A corpus-based study of aspect: still and already + verb phrase constructions into Spanish

Abstract

This paper explores still and already + verb phrase constructions, their semantics, and the resources Spanish uses to convey their meanings. The aim is to explore some of the ways in which the grammars of the two languages, English and Spanish, encode aspectual transitions. The contrastive procedure is based on the parallel corpus P-ACTRES, and combines qualitative and quantitative corpus analysis: the English→Spanish equivalences are qualitatively identified and their relevance is assessed quantitatively. The similarities and differences are analyzed and used as a basis to formulate some empirically-grounded (although necessarily partial) considerations on cross-linguistic lexis-grammar relations. The results also raise questions about contrast and grammaticalization across the languages.