A contrastive study of the degree of grammaticalization of verbal periphrases in Catalan, Spanish and Romanian

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare verbal periphrases (VPs) between three Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan and Romanian) and establish the degree of grammaticalization of these linguistic elements in each language. From the analysis of the data, we can assert that the degree of grammaticalization shown by the auxiliaries of a periphrastic complex in Catalan and Spanish is higher than that shown in Romanian. To measure the degree of grammaticalization of auxiliaries, we applied seven syntactic tests related to the two main parameters associated with this process: decategorization and cohesion (Heine and Kuteva 2002, 2007). We also established the signs of grammaticalization that are more consolidated in each language, highlighting similarities and differences. On the other hand, Romanian is the language with the lowest number of VPs.