Spanish

There are several options for expressing continuative aspect in Modern Spanish, including motion verbs in construction with a gerund, and temporal adverbials, as seen in (1). (1) Si esta señorita-repuso la Bruja mirando a Enriqueta- no sigue despreciando mis consejos, puede aún salvar su honor y evitar su desgracia. (CORDE, La Bruja, 1850) ‘If this Young lady –replied the Witch looking at Enriqueta – does not keep ignoring my advice, she can still save her honour and avoid her disgrace.’ While the development of Spanish progressive constructions estar + GER and andar + GER has enjoyed some attention among variationists (Torres Cacoullos 2000, 2001), the development of the continuative constructions seguir ‘follow ’ + GER and continuar ‘continue’+ GER, in variation with temporal adverbials such as todavía ‘still ’ and aún ‘still ’ with an unmarked Present, has yet to be addressed at length,quantitatively or otherwise. Using diachronic data from the Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) and Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), this study examines variation patterns among thes