Sistemul temporal şi aspectual al limbii Române în contextul Romanic
The Temporal and Aspectual System of Romanian in the Context of Romance Languages

Summary/Abstract: In this study, my main concern is to analyse the verbal system of Romanian from the point of view of language genealogy, on one hand, and from that of language contact, on the other. It is true that there are some quite important differences between the Romanian system and the tense and aspect structures in other Romance languages. The main differences are undoubtedly the absence of a symmetrical series of simple and compound tenses (the Present Perfect being the only exception in Romanian) and the lack of verbal periphrases formed with motion verbs. However, if we study carefully all Romance systems we can observe similarities and common latent tendencies which have evolved differently in Romanian due to the influence of the surrounding languages and to the lack of geographical continuity with other Romance languages. For instance, the future auxiliary a vrea «to want» exists also in French and Italian, albeit on an idiomatic level, il veut pleuvoir; vuol piovere. Similarly, the finite complementation can be found in Portuguese and in various Italian dialects. The syntax of the auxiliary a avea «to have» is very similar to that of Spanish, *he a menudo visto buenas películas pro he visto a menudo buenas películas „I have often seen good films” functions exactly like in Romanian, *am adesea văzut filme bune pro am văzut adesea vilme bune but unlike in French, J’ai souvent vu de bons films, perfectly grmmatical. One of the peculiarities of the Romanian system is the fact that meny verbs documented in older texts have disappeared or at least are no used any more in colloquial language. This systemic simplification has been compensated by the emergence of invariable aspectual elements like fi, o, tot, mai etc.

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