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Category: Analysis

Description: English tense/aspect-marking is an area where variation abounds and where many the-ories have been formulated. Diachronic studies of the preterit/present perfect alterna-tion indicate that the present perfect (e.g. I have eaten already) has been losing ground to the preterit (e.g. I ate already) (e.g. Elsness 1997, but see Hundt & Smith 2009, Werner 2014). However, few studies have examined this alternation in vernacular speech. This paper fills this lacuna by analyzing spoken data from Ontario, Canada from an apparent-time perspective. Using a large archive of multiple communities and people of different generations, we focus on linguistic contexts known to be variable, viz. with adverbs of indefinite time. Results indicate that, in contrast with previous studies, the alternation is mostly stable. We only find evidence of change with the ad-verb ever. Where there is evidence of change, this change is different from the predic-tions in the literature, with the preterit increasing in frequency. We suggest that a mi-nor constructionalization process operates in tandem with ongoing specialization of the preterit/present perfect contrast. Taken together, these results provide another example of the importance of including speech in research on language variation and change and of the unique contribution certain constructions make to more general systems of grammar.