tense in Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish marks tense by suffix on the finite verb, and a finite verb is never tenseless. The three way core is canta for a time containing the moment of speaking, cantó and cantaba for a time preceding it, and cantará for a time following it, and the compound forms built on haber add a second reference point rather than a further distance, so había cantado places an event before a point that itself precedes the moment of speaking. The language grammaticalises no remoteness distinction of the kind the dimension allows: no form is reserved for the same day or for the distant past, and such readings are carried by adverbials such as recién and hace años. In ordinary speech the frame ir a plus an infinitive is commoner than the inflected future, and the inflected future carries an inferential reading about the present at least as readily as a temporal one. Because the two forms for preceding time also carry aspect, one suffix expresses both dimensions at once. The forms that lack agreement carry no tense, which is why the value is obligatory rather than pervasive.