The Regression of the Future Subjunctive in Spain and Latin America

Abstract

As the last word has not yet been told about the chronological evolution of the future subjunctive, we consider it appropriate to dedicate a separate section to the process of regression that the forms in –re suffer throughout its historical development. The objective is –as it will be drafted in the present study– to examine the syntactic contexts in which the verbal form amare still must or may occur in the moments of decline that at the same time must be nuanced insomuch as it occurs at a different pace with regard to Peninsular and Latin American Spanish. In Peninsular Spanish it was notoriously produced already from the 16–17th centuries, nevertheless, certain varieties of Latin American Spanish, due to the different stages of the Spanish colonization, kept the vitality of this verbal tense until the middle of the 19th century.