Gerund structures in Ecuadorian Spanish

In this chapter we study non-prototypical values of gerunds in Ecuadorian and Andean Spanish. Apart from the standard aspectual simultaneity reading, gerunds in Andean Spanish encode an anteriority reading that has been associated to contact with Quechua. The chapter focuses on this value and claims that there are two patterns of gerund verbal complexes that exhibit it: an embedding and a periphrastic one. We provide a syntactic analysis to account for both and we draw the connection between Ecuadorian gerunds and converbs in Quechua. Finally, we offer relevant diachronic evidence that the aspectual values of Andean gerunds are also attested in the history of Spanish, which supports our explanation in terms of contact-induced linguistic change.