¿Cómo va a ser posible? The situated meanings of periphrastic and synthetic future-inflected wh-interrogatives in Spanish
We analyze the use and distribution of Spanish synthetic and periphrastic future-inflected wh-interrogatives in a corpus of informal Spanish conversations, within Linell’s (2009) Dialogical Theory of Language. Our corpus analysis reveals that future-inflected interrogatives realize three types of discourse functions: information requests, interactional challenges, and requests for inference, each clearly distinguishable in terms of their distribution at the sentence and discourse level. The results highlight the importance of speaker attitude and, particularly, their expectations regarding the answerability of the request. Use of the synthetic future is common in requests to inference, in which the hearer is not expected to be able to answer the question, whereas use of the periphrastic future is prototypical in requests for information and interactional challenges, indicating a grammaticalization path towards modal meanings. Our findings underscore the value of corpus-based pragmatic analysis for understanding how grammatical choices reflect interactional meaning-making.
Keywords:
- future,
- modality,
- interrogative,
- question,
- Spanish,
- periphrasis
Publication history
Spanish possesses two constructions that are usually described as expressing futurity and related meanings: the synthetic future (SF, see (1a)) and the periphrastic future (PF, see (1b)).
Funding
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Freie Universität Berlin.
References
Aaron, Jessi
Elana
2010 “Pushing the Envelope:
Looking beyond the Variable Context.” Language Variation and
Change 22: 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394509990226
2014 “A Certain Future:
Epistemicity, Prediction, and Assertion in Iberian Spanish Future Expression.” Studies in
Hispanic and Lusophone
Linguistics 7 (2): 215–240. https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2014-1166
Auer, Peter
2016 “ ‘Wie
geil ist das denn?’ Eine neue Konstruktion im Netzwerk ihrer Nachbarn.” Zeitschrift für
germanistische
Linguistik 44 (1): 69–92. https://doi.org/10.1515/zgl-2016-0003
Blas
Arroyo, José
Luis
2008 “The Variable Expression of
Future Tense in Peninsular Spanish: The Present (and Future) of Inflectional Forms in the Spanish Spoken in a Bilingual
Region.” Language Variation and
Change 20 (1): 85–126. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095439450800001X
Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, Laura Vincze, and Andrzej Zuczkowski
2018 “Questions
and Epistemic Stance: Some Examples from Italian
Conversations.” Ampersand 5: 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2018.11.001
Bybee, Joan
L., William Pagliuca, and Revere
D. Perkins
1991 “Back
to the Future.” In Approaches to
Grammaticalization, ed. by Elizabeth Traugott, and Bernd Heine, 16–58. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.19.2.04byb
Caponigro, Ivano, and Jon Sprouse
2007 “Rhetorical
Questions as Questions.” In Proceedings of Sinn und
Bedeutung
11
, ed. by Louise McNally, and Estela Puig-Waldmüller, 121–133. Barcelona: Universitat
Pompeu Fabra.
Cerović, Marijana
2016 “When
Suspects Ask Questions: Rhetorical Questions as a Challenging Device.” Journal of
Pragmatics 105: 18–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.09.010
Clark, Herbert
H.
1996 Using
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620539
Clift, Rebecca
1999 “Irony
in Conversation.” Language in
Society 28 (4): 523–553. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599004029
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margret Selting
2018 Interactional
Linguistics: Studying Language in Social
Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139507318
Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia
2005 C-ORAL-ROM.
Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Studies in Corpus
Linguistics. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.15
Culpeper, Jonathan
1996 “Towards
an Anatomy of Impoliteness.” Journal of
Pragmatics 25 (3): 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3
Drew, Paul
2012 “What
Drives Sequences?” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 45 (1): 61–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2012.646688
Egg, Markus
2007 “Meaning
and Use of Rhetorical Questions.” In Proceedings of the 16th
Amsterdam
Colloquium (1): 73–78. Institute
for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam.
Ehmer, Oliver, and Malte Rosemeyer
2018 “When
‘Questions’ Are Not Questions. Inferences and Conventionalization in Spanish But-Prefaced Partial
Interrogatives.” Open
Linguistics 4: 70–100. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0005
Enfield, Nicholas
J., Penelope Brown, and Jan De Ruiter
2012 “Epistemic
Dimensions of Polar Questions: Sentence-Final Particles in Comparative
Perspective.” In Questions, ed.
by Jan
De Ruiter, 193–221. West
Nyack: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139045414.014
Enghels, Renata
2018 “On
the Grammaticalization of the Deverbal Epistemic Pragmatic Marker sabes: A Study in Recent Language
Change.” Revue roumaine de linguistique [Romanian review of
linguistics] 63: 341–360.
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria
2010 “Futuro
y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística
Hispánica 26: 9–34.
2014 “Evidential
Futures: The Case of Spanish.” In Future Tense vs. Future Time: An
Introduction, ed. by Philippe
De Brabanter, Mikhail Kissine, and Saghie Sharifzadeh, 219–246. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679157.003.0010
2018 “Evidential
Commitment and Feature Mismatch in Spanish estar Constructions.” Journal of
Pragmatics 128: 102–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.10.004
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti
2021 “Spanish
‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels
and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198871217.003.0009
Evans, Nicholas, Henrik Bergqvist, and Lila
San Roque
2018 “The
Grammar of Engagement I: Framework and Initial
Exemplification.” Language and
Cognition 10: 110–140. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2017.21
Fillmore, Charles
J.
1996 “The Pragmatics of
Constructions.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and
Language, ed. by Dan Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, and Guo Jiansheng. New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fleischman, Suzanne
1982 The
Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from
Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Garassino, Davide
2022 “A
Contrastive Perspective on French and Italian Wh-in situ Questions. A Discourse-Pragmatic
Approach.” Functions of
Language 29: 25–57. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.00037.gar
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo
2008 “Topicalization
and Preverbal Subjects in Spanish Wh-Interrogatives.” In Selected
Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Joyce Bruhn
de Garavito, and Elena Valenzuela, 225–236. Somerville: Cascadilla.
Haugh, Michael
2010 “Jocular
Mockery, (Dis)affiliation, and Face.” Journal of
Pragmatics 42 (8): 2106–2119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.018
Hayano, Kaoru
2013 “Question
Design in Conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation
Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 395–414. Malden: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch19
Heritage, John
1984 “A
Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential
Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation
Analysis, ed. by J.
Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
2009 “Questioning
in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in
Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New
York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306897.003.0003
Heritage, John, and Steven Clayman
2010 Talk
in Action. Interactions, Identities, and
Institutions. Malden: Wiley
Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444318135
Jiménez-Fernández, Ángel
L., and Mercedes Tubino-Blanco
2023 “Inferential
Interrogatives with qué in
Spanish.” Languages 8 (4): 282. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040282
Jørgensen, Annette
Myre, and Esperanza
Eguía Padilla
Koshik, Irene
2003 “
Wh-Questions
Used as Challenges.” Discourse
Studies 5: 51–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456030050010301
Kotthoff, Helga
2009 “Joint
Construction of Humorous Fictions in Conversation. An Unnamed Narrative Activity in a Playful
Keying.” Journal of Literary
Theory 3 (3): 195–217. https://doi.org/10.1515/JLT.2009.012
Ledgeway, Adam, and Martin Maiden
2016 The
Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199677108.001.0001
Linell, Per
2009a “Constructions
in Dialogue.” In Contexts and
Constructions, ed. by Alexander Bergs, and Gabriele Diewald, 97–110. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.9.05lin
2009b Rethinking
Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human
Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age
Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-60752-198-3
Marcos
Marín, Francisco
2017 Corpus
oral de referencia de la lengua española contemporánea. Available online at http://www.lllf.uam.es/ESP/Info%20Corlec.html. Last access 20/01/2017.
Marín
Arrese, Juana
2017 “Multifunctionality
of Evidential Expressions in Discourse Domains and Genres: Evidence from Cross-Linguistic Case
Studies.” In Evidentiality Revisited. Cognitive Grammar, Functional
and Discourse-Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Juana
Marín Arrese, Gerda Haßler, and Marta Carretero, 195–224. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.271.09mar
Matos
Amaral, Patrícia, and Scott
A. Schwenter
2003 “Contrast
and the (Non-)Occurrence of Subject Pronouns.” In Selected Proceedings
of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 116–127. Somerville: Cascadilla.
Matte
Bon, Francisco, and Ma del
Pilar
Hernández Mercedes
2007 “Las
maneras de hablar del futuro en español: Del sistema codificado a las interpretaciones
contextuales.” MarcoELE: Revista de
Didáctica 5: 1–24.
Mithun, Marianne
2016 “How
Fascinating! Insubordinate
Exclamations.” In Insubordination, ed.
by Nicholas Evans, and Honoré Watanabe, 367–392. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.115.14mit
Montes, Rosa
Graciela
1999 “The Development of
Discourse Markers in Spanish: Interjections.” Journal of
Pragmatics 31 (10): 1289–1319. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00106-4
Myers, Lindsy
Lee
2007 “WH-Interrogatives in Spoken
French: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Their Form and Function.” PhD
thesis. University of Texas at Austin.
Nuyts, Jan
2001 Epistemic
Modality, Language, and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-Pragmatic
Perspective. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.5
Olbertz, Hella
1998 Verbal
Periphrases in a Functional Grammar of
Spanish. Berlin: De
Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110820881
Orozco, Rafael
2005 “Distribution
of Future Time Forms in Northern Colombian Spanish.” In Selected
Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 56–65. Somerville: Cascadilla
Proceedings Project.
Palmer, Frank
Robert
2001 Mood and
Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139167178
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing
and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn
Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation
Analysis, ed. by J.
Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage
2012 “Preference.” In The
Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch11
Primerano, Antoine, and Miriam Bouzouita
2024 “La
gramaticalización de los futuros y condicionales en el navarroaragonés de los siglos XIII y XIV : Una comparación con el
castellano medieval.” In Revue
Romane 59: 143–184. https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.21015.pri
RAE/ASALE
2009 Nueva Gramática de la
Lengua
Española. Madrid: Espasa.
Reig
Alamilio, Asela
2019 “Las
interrogativas hipotéticas con qué invariable en español: Un tipo de interrogativas parciales
marcadas.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone
Linguistics 12 (1): 155–178. https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2019-2004
Reinhardt, Janina
2019 “Regularity
and Variation in French Direct Interrogatives: The Morphosyntax and Intonation of Question Forms in Reality TV Shows, Audio
Books and Teaching Materials.” PhD thesis. University of
Konstanz. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-y00meiao8m342
Rivero, María
Luisa
2014 “Spanish Inferential and
Mirative Futures and Conditionals: An Evidential Gradable Modal Proposal.” Lingua:
International Review of General
Linguistics 151 (B): 197–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.04.009
Rodríguez
Rosique, Susana
2019 El
futuro en español. Tiempo, conocimiento,
interacción. Bern: Peter
Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b15234
Rosemeyer, Malte
2018 “The
Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia
Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2018-0007
2019 “Brazilian
Portuguese in-situ Wh-Interrogatives between Rhetoric and
Change.” Glossa 4(1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.900
Rosemeyer, Malte, and María
Sol Sansiñena
2022 “How
Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future
Constructions.” Functions of
Language 29 (1): 116–141. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.00040.ros
Selting, Margret, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
eds. 2001 Studies
in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.10
Squartini, Mario
2001 “The
Internal Structure of Evidentiality in Romance.” Studies in
Language 25 (2): 297–334. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.25.2.05squ
2004 “Disentangling
Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality in
Romance.” Lingua 114 (7): 873–895. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(03)00064-0
Stalnaker, Robert
1973 “Presuppositions.” Journal
of Philosophical Logic 2: 447–457. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00262951
2002 “Common
Ground.” Linguistics and
Philosophy 25: 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020867916902
Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano
2010 “Mobilizing
Response.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 43 (1): 3–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351810903471258
Waltereit, Richard
2018 “Inferencing,
Reanalysis, and the History of the French est-ce que Question.” Open
Linguistics 4: 56–69. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0004