Tense and Aspect in Oral Spanish Narrative: Context and Meaning

This quantitative and qualitative study of the distribution of tense and aspect in oral Spanish narrative shows that the meaning of certain verb forms is in part delimited by the narrative structural context in which they occur. The historical present/preterit alternation, an issue that has attracted recent controversy (Wolfson 1979, Schiffrin 1981) is examined, and the results show that the Spanish historical present functions as an internal evaluation mechanism.