THE RELEVANCE OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN QUASI-SYNONYMOUS GRAMMEMS OF “FOCALIZED” AND “DURATIVE” PROGRESSIVES IN THE SPANISH LANGUAGE

Alypova Svetlana Alekseevna

The article examines the progressive aspect in the modern Spanish language, expressed by gerundial periphrases, as well as the theory expressed in the works of P. M. Bertinetto and co-authors, about the division of progressive into “durative” and “focalized” subtypes. The purpose of the article is to analyze the relevance of such a dichotomy and the applicability of Bertinetto's theory to the current state of the Spanish language based on the Internet news corpus “Corpus del Español: NOW”. The study analyzed over 500 contexts. As a result of the research, it was revealed that there is a contradiction in the theory under consideration. An achievement verb, according to Bertinetto, can only be combined with a “focalized” progressive, at the same time, it is argued that gerundial periphrases with verbs of movement belong strictly to the “durative” subtype. However, in Spanish, unlike Italian, on the basis of which the theory was formulated, a large number of occurrences of achievement verbs in the gerundial periphrasis with the movement verb “ir” were found. Thus, based on the research carried out, we can only state the partial applicability of Bertinetto's classification to modern Spanish.

Keywords:“focalized” progressive, “durative” progressive, progressive in Spanish, gerundial periphrases in Spanish, corpus research.