Spanish shows variation between two future expressions1. The Synthetic Future (SF) is marked morphologically, as seen in (1a), while the Periphrastic Future (PF) is constructed with the verb ir ‘to go’ plus an infinitive, as in (1b).

(1) a. come-ré pizza mañana

eat-1sg.fut pizza tomorrow

b. voy a com-er pizza mañana

go to eat-inf pizza tomorrow

‘I will eat pizza tomorrow’

While several factors that seem to determine the use of these expressions have been proposed and thoroughly analyzed in the literature, the effects of priming on their selection are yet to be addressed. This paper contributes to the literature on Spanish future expressions by assessing the role of priming on the choice of the SF and PF in two oral corpora of South American and Peninsular Spanish: Macro-corpus de la norma lingüística culta de las principales ciudades del mundo hispánico (henceforth MCN) (SAMPER; HERNÁNDEZ CABRERA; TROYA, 1998[1]) and La lengua hablada en Alcalá de Henares: Corpus PRESEEA- Alcalá (ALC) (MORENO FERNÁNDEZ; CESTERO MANCERA; MOLINA MARTOS; PAREDES GARCÍA, 2002[2]).

The structure of this work is as follows. In §1, we summarize the factors that have been recognized in the literature as the most important in the selection of the future expressions of interest. We also provide a brief account of priming and its role in the conservation of less frequent linguistic variants as well as the research questions. The methodology follows in §2 and the results are presented in §3. In §4 and §5, we present the discussion and the general conclusions of this study.

The forms of the Spanish futures can express a diversity of meanings other than futurity per se (AARON, 2014[3]; FERNÁNDEZ RAMÍREZ, 1940[4]). For example, the form of the SF can be used to convey events that are seen as hypothetical by the speaker, a use known as the epistemic future (AARON, 2014[3]), illustrated in (2a). Here, by using the SF form será, the speaker is not conveying that the job discussed in the previous context will be difficult, but rather that he believes it is difficult. Differently, the form of the PF is used to express motion towards some goal (SEDANO, 1994[5]) and not futurity. In (2b), for example, the speaker conveys that he goes to Madrid to study, not that he will study in Madrid.

(1) a. trabaja de poner una consulta y esperar, me imagino que se-rá bastante

he.works in building a clinic and wait, myself I.imagine that to.be-_3SG-FUT quite

dificultoso

difficult

‘He works in building a clinic and waits, I imagine it is quite difficult’

(MCNMA04)

b. los sábados voy a estudi-ar en Madrid

the Saturdays I.go to study._INF to Madrid

‘On Saturdays, I go to study to Madrid’ (MCN-MA05)

The present research, however, is concerned only with future expression forms conveying actual future-time reference. In this respect, a number of factors have been proposed in the literature as governing the use of future expression in Spanish. For instance, the temporal distance of the future action in relation to the present has been numerously cited as one of its most important determinants (SEDANO, 1994[5]; FLEISCHMAN, 1982[6]). Accordingly, more immediate future events prefer the PF while events more distant in time prefer the SF (BLAS ARROYO, 2008[7]).

Additionally, governing factors of a more psychological nature have been proposed, as is the case of certainty (AARON, 2014[3]; ALMEIDA; DÍAZ, 1998[8]), also known as confidence in some works (e.g., BLAS ARROYO, 2008[7]). Although there seems to be no consensus in the literature as to the definition of this factor, for the purposes of this research, we follow Almeida and Díaz’s (1998[8]) definition of certainty as “the different certainty degree of the future event”2. As reported by these studies, the PF is preferred for future actions which, according to the speaker, will unfold with certainty. In contrast, the SF is used for actions whose outcome is shrouded in uncertainty (AARON, 2014[3]; BLAS ARROYO, 2008[7]).

While other potential linguistic factors that could affect the variation at hand have been proposed as well, such as style, temporal determinacy, and connection of the future event with the present of the speaker, they have found less support among scholars. For this reason, in this paper we focus on the two semantic factors that have been shown to be most relevant, namely temporal distance and certainty.

Importantly, despite the picture of complementary distribution in future expressions that the past characterizations may suggest, previous studies find that their distribution is by no means clear-cut. In fact, variation is found even in contexts that have been identified as highly preferring one form. Consequently, the selection of future expressions in Spanish has been described as lying between complementary distribution and “free variation”, suggesting that speakers have more choice in certain contexts than in others (AARON, 2014[3]; BLAS ARROYO, 2008[7]).

Finally, in addition to these linguistic factors, the preference for one or the other future expression is also subject to dialect-specific tendencies. Sedano’s (2006[9]) survey of seven spoken Spanish varieties finds that, in general, the SF is the least frequent future expression, an observation that had been made in previous impressionistic studies (KANY, 1945[10]). Furthermore, this author identifies differences in the overall frequency of the SF in these varieties along a continuum of use. In one extreme, the SF is more frequent in Spain (40% 1352/3380) and in Mexico (31% 374/1198). In the other, the Spanish of Dominican Republic (0% 0/16) and Chile (2% 1/65) show the lowest usage rates of the SF, admittedly with a very small sample. Intermediate rates of use are found among the South American dialects. These tendencies of use are illustrated in Figure 1.

A great wealth of evidence from psychology, psycholinguistics, and linguistics shows that speakers are more likely to use a syntactic construction that they have used or heard in the previous context - a phenomenon known priming or persistence (SZMRECSANYI, 2005[11]). In a classic study about retrieval of words, Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971[12]) using perception experiments, demonstrated that our memory is organized by familiarity as well as by meaning “with frequently examined locations in one “sector” and infrequently examined locations in another sector” (MEYER; SCHVANEVELDT, 1971, p.232[12]). For instance, Szmrecsanyi (2005[11]) found that English speakers are more likely to use gonna rather than will when there is a previous gonna in the discourse. For Spanish, Rosemeyer’s (2015[13]) diachronic study describes that the archaic perfects with ser, such as soy venido ‘I have come’, are more likely when another ser-perfect is found in the previous discourse. An even more interesting finding from previous studies on priming is that linguistic variants with lower frequency seem to have stronger priming effects. This is illustrated in Rosemeyer and Schwenter’s (2019[14]) diachronic study on the alternation of Spanish past subjunctives with -ra, as in pudie-ras ‘can-2sg.past.subj’, and subjunctives with -se, as in pudie-ses ‘can-2sg.past.subj’. The authors find that subjunctives with -se are by far the least frequent in the surveyed texts and document a diachronic pattern of replacement that led -ra subjunctives to become the dominating variant. However, consistently across temporal stages, when there is a previous -se subjunctive in the discourse, speakers are more likely to use another -se subjunctive rather than a -ra subjunctive.

In turn, this finding has implications for language change. The authors find that -se subjunctives are mostly restricted to high-frequency verbs, such as ser ‘to be’, estar ‘to be’, and haber ‘to have’. The explanation for the conservation of the -se subjunctives with these verbs is to be found in entrenchment (LANGACKER, 1987, p.59[15]). In other words, these high- frequency linguistic items are stored as a whole “chunk” in the speakers’ minds and are no longer analyzable in their component parts. Since the entrenched items are interpreted and processed as a different pattern, they are less subject to replacement by other linguistic variants - the -ra subjunctives in this case. Entrenchment in turn led to the paradigmatic atrophy (LEECH; HUNDT; MAIR; SMITH, 2009, p.80[16]) of the -se subjunctives, that is, their reduced productivity relegated to a small number of verbs.

However, Rosemeyer and Schwenter (2019[14]) show that primed -se subjunctives occur in fact with a larger inventory of verbs than unprimed -se subjunctives. The interpretation of this seemingly reviving effect of a previous -se subjunctive is that priming activates the construction with -se in the speaker’s mind, therefore allowing her to use it with a larger range of verbs than when unprimed. Thus, the authors conclude that priming can act as a conserving force in language change as a sort of counterbalance to paradigmatic atrophy.

In sum, the literature identifies several semantic factors that could affect the selection of future expressions in Spanish, such as temporal distance and certainty. However, it is also subject to extra-linguistic factors, especially dialect-specific preferences. While the SF is the least frequent future expression in all Spanish speaking countries, it is relatively more common in Spain. Other Spanish-speaking regions such as South America show lower rates of use of the SF. Finally, priming is another factor that can affect the use of linguistic variants. Previous studies show that its effects are stronger among less-frequent variants and that it can have a conserving effect in language change.

Informed by the studies described in the previous subsections, we propose the following research questions:

1. What effect does priming have on each Spanish future expression (PF and SF)?

2. What are the differences in priming effects on future expressions according to geographical region (South America vs Spain)?

These questions, in turn, have their corresponding hypotheses:

H1: a SF will be more likely after a previous SF in the discourse because it is the least frequent variant.

H2: there will be stronger priming effects of the SF in South American than in Peninsular Spanish because the SF is less frequent in South America.

As mentioned in the introduction, we looked for future expressions in two oral corpora of Spanish from Spain and South America. In total, we analyzed 82 interviews from tree cities in Spain - Madrid, Alcalá de Henares, and Seville - and three cities in South America - Buenos Aires (Agentina), La Paz (Bolivia) y Caracas (Venezuela). The key terms used for the searches in the corpora are shown in Table 1. We considered only future expression forms that had unambiguous future reference.