Abstract
The verbal periphrasis venir de + infinitive (“have just + past participle”) is, no doubt, one of the most characteristic features of Modern French. Except for Occitan and occasionally Portuguese, it is found in no other Romance language1. Moreover Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese have acabar de + infinitive, whereas Romantsh., Italian and Rumanian do not possess any similar periphrasis. In these languages the standard translation of venir de + infinitive is a perfect tense determined by at least one adverb. The same conclusion holds for Germanic languages and Latin.
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© 1983 Communication and Cognition
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Dominicy, M. (1983). Time, Tense and Restriction. In: Tasmowski, L., Willems, D. (eds) Problems in Syntax. Studies in Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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