Aspectualizers and their Complementation in English and Romanian

Abstract

Abstract Aspectualizers as verbs indicating phases in the development of events are typically divided into ingressive (denoting beginning), continuative (denoting continuation) and egressive (denoting ending). These verbs require specific complementation with the lexical verbs which are paired with the aspectualizers. Their analysis starts from the features of such complementation in English (subordinate non-finite infinitival and participial clauses) and compares them with the features of their Romanian translation equivalents. This corpus-based research (with the examples from modern British novels) focuses on the structural characteristics of the complementation in the two languages, lexical aspect of the verbs in the complementation (activities, states, accomplishments, achievements), as well as similarities and differences between the two languages in that respect.