A CORPUS ANALYSIS OF SOME USAGE DIFFERENCES AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

The Corpus del Español / Web Dialects was used to study usage differences among 21 Spanish-speaking countries. This included variation in verbal morphology: the use of -ra and - se forms of the past subjunctive (e.g. comiera~comiese ), and final -s on 2 nd person singular preterites (e.g. pusistes ). The appearance of habían with plural arguments (e.g. habían muchas riñas) , the use of the present perfect to express recent past events (e.g. Esta mañana lo hemos visto ), the use of present subjunctive in embedded clauses following matrix clauses with past tense subjunctive triggers (e.g. Quería que vengas y no viniste ), and rates of clitic climbing (e.g. Lo iban a ver~iban a verlo ) were also examined. Variation in nine vocabulary was also studied (e.g. elevador~ascensor ), gender variation in seven words (e.g. el~la margen ), and the use of ser or estar with consciente .