Journal archive

Abstract: The article compares such a complex syntactic phenomenon as an absolute participial construction (APC), which may be difficult to understand when studying French or Spanish. The purpose of this article is to identify the specific features of the absolute participial construction built on the past participle that is frequently used in Romance languages. Comparative analysis, as well as elements of analysis of the semantic structure and morphological analysis, is used as the key method herein. This article contains a brief review of works by foreign linguists. Some examples from contemporary fiction are analyzed. Specific features of the Spanish and French absolute participial constructions are identified; differences and similarities are found. One of the distinctive features is the existence of three forms of the participle in French that are used to build an absolute participial construction and one “universal” form in Spanish. This article considers the specific features of usage of such constructions, and temporal and positional relationships with the main part of the sentence. The conclusions stated herein will help students to overcome the difficulties associated with understanding absolute participial constructions and arising, among other things, from the absence of this construction in the Russian language.