosodyandthe context; the effect of immediacyis retained:
(31) Yfue y se acerco a la moto, iya?27 And he went and walkedtowardthe mo-
torcycle, right?
A: 'Asi es que porque eso no me gusta, yo 'So because I don't like that, I do this to
te hago esto.' iBum! Y le empuja la you'. Bum!And he pushes his motor-
moto, y se cae ipah!, y le bota la moto. cycle, and it falls pah!, and he drops
the motorcycle.
Entonces, ' Te gusta eso?' Then, 'Do you like that?'
B: Asi es que, 'Cuidado, te voy a sacar la So, 'Takeit easy, I'm gonnabeat you up,
mugre, eah?' eh?'
A: 'iAh! (Me vai a pegar?' 'Ah! You're gonna beat me up?'
Entonces, 'Sabis que no te conviene, Then, 'You know you'd better not, be-
porque te sacariamos la un.'28 (L, m, cause we'd kick your iuh.'
16)
(32) A: Y me dijo, ' Tantas hojas?' And she said to me, 'So many sheets?'
B: 'Si, es que para sacar ejercicios.' (T, f, 'Yes, draft paperfor doing exercises.'
16)
Wolfson suggests that the English present tense is not equal to present time,
but is more accurately a 'timeless' form, as proposed by Twaddell(quoted by
Wolfson, 180). Similarly,Bull (86) proposes that the Spanishpresentis 'a tense-
less form'; but he adds that the function of all verbal forms is in fact given by
the context. Thus the HP does not have the meaningof past. We infer that it
refers to past events, because of the context in which it occurs; but its meaning
remainsthat of includingthe momentof speaking. Furthermore,certainspeech
events (e.g. sportscasts, descriptions of events in a ceremony) are encoded in
the present, and refer to actions which occur simultaneouslywith the moment
of speaking. In addition, the present in Spanish, as in other Romance lan-

26 Wolfson
(p.c.) disagreeswith my analysis;she believes that what is most importantand dra-
maticis thatthe speakerstandsup to the othermanandSAYS something.I wouldpointout, however,
that a change in the content of what the speaker says changes the illocutionaryeffect of the act:
And I said, 'Mister, are you standing in line to get gas?'
27 The capital letters 'A' and 'B' are used to indicate the turnsof each speakerin the reported
conversation.
28 The narratoredits the direct quote and uses a noise (uh), instead of the tabu word which I
assume was actually said.
778 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

guages,29may refer to on-going action at the moment of speaking:

(33) A: iQue estudias, Rodrigo? What{do you study, are you studying},
Rod?
B: Estudio historia. I {study, am studying} history.
This is evidence that the present is not necessarily a timeless form. Indeed,
the present, in all its uses, either relates events to the moment of speaking,or
refers to events which are true at all times, includingthe moment of speaking.
Used in the context of the narrativeclauses to reportpast events, the present
brings those events from the past and presents them as if they were occurring
simultaneouslywith speech time. This internalevaluationfunction of the HP
is supported by the quantitativeand qualitativeanalysis of the narrativesin-
cluded in this study.
4. CONCLUSION. The distributionof tense and aspect in oral Spanish nar-
rative shows that the meaningof the forms is, in part,delimitedby the narrative
context in which they occur. Thus the P and the I share the meaning of an-
teriority; but in the context of the orientation, only the I may be marked by
(i.e. may refer to) the feature TIMEOFTHENARRATIVE
EVENTS.In the compli-
cating action section, however, the I does not indicate habitualness(a possible
readingin other contexts), and the present acquiresperfective aspect; i.e., like
the P, it encodes sequential events with temporaljuncture.
The quantitativeand qualitativeevidence presented here indicates that the
HP functions as an internalevaluationdevice. I have tested two partiallycon-
tradictoryanalyses of English narrativeagainst the Spanish data; and I have
shown that, for Spanish, the function of the switch between P and HP is not
that of separatingevents. Rather, the switch may be considered to set off one
or more events-those which representthe most climacticmoments-from the
rest of the narrativeclauses. This co-occurrencewith climacticevents indicates
that the HP is an internalevaluation mechanism,a conclusion which supports
Schiffrin's similar claim for English. This cross-linguistic evidence suggests
that we may eventually be able to develop a universalcharacterizationof the
discourse propertiesof temporaland aspectual elements in naturallanguage.
Bull (82) has said that
'forms do not, in a literal sense, perform functions. They have, rather, certain combinatory
potentialswhich make them uniquewithin the total set of forms in the tense system. Whatis
calleda formfunctionis actuallythe productof the interactionof the formandthe otherfactors
involved in the communication,that is, the systems combiningwith the form and the active
participationof the hearer.'
Thus we may conclude that the HP does not, in itself, have a rhetoricalfunction.
Rather,the context of the narrativein which it is embedded,and its interaction
with linguistic and extralinguisticfactors, draw out forcefully that aspect of
the present form which includes the momentof speaking,presentingthe events
as if they were occurringbefore us. Of the total set of forms in the tense system
of Spanish, only the present tense can achieve this effect.

29 And also in English expressions of the type Here I come or There she goes.
 TENSEAND ASPECTIN ORALSPANISHNARRATIVE 779

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