The Tense Aspect System of the Spanish Verb

69 Pages·1971·2.354 MB·English

by  Charles Rallides

THE TENSE ASPECT SYSTEM OF THE SPANISH VERB
JANUA LINGUARUM
STUDIA MEMORIAE
NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA
edenda curat
C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
SERIES PRACTICA
119
1971
MOUTON
THE NAGUE · PARIS
THE TENSE ASPECT SYSTEM
OF
THE SPANISH VERB
AS USED IN CULTIVATED
BOGOTÁ SPANISH
by
CHARLES RALLIDES
1971
MOUTON
THE HAGUE • PARIS
© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands.
Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague.
No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm,
or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-147933
Printed in Hungary
To
Frederick H. Jungemann
of
Columbia University

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION 9
1. Person 10
2. Number 11
3. Voice 11
4. Tense 11
5. Aspect 13
6. Mood 16
II. ANALYSIS 19
Past Time 24
(a) Non-sequential 24
1. 2 24
2. 7110 28
3. 3 31
4. 6211 34
5. 6S11 35
(b) Sequential 38
6. Ν 2 39
7. Ν 6211 40
8. Ν 7210 41
9. Ν 3, Ν β311 42
10. Ν 3, Ν 5, Ν 8212-ΝΖ21 44
11. Ν 3 51
12. Ν 6311 52
13. Ν 3 52
14. Ν 6311 53
15. Ν 6β11 54
Present Time 55
(a) Non-sequential 55
16. 1 55
8 TABLE OF CONTENTS
17. βΗΙ 57
(b) Sequential 57
18. Ν 1 57
19. Ν 1-NZ l1 58
20. Ν 6*11 58
Future Time 59
(a) Non-sequential 59
21. 4, 9112, 8112, 1 Β 59
22. 6411 62
(b) Sequential 62
23. Ν 4, Ν 8X,12, Ν" 9U2-NZ l1 62
24. Ν 6411 63
25. NZÄ 71l0 63
26. NZB 1 63
CONCLUSION 64
BIBLIOGRAPHY 65
I. INTRODUCTION
The verbal system we shall describe is the system employed by cultivated
speakers of Bogotá, Colombia, in their oral expression, which, as will be shown
below, does not coincide exactly with the written language.
In this work we shall describe the semantic structure of the grammaticalized
morphemes of the Spanish verb which carry no meaning other than time and
its aspects. We are not interested in aspect as it is related to the lexical meaning
of the verb, unless it modifies our system, i.e., a punctual or durative verb
becomes repeated in extension, while aperma nent verb becomes pure extension.
Furthermore, we shall not consider those morphemes which have not become
completely grammaticalized, i.e., viene cantando ('he is singing', lit. 'he comes
singing'), anda buscando ('he is searching for', lit. 'he walks searching for'),
and other verbs of motion and state used in this kind of construction. What
happens in this type of construction is that in addition to carrying the gram-
matical meanings of 'present, non-repeated, extended, indefinite',1 it also
carries the lexical meaning of the verb stem of the auxiliary. Another class of
verbal elements will be excluded from this study. We refer to those verbal
phrases which are verbally uninflected and always have a single meaning
related to a single form. Such forms are antes de entrar ('before entering'),
después de entrar ('after entering'), and al entrar ('upon entering'). In our ana-
lysis, we shall confine ourselves to those forms which do not always carry a
single meaning but are scattered throughout the system having different
meanings depending on where they appear in the system. Such a form would be
the signal 1, -o, which has the form 1, -o, and has a number of meanings,
BEI, NBREI, NZBFb, F (see Key to Table p. 23) for meanings.
According to our analysis, the term TENSE refers to forms whose content
is TIME, and ASPECT refers to forms whose content is THE SPEAKER'S POINT
OF VIEW. All forms of the verb are combinations of tense and aspect, with
the exception of those forms of the non-sequential future which contain only
the meaning 'future' (see Table pp. 22—23).
1 These meanings will be explained in detail in the body of this work.