A constructional analysis of gerund cursive periphrastic structures in Galician and Portuguese: a comparative study

This article intends to analyze, in a given time frame (20th and 21st centuries), the periphrastic constructions of gerund that are markers of the imperfective cursive aspect in Galician, specifically those formed by the auxiliaries estar and ficar. The aim of this study is to compare the initial results found for the behavior of these constructions in Galician with those already attested in Portuguese regarding the same phenomenon. The work follows the orientation of the usage-based models and of the constructionalization and constructional change approach of Traugott & Trousdale (2013). The analysis is comparative. The method used was the collection of data in two contemporary Galician text banks and the analysis of these data regarding analytical factors that characterized the context of occurrence of these constructions, namely: semantic type of the main verb (V2), subject animacy and presence of intervening material between the elements of the periphrase (Auxiliary (V1) and main verb(V2)). The results point to a very similar profile of use of the constructions [estar + X-ndo] cursive and [ficar + X-ndo] cursive in the two languages under analysis, thus confirming the hypothesis suggested for the phenomenon in Portuguese in Oliveira (2018) that the construction formed by estar is more advanced in the process of constructional change than the construction formed by ficar. In addition, from this comparative study, it was also possible to trace some particularities of these two languages related to the study developed.