Era uma vez... the Imperfect in Contemporary European Portuguese

Abstract

In the studies on tenses in Contemporary European Portuguese, the temporal and aspectual properties that characterize the different linguistic sequences, marked with the imperfeito, are interrelated. For this reason, the study of the imperfect – strictly considering temporal and aspectual values – requires the activation of a set of supports that are important for understanding their different values.

According to the theoretical proposals, such as those integrated into an enunciative perspective, the imperfeito is characterized by allowing the intersection of different enunciative plans. These plans are inter-related by temporal and/or aspectual adverbials that “connect” them, allowing for the interpretation of the different sequences. Thus, if we have a sequence like “Joana used to sing” it only becomes an utterance (validated as such) if a temporal adverbial, or an aspectual adverbial with iterative value, co-occurs with that sequence.

Because there are other verbal forms available in Portuguese to mark anteriority and [-perfectivity], this paper aims at describing some values that are exhibited by the imperfeito, relating it with the simple past perfect from a temporal point of view. On the other hand, the imperfeito relates with the present or with the compound perfect tense, because it can also correspond to an iterative and non-perfective meaning.