Concluded event reading of ir + gerund periphrasis in Rioplatense Spanish

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze a peculiar use of the periphrasis ir + gerund, which we refer to as concluded event reading, attested in Rioplatense Spanish, which differs from the canonical ir + gerund in that it appears to express a situation where the event denoted by the predicate is presented as complete (e.g., De todo lo que ten.a para leer, Ana iba leyendo tres libros el miércoles ‘Out of everything she had to read, Ana was reading three books on Wednesday’ →leyó tres libros ‘She read three books’). Through a series of tests, we demonstrate that this construction constitutes a progressive structure (unlike the canonical form, which conveys a durative structure). Specifically, we argue that it describes a situation in which, at a specific point in time (the reference time), certain events have already taken place, while other potential events are expected to occur. Thus, the effect of perfectivity arises from the temporal anchoring of the progressive structure: the events denoted by the predicate are anterior to the reference time. The prospective interpretation, in turn, is pragmatically derived from a scalar implicature.