Perfecto simple y perfecto compuesto en los atlas lingüísticos españoles

Abstract

Throughout the following pages a description of the use of Simple Past and the Compound Past in Peninsular and Canary Islands Spanish from the Spanish linguistic atlases will be presented. The catalogue of these twentieth century traditional atlases gives us valuable information on areas that are not at all covered by current studies. It should also serve to understand the meaning of those previously mentioned tenses by around the middle of the past century. Section 1 will be dedicated to the description of the actual variation between those two tenses in Spanish and their geographical distribution in Peninsular and Canary Islands Spanish. We will face afterwards the special characteristics of the Spanish atlases and the nature of the linguistic information they contain. Finally, section 3 will face the analysis of the data from the atlases and the outlook they offer in relation to the current distribution of the different semantic features of Spanish Simple and Compound Pasts.