The aspectual value of particle verbs in Romansh

Particle verbs or phrasal verbs, i.e., combinations of a preposition-like element and a verb, are common among the languages of Europe and best known from Germanic, but their systematic aspectual use in Romansh, a minority Romance language of Southeastern Switzerland, has gone largely unrecognized i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Hotz, Rolf|||0009-0005-4954-2614, Julmi, Nora
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2026
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:uabarcelona_::2f35f600c9c1ac2dd15e00963fbd18cc
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/327297
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.629
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Romansh
Aspect
Aktionsart
Particle verbs
Phrasal verbs
Syntactic convergence
Descripción
Sumario:Particle verbs or phrasal verbs, i.e., combinations of a preposition-like element and a verb, are common among the languages of Europe and best known from Germanic, but their systematic aspectual use in Romansh, a minority Romance language of Southeastern Switzerland, has gone largely unrecognized in the literature. Drawing on corpus and elicited data, this paper proposes an analysis of the aspectual value of particle verbs in Romansh marking telic, resultative, durative, and ingressive readings. This investigation frames the aspectual value of particle verbs as a case of syntactic convergence through intense language contact and bilingualism: although the particle verb construction in Romansh has a clear origin in Latin and some equivalent forms are found in neighboring Romance languages, its robust aspectual system in the modern language is typologically uncommon within the Romance family and strongly mirrors that of neighboring Germanic languages. These findings contribute to understanding how aspectual systems may evolve through contact and shed light on the areal dynamics underlying the emergence of particle verbs in the Alpine region.