Perífrasis verbales del español y rumano. Un estudio contrastivo (2011)

The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to carry out a contrastive study of the verbal periphrases (VP) of Spanish and Romanian, regarding the degree of grammaticalization, on the one hand, and the types of use restrictions, on the other. As regards the first aspect, it has been shown that the VP of Spanish have a higher degree of grammaticalization than Romanian PV. With respect to the second, we highlight that Romanian has more restrictions on the semantic type of the verb that can be combined or as to the mode and tense in which the auxiliary verb is conjugated.

First, we focus on the review of the concept of PV, the terminology and the formal and semantic properties of these biverbal constructions. We then proceed to the evaluation of the criteria typically used to identify a PV. We conclude with the validation of ten of the fifteen evaluated criteria. To this end, we argue that the validity of a criterion is not determined solely by the fact that it can not be successfully applied in a non-periphrastic construction, but also by the ability to reveal in the verbal complex one or more grammaticalization related properties.

Since the main semantics division is between aspectual and modal auxiliaries, in Chapters 3 and 4 we review the major classifications that have been made in the field of these semantic categories in order to establish our own aspectual and modal classification.

In Chapter 5 we describe in detail 44 constructions considered as periphrastic in Spanish based on previously validated criteria. The description contains the temporal and actional constraints and the capacity of the auxiliary to appear alongside other PV (recursion). Finally, we present the translation into Romanian.

In Chapter 6, prior to the conclusions, we analyze 24 of the Romanian VP, most of them equivalent to Spanish VP. We follow the same procedure as in the case of the Spanish PV, using the same criteria and highlighting all kinds of restrictions.

The work is accompanied by five appendices. The first contains the description of the lexicographic tool that enables the development of a dictionary of Spanish-Romanian VP, presented separately in electronic format. The second and the third appendix contain the compilations of VP in both languages, constructed from VP studies of a number of authors. Finally, appendices A and B, also presented in electronic form, contain the examples of corpora related to each of the Spanish and Romanian VP, respectively.