Does the category of verbal aspect exist in the Spanish language?
The pertinence of the topic stems from the fact that there is no single point of view on the category of verbal aspect in the Spanish language among grammarians. The very existence of this category is often denied by scientists. The problems are caused by the confusion of grammatical concepts of tense and aspect of verbs, as well as by different interpretations of conveying aspectual meanings in Spanish. The purpose of this article is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the grammatical category of verbal aspect in Spanish, which can be useful both for translators and for teachers working with Spanish-speaking students. In this study, we consider concepts of well-known scientists, as well as the collective works by authors of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, regarding the category of verbal aspect.
In Spanish studies, the category of verbal aspect is debatable. The very existence of this category in Spanish is often questioned. The ramified system of tenses in Spanish, owing its origin to Latin, gives reason to assert that the category of tense is of paramount importance among the verbal categories of the Spanish language. However, a strong relationship between the category of tense and the verbal aspectual meanings in Spanish can be noted. The aspectual and temporal forms of the Spanish language are divided according to their morphological structure, temporal correlation, and aspectual characteristics. The categories of aspect and tense in grammarians’ studies have gone through three stages: the stage of “traditional grammar” in its classical period, the stage of traditional grammar immediately before the spread of structuralism, and the modern stage. At the last stage, there is a clear decrease in the value of temporality as a structuring element of the verbal system, and the category of aspect is becoming increasingly important; there are contemporary theories that considerably reduce the role of the category of tense. Three ways of conveying aspectual meanings in Spanish are described in the article: the lexical aspect (aspecto léxico), or the mode of action (modo de acción); the syntactic (aspecto sintáctico), or periphrastic aspect (aspecto perifrástico); the morphological aspect (aspecto morfológico). The following research methods are used in the article: theoretical analysis, synthesis, comparison, analysis of scientific and methodological literature on the grammatical category of verbal aspect in Spanish. As a result of our work, we conclude that the Spanish verbal system has ample opportunities to convey a wide variety of aspectual meanings, but at the same time it is considered in close connection with the category of tense and in some cases is not singled out by scientists into a separate grammatical category.
Korneeva, A.V. (2020). Does the category of verbal aspect exist in the Spanish language? Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, V.6 (4), 3-12, DOI: 10.18413/2313-8912-2020-6-4-0-1
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