Interlinguistic and Translemic Equivalence of Inchoative Verbal Periphrases. A Contrastive Analysis Spanish-Romanian

Abstract

This article investigates Spanish verbal periphrases and their Romanian equivalence based on a translation-oriented corpus. In addition to examining the resources employed by the Romanian language, the analysis aims to revisit the concept of ‘verbal periphrase’ and to identify the status of such constructions in contemporary Romanian. It is revealed that, from a semantic and morphosyntactic view, in Spanish, periphrastic constructions (auxiliary + main verb) function as predicates. Romanian, however, expresses the inchoative aspect using various lexico-semantic mechanisms, which syntactically form compound verbal predicates: aspectual-inchoative verb (a începe ‘begin’, a se apuca ‘begin’ etc.) + subordinate verb. Also, forms from the verbal paradigm (imperfect, future, subjunctive) may also be used. These partial equivalences lead to undertranslation due to the loss of aspectual, temporal and stylistic nuances.