A composicionalidade aspetual da perífrase verbal andar a + inf

The Portuguese language possesses various means of expressing verbal aspect, among which a significant place is occupied by verbal periphrases. Due to the fact that the issue discussed is characterized by a high degree of complexity, we have decided that the range of our considerations should be limited. We have chosen the construction andar a + inf, which represents a group of aspectual verbal periphrases and constitutes a considerable form in creating the verbal category of aspect. The main aim of the research is an attempt to evaluate the impact of mutual dependencies between various elements in a sentence (verb andar a, verbal predicate type, adverbial constructions and other factors) on creating various aspectual values, expressed by the analyzed verbal periphrasis. For this purpose, we use the corpus which consists of the examples presenting authenticlanguage material and coming from literary texts. Some of the examples have been created by us and, subsequently, consulted with native speakers of the Portuguese language.