Re: Portuguese tense/aspect system


"António Marques" <m.ap@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4245573b$0$7735$a729d347@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Neeraj Mathur wrote:
> >
> > Doesn't Portuguese have a tense/aspect system that differs widely from
> > Spanish, Classical French, and most Italian?
>
> Since neither Ruud nor Miguel seem to say much about it, I'll have to
> barge in. Yes, portuguese (and galician) works much more like enghlish
> than like the three of them. Compare:
[snip examples; a few transplanted to below]

Thanks.

I just dug out the notes from this lecture series I attended a long while
back; maybe they'll be repeated some time in the future, because I'm quite
certain that I would gain much more from them now than I did then!

Anyway, the point that Smith was trying to talk about was a slightly
different one from what I wrote above. He was using an analysis of tense
based on Hornstein, where the speech-act (S) and the event (E) have no
direct relationship with each other, but both have a relationship with the
reference point (R). (So instead of saying that the difference between a
present perfect and a preterite is that the first is E-SR while the second
is ER-S, he says that the first is (E-R)(S,R) and the second is (E,R)(R-S),
if you see what I mean.)

He was then talking about the morphological structure of the various tenses,
using a Coseriu-type analysis. It seems that for Classical French and
Standard Italian, you get a consistent pattern where, if E and R are
coincident, the tense has a simple structure and if they are not, the tense
is compound or formed with periphrasis; in Spanish the pattern also seems to
apply, with one possible exception, but in Portuguese the pattern doesn't
work as well.

The exception in Spanish is the 'simple pluperfect' (hiciera), which tense
is described as being (E-R)(R-S) and should therefore have a compound
structure. This does seem to appear, as in 'había hecho'; he has given
'hiciera' in brackets but I can't seem to work out why (the only note I've
got jotted there says 'backgrounding past'). In his analysis there is no
distinction between hiciera and había hecho in either tense or aspect.

In Portuguese there appear to be two exceptions. The first is equivalent to
the Spanish one, the simple pluperfect 'fizera' occupying the same position
as 'tinha feito'. The second exception I don't fully understand at this
point - the handout doesn't say very much and my notes don't indicate that
he talked much about it - but it seems to involve 'fiz' and 'tenho feito'.
He has 'fiz' in the same box as 'hai feito' which he has crossed out, and
'tenho feito' which he has put in brackets. As I read his handout, he seems
to be suggesting that 'fiz' is used exclusively for the tense (E,R)(R-S) in
the perfective aspect, but that it can also be used for (E-R)(R,S) as well;
for this latter, 'tenho feito' also an option (but less common?) standing
for an older form 'hai feito' (but that even in this older stage, 'fiz' was
possible for this tense as well).

To put it another way, Portuguese has developed the Latin perfectum in a
very different way. He provides the following schema for the (VERY long
term!) diachronic changes in Romance:

1) perfect aorist
\ /
2) perfectum
/ \
3) pres. perf. preterite
\ /
4) compound past

Here, stage 1 would be the Indo-European stage; stage 2 would be Latin,
stage 3 would be Spanish, Classical French, and Standard Italian, and stage
4 would be the stage of Modern French, Romanian, and various northern
Italian dialects.

Essentially, he is claiming on this handout that Portuguese, together with
Calabrian and Sicilian, is still at Stage 2 with Latin, or is just about to
break out into stage 3.

Now, you gave the following examples of Portugese tense usage:

>I did: fiz
>
>I have done: fiz [...time adverb]
>
>I have done (frequentative, contrived): tenho feito
>
>I used to do: fazia [...time adverb]

According to this, it seems that you are generally happy to agree that 'fiz'
and 'fazia' are used to differentiate aspect in the tense (E,R)(R-S); I'm a
bit less clear on what you're saying about the distinction between 'fiz' and
'tenho feito'. Is it used consistently for (E-R)(R,S), contrasting with
'fiz' in the same way that eg. 'he hecho' and 'hice' do in Spanish? Or are
you saying that its disctinction is aspectual? If so, how does it differ
from 'fazia'? I have the feeling the lecturer (John Charles Smith) may have
suggested that 'tenho feito' and 'hai feito' were essentially invented as
artificial literary constructs in an attempt to mimic Spanish (or maybe it
was something completely different that he said - I don't have much written
here) - is that true?

The problem is quite intriguing; he didn't talk about it that much because
the focus was on the method by which the periphrastic tenses came into being
in those languages that use them. I wish I'd paid more attention (and not
stopped going halfway through term); it was the first term in my first year
and I only went to them because I was interested in linguistics. I've done a
lot more study now of linguistics in general (historical in particular) and
would be able to get much more out of it if he were to repeat them!

Neeraj Mathur


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Portuguese tense/aspect system
    ... > 'Tenho feito' is the same as fiz only it seems to imply repeated ... 'fiz' is purely aspectual, rather than tense. ... Portuguese you would translate the second verb with an imperfect but the ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Portuguese tense/aspect system
    ... equivalent to the Spanish one, the simple pluperfect 'fizera' occupying the same position as 'tinha feito'. ... The second exception I don't fully understand at this point - the handout doesn't say very much and my notes don't indicate that he talked much about it - but it seems to involve 'fiz' and 'tenho feito'. ... would be the Portuguese form corresponding to Spanish "he hecho", except that Portuguese doesn't use auxiliary 'haver' where Spanish uses haber, but 'ter' instead. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Languages in Europe - Who understands what ?
    ... > because it isn't) is very different from the cognate tense in GErmasn ... > and Dutch, and closer to that of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. ... South Germany uses the perfect tense in a way that differs ...
    (sci.lang)
  • We need Language Exchange Partners, we can teach you Portuguese
    ... We can teach you Portuguese in exchange. ... Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish ... Im 30 years old im from madeira island i dlike to learn many languages ... German ...
    (soc.culture.brazil)
  • Re: Its on...
    ... The car parks had mostly spanish cars/bikes. ... Brno was added back in 1987 after having been on the calendar until a decade earlier, and had huge attendance in the iron curtain days, and mostly from East Germany; today it and the Sachsenring are the only races in that part of Europe. ... The GP history of the Portuguese GP consists of races run in 87-88, and those races took place at Jarama and Jerez, in Spain. ... With a heavy European focus, and inevitably European favoritism and European biases? ...
    (rec.motorcycles.racing)