Linguistic Characterization of San Pedro Catalan: Distributional Patterns of Perfet Perifràstic and Perfet Compost

This chapter presents a linguistic characterization of San Pedro Majorcan Catalan. This is approached from various—yet ultimately complementary—spheres, namely phonology, morphology, and pragmatics. San Pedro Majorcan Catalan provides evidence for certain linguistic innovations distinguishing it from the variety spoken in modern Majorca. The variety under study presents a number of archaic phonological instances, morphosyntactic constructions, and lexical items, when compared to the speech of modern-day Majorcans. In this respect, it is important to keep in mind that either of these varieties is in contact with a different Spanish dialect (i.e., Argentinian Spanish and European Spanish, respectively), configuring a sociolinguistic setting where fascinating contrasts arise. As a case study, distributional patterns in Catalan past tenses perfet perifràstic and perfet compost from Task 3 are analyzed and contrasted across varieties. Overall results show that, whereas the standard Majorcan Catalan uses of perfet perifràstic and perfet compost tend to be largely monolithic, the speech of San Pedroans demonstrates ample variation, presumably due to the influence of Argentinian Spanish.