THE SPANISH VERBAL SYSTEM OF COSTA RICA IN THE DAWN OF THE INDEPENDENT ERA

The present article offers an introduction to the verbal system of Costa Rican Spanish during the decade immediately after the Independence (1821). In order to achieve this purpose, the weekly news Noticioso Universal has been used as a corpus, being this newspaper one of the first written texts in Costa Rica after the first press came to the country, in the 1830's. This work will focus on the opposition between past tense (cante) and perfect (he cantado), besides future tense. Further I would like to compare the data with other historical stages of Costa Rican Spanish, such as the Colonial times and the verbal system nowadays. Thus, I want to contribute to the knowledge of this grammatical part of Costa Rican Spanish during the 19th Century.