Abstract

While it is know that there are differences in the expression of aspect in Mapudungun and Spanish, given the agglutinating and polysynthetic nature of first language and synthetic and flexive tendency of second language, the verbal system of Spanish spoken by bilingual Mapudungun/Spanish has been little explored. The aim of this research is to describe the expression of estar + gerund in Spanish spoken by bilingual Mapudungun/ Spanish and compare it with the one produced by monolingual Spanish. From a sixty -minute interview applied to 50 speakers (30 bilingual Mapudungun/Spanish and 20 monolingual Spanish), the frequency of appearance of estar + gerund was analysed and the interpretations that it adopted in the case of bilingual. Results show a high frequency of use of periphrastic constructions in general and specifically of estar + gerund in bilingual. Also, it is observed that aspectual values of this periphrases has interpretations that are not present in monolingual Spanish. We claim this interpretations are selective copying or semantic transferences of aspectual markers from Mapudungun to Spanish, being reflected in periphrastic uses. Estar + gerund in Spanish contact seems to operate as a resource that allows to express aspectual meaning encodes in Mapudungun.