Habría dado vs. hubiera dado en la apódosis de las oraciones condicionales irreales a comienzos del siglo XIX

Abstract

In this article one analyzes the fight between habría dado and hubiera dado due tothe primacy of the expression having a DEDISSEM value (apodosis of the past unreal) in thefirst half of the 19th century. In order to do this, we analyzed the documents of that time as collectedin CORDE (which provided us with a large quantity of examples) both those publishedin Spain, as well as those that appeared in Latin American countries. Thus, we attempt to verifyif there are differences at this time between the use in Spain and in Latin America. We havepaid special attention to the preferences of the different authors and also to see if, as happens atother moments in history, the preferences have some external conditioning. Part of this analysisis also focused on distinguishing the conditional sequence that appears in the two verbal formsso as to see if there are differences and if these differences come from some type of pattern.The most important conclusions that can be deduced from this analysis are, on the one hand,the prominent increase of the use of the form habría dado—even though the predominant formfor this use is still hubiera dado—and the increase in the sequences in which it appears; and onthe other, the fact that there are authors who favor this verb form by setting aside hubiera dado.