On the Verbal Periphrases of Gerundio in La Rambla paralela by Fernando Vallejo

Abstract

The article deals with the verbal periphrases with gerunds and highlights their role in the specific style of the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo in one of his autobiographical novels, La Rambla paralela. The introductory part of the study presents the narrative structure of the novel and its recurrent themes, such as the passage of time, as the present and past merge into a future that leads to death. The title of the work is meaningful and hints at a parallel along which the protagonist moves between life and death, between his present and past, between Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, and Medellín, the capital of the Colombian Department of Antioquia.

The second part of the paper analyses some aspectual verb periphrases with gerunds. The auxiliary verbs are often verbs of movement, which, although they partially or completely lose their full lexical meaning, retain a touch of dynamism. The verb periphrasis ir + gerundio signals the gradual progression of actions and often occurs together with proverbial determinants for progressivity. The feeling of a slow course of action, conjured by the narrator with these verb periphrases with gerund, especially with ir + gerundio, triggers the creation of images captured in moments of slow progress and emphasizes the unstoppable passage of time as felt by human beings. La Rambla paralela (‘the parallel street’) manifests itself as a river of people in permanent flow, as the metaphor for the passage of time and life, but also as a recurrent movement of coming and going.