Abstract
This study aims to provide a survey of periphrastic aspectual constructions (imminent ingressivity) in contemporary European Portuguese. The research was initially conducted on periphrastic constructions in the two main Portuguese corpuses, the CETEMPúblico and the Corpus do Português, and was then followed by a semantic analysis.
In Portuguese, the category of the nature of verbal action employs specific means that can be separated from morphological means rendering aspect. Periphrastic constructions are the most frequent expressive means.
The author here understands periphrastic constructions as being combinations of a verb and a nonfinite verb form. Periphrasic constructions are divided according to their aspectual meaning into three basic groups: ingressive periphrases (including sub-groups rendering imminent, dispositive, initial, and inceptive meaning); durative and terminative periphrases.