Interactions between the Semantic Aspect and the Verbal Aspect in French and Italian

Abstract

The study presented here seeks to highlight the interactions between the semantic and verbal aspect or "morphological" in French and Italian. Its starting point is constituted by the confusion existing in the Romance languages for the notion of aspect. In most cases, it concerns the opposition unaccomplished / accomplished that is manifested morphologically, with the presence of the auxiliary in compound forms, with very few references to the couple imperfective / perfective rooted in the meaning of the verb. Our analysis examines the interactions of the most significant and shows that the semantic aspect, although it is not a separate category in the Romance languages, helps to understand phenomena related to the verbal aspectuality.

Keywords

• Comparative linguistics of the Romance languages
• French linguistics
• Italian linguisitics
• semantics
• morphosyntax