Re: CHAT: I need help with the concept "New World Spanish"
| From: | Santiago <sanctifeld@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 2, 2002, 4:43 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Mills <romilly@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 3:47 AM
Subject: Re: CHAT: I need help with the concept "New World Spanish"
> Josh Roth wrote:
>
>
> >In a message dated 8/31/02 11:51:40 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:
>
>
>
> Interesting question for your friend, or Pablo Flores if he's reading
this--
> do vos forms occur in other tenses? (I think I've hear pres. subj. amés,
> comás etc; but how about the imperfect, the preterit, the future, the 2
past
> subjunctives etc.???)
>
I'm Argentinian, too
The pronoun vos is present throughout the conjugation of verbs, in all
tenses and moods... but what is not always present is the corresponding
verbal form... sometimes we use vos plus the verb form of tú... The future
imperfect 'vos comerás' should be 'vos comerés' following the vosotros form
'comeréis'... but, actually, this tense is hardly ever used; we express
future by means of the periphrasis (periphrase?) 'vos vas a comer' (almost
identical to English 'you're going to eat')...
But there's something interesting about the present subjunctive form (vos
comás): we use both 'vos comas' and 'vos comás' (ie either stressed on one
or the other syllable)... and there is a subtle difference between them. To
my ears, vos comás sounds more rude, or sometimes more intimate, even slang,
than vos comas, which sounds more neutral. If a burglar gets into a house
and wants to threaten the owners aiming at them with a gun, he'll choose the
more threatening 'no te movás' (don't move), rather than the inocuous 'no te
muevas'... At the same time, when someone is plunged into an emotional state
(maybe joy or desperation) his / her speech is likely to have subjunctives
vos + vos forms (no te vayás / don´t go) instead of vos + tú forms (no te
vayas)...
oops, I've been talking about the imperative.. well, indeed, it's the
subjunctive form used for negative imperatives, but the above described
functions also with real subjunctives...
Santiago Feldman