Abstract The periphrasis ir (‘to go’) in simple past plus gerund is known as a strategy of failed attempt that emerges in American Spanish. In other words, the sentence le ibas atropellando is synonym to casi le atropellas (‘you were about to run him over’), a nuance that is also attested in Portuguese. However, this semantic reading has not yet been investigated for Spain and we lack studies that evidence its existence in Peninsular Spanish. Nevertheless, in this paper, I aim to demonstrate that this periphrastic resource to express an action that does not end up happening is also present in the European variety. Thanks to a specific survey filled in by more than two hundred informants, I can pinpoint the type of speakers where this phenomenon occurs, the geographical restrictions it possesses, why it has ended up meaning failed attempt and to what extent it is possible to determine it is an Americanism, a Lusism or, instead, it deals with an innovation also developed within the Peninsular variety, prompted by the behaviour of such a periphrasis.
Noelia Sabino Rodríguez (Mon,) studied this question.
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