Seventh Heritage Language Research Institute

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Tense, Aspect and Mood in Chicago Spanish

Most studies on U.S. Spanish focus on the Southwest and the East Coast.  Although Chicago is the third largest Spanish-speaking city in the U.S. (with a Spanish-speaking population estimated at almost 30% of the city, or 1 million people), there is relatively little research on Spanish in this context. In recent years, Kim Potowski and I have been engaged in a study of Spanish in the Midwest. While currently we are witnessing the increasing heterogeneity of Latino populations across the nation, Chicago is a particularly interesting site as it is the only U.S. city where Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have been living in contact for several generations.  Our sociolinguistic study is based on an extensive Spanish language corpus of 125 hour-long oral interviews with first, second, and third generation bilingual Latinos in Chicago: 39 Mexicans, 40 Puerto Ricans, and 46 MexiRicans. 

In this presentation, I will introduce our Chicago Spanish project and focus on what the corpus tells us about the tense-aspect-mood system of Chicago Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and MexiRicans.  I will address the following issues: How has the Chicago Spanish verbal system changed across generations? Is simplification occurring? What internal and external factors might account for the observed changes? Is there a difference in the tense-aspect-mood systems of the Puerto Rican, Mexican, and MexiRican groups? I will also discuss how change in the verbal system of Chicago Spanish compares to change observed in Los Angeles Mexican Spanish (Silva-Corvalán 1994) and in New York Puerto Rican Spanish (Zentella 1997).