On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 06:53:08 +0000, aap_br <
aap_br@...> wrote:
>> Castilian lost the agreement in the XVth century.
>
>The same happened to Portuguese (maybe by about the same time as
>Castilian).
>About the perfect tenses, they aren't so used nowadays in Portuguese
>as they are in Castilian / Italian / English. At least in Brazilian
>Portuguese, I mean.
There are two big differences between the Castilian and the Portuguese
composite perfect tenses. The first is that Portuguese uses the verb <ter>
(Cast. <tener>) instead of <haver> (Cast. <haber>). The second one is that
in Portuguese a form like <tenho escrito> denotes something like a repeated
action in the past which continues until the present, whereas in Castilian
it denotes a past action which has occurred within the "current time frame"
(e.g. hoy/este anõ he escrito vs. ayer/el año pasado escribí). As a
consequence, the periphrastic perfect is much more common in Castilian than
in Portuguese. But in most of Spanish America, one hears <hoy/este año
escribí>, and the form <he escrito> has largely fallen out of use.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...