Observaţii asupra categoriei verbale a aspectului în construcţia discursului indirect
Notes on the Verbal Category of Aspect in the Construction of Indirect Speech

Summary/Abstract: Our paper analyzes the way verbal aspect is involved in the changes of verbal forms in the transformation of direct into indirect speech. Latin sequence of tenses consisted of a set of rules that restricted the selection of verbal forms in a subordinate clause. Generally, Western Romance languages have inherited the same restrictions, while they are almost absent in Romanian. In our analysis we will prove that these rules have a logical pattern in Romance, as each form has to be replaced by another, according to three rules: conservation of the mood (or use of a compatible one), conservation of the aspect (perfect is replaced by perfect, imperfect by imperfect) and shifting one step backwards on the temporal axis (from future to present, from present to past, from past to an anterior past, etc.). The novelty of this paper consists in the logical explanation of such substitutions (e. g. why the future of the indicative is replaced by the present of the conditional in Western Romance), based on the aspectual behavior of verbal forms.

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