Valores estilísticos del imperfecto

Abstract

Se puede decir que la gramát ica y la estilística convergen y se bifurcan dentro de cualquier ftnÓ · meno linguistico concreto : si 5f! analila tan sólo dentro del sistema de la lengua, se trata de un fenómeno gramatical. pero si se analiza dentro de la totalidad de un enunciado individual o de un genero discursivo, es un fenómeno de estilo. La misma e(tcción de determinada forma gramatical por d hablante es un acto de estilística.M. Bajtin, Est¡:tica dt fa c",.ario" ver bal. L El. TMPERFECTO: TIEMPO, ASPECTO Y MODOEn el presente trabajo propongo un análisis del imperfecto de indicativo español hecho a la luz de estudios recientes sobre los significados de las {or-mas verbales y sus funciones en el discurso. Me voy a detener en los usos del imperfecto que distinguen a esta forma de las restantes formas de pasado de la conjugación española y especialmente del pretérito indefinido, haciendo hincapié en los valores estilísticos que presenta el uso de CANTABA frente al pretérito CANTf o a las formas que -alternan con CANTÉ en los textos na· rrativos. Por valores estilísticos debe entenderse aquí significados expresivos (relacionados con el hablante) o pragmáticos (relacionados con el discurso mismo y con la situación), que se originan en determinadas intenciones ca· Illunicativas del hablante. Los valores estilísticos están ligados a convenciones genéricas, que, pese a sus imposiciones, dejan siempre un margen para la creatividad discursiva.La forma de la conjugación española que conocemos con el nombre de imperfecto tiene significados temporales, aspectuales y modales. Temporal. mente. el imperfecto CANTABA significa lo mismo que el pretérito simple Revista de Filología Española, vol. LXX, n.º 1/2 (1990) (c) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Licencia Creative Commons 3.0 España (by-nc)

How Second (L2) and Heritage (HL) Language Learners Can Draw on Existing Knowledge to Overcome Common Discourse Issues in Spanish Compositions

“…Consider the use of the imperfect by some authors to create a sense of immediacy or in the moment sensation in the narration of a situation. Reyes (1990) underscores this fact that the imperfect tense, in addition to its more traditionally known aspectual usage, has also a lesser-known discourse application. Consider the following authentic examples (8)(a), ( 9)(a) and ( 10)(a) from Reyes (1990), and their corresponding English equivalents (our translation) in ( 8 For all three examples, Reyes explains that the imperfect is used to achieve more intimate involvement by the reader in the action being expressed.…”

“…Reyes (1990) underscores this fact that the imperfect tense, in addition to its more traditionally known aspectual usage, has also a lesser-known discourse application. Consider the following authentic examples (8)(a), ( 9)(a) and ( 10)(a) from Reyes (1990), and their corresponding English equivalents (our translation) in ( 8 For all three examples, Reyes explains that the imperfect is used to achieve more intimate involvement by the reader in the action being expressed. In (8)(a), which is an example she draws from the Esbozo of the RAE (1914), 5 Reyes points out that the use of the imperfect establecí a 'established' at the end of a series of several other verbs that are otherwise conjugated in the preterit tense signals a point in a succession of events at which comparable greater involvement is solicited of the reader in the action specified, suggesting that up until that point, the reader held a more passive role.…”

A guide to subjunctive and modals in Spanish: questions and analyses

“…Finally, in Spanish and in Italian, the imperfective past has a set of modal uses where the form is used, without making any reference to the past, to express several irrealis notions and also to convey surprise or a less committed attitude when expressing wishes and orders (see Fernández Ramírez 1953: 269 onward, Bertinetto 1986, Reyes 1990. Note that in some cases, like (305) and (306), the imperfective could be replaced by the conditional.…”

“…The form is opposed to the perfective past in the sense that it does not refer to a specific action -in Bertinetto's terms, it does not focalise the endpoint of eventualities, and can involve generic or habitual quantification-, so it presents the predicate in an indirect way (Reyes 1990), which can be reinterpreted as a way to convey that the speaker's experience with the reported event is not direct. In some recent approaches (Laca 2010b, Ippolito 2013, imperfective past, in fact, can be reinterpreted as a device that distances the claim from the actual world-time pair, something that makes it predictable that these forms could develop modal uses.…”

Speaker’s stance and subjectivity in the epistemic modal and evidential use of the Spanishimperfectoin journalistic texts

“…299-358). There are also some studies (García Fernández, 2004;Reyes, 1990b) which refer to the narrative use of the Spanish imperfecto when it is used instead of the perfective form, i.e., pretérito perfecto simple, with specific dates or temporally limited adverbs:…”