Chapter 17. Auxiliary reduction in secondary grammaticalization

At the center of grammaticalization studies has been an effort to understand the interplay between form and function throughout the development of a construction. A recent analysis by Dehé & Stathi (2016) has made the case that desemanticization (semantic reduction) and erosion (phonetic reduction) occur in parallel and that different phonetic patterns can be associated with different degrees of grammaticalization. This paper approaches Dehé and Stathi’s proposal by means of the periphrastic past (PP) in Spanish, a form that shows considerable variation across dialects and has been shown to display various degrees of grammaticalization (Howe 2013). Focusing specifically on the PP’s use in sequenced past narratives in Peninsular Spanish, this analysis observes the behavior of the haber auxiliary and finds evidence for increased reduction/omission in these innovative narrative contexts. The patterns of reduction shown in this analysis are consistent with the claim made by Dehé and Stathi regarding the association of specific reductive processes with more advanced stages of grammaticalization. These data reveal a coevolution of form and meaning with the PP not yet discussed in the literature, one that has broader implications for the study of periphrastic past forms in Romance.