Tempi verbali e perifrasi gerundivali in un corpus di italiano letterario (1800-2000)

The Italian gerundial structures have undergone opposite developments in the last century. The continuous periphrasis [andare or venire + gerund] was more frequent at the end of the 1800s, whereas the progressive structure [stare + gerund] increased sharply during the 1900s. Furthermore, some of its syntactic constraints have weakened and today it can include a broader range of verb tenses and actional values. Based on previous research, both qualitative and quantitative, this study analyses a corpus including novels written by Italian authors and translations from foreign languages into Italian dating from 1811-1896 and 1976-2005. In addition to the overall figures, which confirm the dominant role of the continuous periphrases in literary language at the end of the 1900s, data suggest that translators anticipated the development of the gerundial periphrases in Italian in terms of the selection of auxiliary verbs and verb tenses.