O aspecto sob a ótica da teoria gerativa

Abstract

This work demonstrates the syntactic representation of aspect in the form of a “syntactic tree” and presents several conclusions: Verbs in the perfective form are distributed in a balanced manner between telic and atelic verbs. Telic verbs tend to be more perfective, while atelic verbs tend to be more imperfective. Unaccusative and unergative verbs occur more frequently in atelic contexts. Unergative verbs are less common than unaccusative verbs. In Portuguese, it is not only the subject that tends to be explicit; the verb’s complement is also an essential element of the sentence. The presence of an adverb increases the likelihood of a sentence being telic by 70%. The type of adverb present in a sentence is more significant in defining its aspectual nature than the number of adverbs used. Sentences containing an unergative verb only become telic through the presence of an adverb. In a syntactic representation, there exists an aspect phrase that is independent of the tense phrase.