Auxiliary selection : syntactico-semantic interfaces in English and Romanian [articol]

Abstract

The present study presents the issue of auxiliary selection in English and Romanian, aiming to underline the specificities of the two languages, and contrast them in terms of differences and similarities as regards auxiliary selection. We analyse the restrictions in the selection of the progressive/imperfective and perfective aspects (that is, the auxiliaries have or be) with different semantic classes of verbs (states, processes, activities) in English, and the difference of selection for perfective and imperfective in Romanian by contrast with the English selection. Furthermore, the present paper also illustrates the differences in auxiliary passive selection between Romanian and English.