'Clausal' temporal constructions

[Chad Howe]

Dear Typologists,

I’m working with a family of temporal constructions in Romance Languages 
that are used to indicate meanings similar to ‘ago’ and ‘since/for’ in 
English. For instance, the existential construction in French "il y a" 
‘there is/are’ and the verb "hacer" ‘to do/make’ can occur with a 
quantified temporal element to obtain either a punctual meaning (as in 1 
and 2) or a durative one (as in 3 and 4), depending largely on the 
modified verb. There are similar structures in other varieties of 
Romance. Moreover, these structures can also occur post-verbally (e.g., 
"Je me suis mariée il y a quatre ans" ‘I got married four years ago’), 
though the resulting meanings can be distinct.

French
(1) Il y a quatre ans (que) je me suis mariée.
Spanish
(2) Hace cuatro años (que) me casé.
‘It’s been four years since I got married.’ / ‘I got married four years 
ago.’

French
(3) Il y a quatre ans que j’ habite ici.
Spanish
(4) Hace cuatro años que vivo aquí.
‘It’s been four years that I have lived here.’ / ‘I have lived here for 
four years.’

These elements are typically treated as being composed of a finite verb 
(e.g., "a" from "avoir" in French and "hace" from "hacer" in Spanish) 
and a temporal complement. Despite what seems to be matrix clausal 
structure, however, many sources treat these elements as adjunctival. I 
would like to know more about similar ‘clausal’ structures in other 
languages—i.e. structures in which an analogous set of temporal meanings 
is obtained with an ostensibly verbal nucleus.

In a second and presumably related question, I’m also looking for 
information regarding verbs used cross-linguistically for addition. For 
instance, in English one can say “Two and two is/are four” or “Two and 
two make/makes four”. In Spanish, the verbs used for this type of 
calculation are similar “Dos y dos son [< "ser" 'to be'] cuatro”. I 
would certainly appreciate any suggestions regarding any type of 
literature on these structures.

Thanks in advance,
Chad Howe

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Lewis (Chad) Howe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics
University of Georgia
Department of Romance Languages & Program in Linguistics
370J Gilbert Hall
Athens, GA 30602-1815
Office:  (706) 583-0792
Fax:  (706) 542-3287
URL: http://chadhowe.wordpress.com