The Progressive in Modern English: A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes

The Progressive in Modern English A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes

LANGUAGE AND COMPUTERS: STUDIES IN PRACTICAL LINGUISTICS No 72 edited by Christian Mair Charles F. Meyer Nelleke Oostdijk

The Progressive in Modern English A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes

Svenja Kranich

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010

Cover image: Morguefile.com Cover design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence". ISBN: 978-90-420-3143-2 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3144-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in The Netherlands

Acknowledgments I would like to start by thanking Klaus Dietz, who has supervised my dissertation with thoughtfulness and perspicacity. As an inspiring teacher, he is responsible for first awakening my interest in historical linguistics. I was also very fortunate to meet my second dissertation adviser, Ilse Wischer, who has also taken an active interest in the present work from its very beginning and helped to shape it with her thoughtful comments and with her great enthusiasm. The exchange of ideas with other colleagues working on the progressive has also furnished me with inspiration. The email exchanges with René Arnaud have thus truly stimulated my thinking. Email and/or personal conversation with Kristin Killie, Nadja Nesselhauf, Anni Sairio, and Erik Smitterberg have also provided great opportunities for exchanging ideas. I am particularly grateful to Kristin Killie for her thoughtful and detailed comments. I would like to thank all these colleagues as well as Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Marianne Hundt, Paloma Núñez Pertejo, and Douglas Wulf for sending me their recently published, submitted, or forthcoming publications. I also wish to thank all scholars with whom I have had the chance to discuss my ideas. Not being able to name all of them, I would like to thank at least those who come to mind (in alphabetical order): Gabriele Diewald, Elke Gehweiler, Ekkehard König, Salikoko Mufwene, Stefan Thim, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Letizia Vezzosi, and Wim van der Wurff. I also thank once more Professor Marianne Hundt for giving me the opportunity to access ARCHER in Heidelberg and Carolin Biewer, who helped me with the nitty-gritty of the corpus search while I was there. On a more general note, I would like to thank Juliane House for helping me with her support and encouragement and for providing me, together with the colleagues at the SFB Mehrsprachigkeit (Research Center on Multilingualism), with a highly stimulating and pleasant working environment. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge gratefully the financial support I received from the NaFöG foundation. I am also grateful to the series editors for including this study into the Language and Computers series. I would like to thank especially Christian Mair for his thoughtful comments and corrections. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends. My parents, August and Ingrid Kranich, and my uncle and aunt, Helmut and Gerda Schurat, have had a great share in making this work possible, both through their emotional as well as their material support. I also wish to thank all my friends for their encouragement. Particular thanks are due to those friends who have sacrificed some of their time to help me with my work. Miguel Quintanilla deserves my special gratitude for his amazing aptitude at devising exactly the sort of computer program I needed for the statistical calculation and for bringing the data into a manageable format, which made my task considerably more feasible. I am also

very grateful to Svenja Junge for helping me with the final formatting of the document. My final thanks goes out to my brave proof readers for the great care with which they have eliminated errors from the present work, despite various other time-consuming engagements. Here I would like to thank the following colleagues and friends: Kalynda Beal, Viktor Becher, Harriet Beier, Andrea Bicsár, Elke Gehweiler, Alexander Haselow, Claudia Heinrich, Robert Kirstein, Anne Küppers, and Demet Özçetin. Needless to say, all remaining flaws of this work remain my own. S.K. October 2009

Contents 1.  1.1  1.2  1.3  2.  2.1  2.2  2.3  2.4  2.5  2.6  2.7  2.8  3. 

Introduction General description of the study Brief overview of the state-of-the-art and aims of the present study Organization of the study Theoretical background and methodology Grammaticalization as a theoretical framework The relation between grammaticalization and subjectification Choice of corpus Retrieval of progressive instances from the corpus How to see grammaticalization in a corpus The relation between evidence from corpora and actual language use Statistical methods Terminology and conventions The functions of the progressive in present-day English

3.1  The progressive as a marker of aspect 3.1.1  Definitions of aspect 3.1.1.1  The subjective nature of aspect 3.1.1.2  Grammatical aspect and situation type 3.1.1.3  More formalized approaches to aspect 3.1.2  General imperfective and progressive markers 3.1.2.1  The differences between general imperfective and progressive markers 3.1.2.2  Clines of grammaticalization of imperfectives and progressives 3.1.2.3  The English progressive today – general imperfective or progressive? 3.1.2.4  Specific aspectual meanings: time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ 3.1.3  The ‘imperfective paradox’ 3.2  The progressive and the nature of the situation 3.2.1  Duration 3.2.1.1  The progressive and reference to duration 3.2.1.2  The progressive and reference to limited duration 3.2.2  Stativity and dynamism 3.2.2.1  The progressive turns statives into dynamic situations 3.2.2.2  The progressive turns dynamic situations into statives 3.2.3  Agentivity 3.2.4  Overt and covert situations 3.2.4.1  The progressive as marker of overt activity 3.2.4.2  The progressive and covert situations

1  1  2  3  5  5  7  9  14  17  17  18  20  23  23  23  23  24  27  30  30  31  32  35  37  44  44  44  46  49  49  52  54  55  56  59 

The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion 3.3  3.3.1  Subjective progressive with ALWAYS 3.3.2  Subjective progressive without ALWAYS 3.3.3  Interpretative progressive 3.4  A ‘basic meaning’ or ‘core value’ for the progressive? 4. 

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period 77 

4.1  The source of the English progressive 4.1.1  Which construction is the ancestor of the PDE progressive? He wæs huntiende vs. he wæs on huntung 4.1.2  Language-internal explanations 4.1.3  Language contact-based explanations 4.2  The progressive in Old English and Middle English 4.2.1  Frequency and distribution 4.2.2  The functions of the progressive in OE and ME 4.2.2.1  The progressive as marker of aspect 4.2.2.2  The progressive and the nature of the situation 4.2.2.3  The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion 4.2.2.4  A ‘basic meaning’ or ‘core value’ for the progressive in Old and Middle English? 5.  5.1  5.2  5.3  5.4  5.5  6.  6.1  6.2  6.3  6.4  6.5  6.6  6.7  6.8  6.9  7. 

61  63  66  68  72 

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

78  78  79  81  82  82  82  83  85  87  88  91 

General overview of the changes in frequency from c1500 to c2000 91  Distribution across genres 96  Impact of sociolinguistic variables 103  Possible reasons for the increase in frequency 106  Frequency of the type to be a-hunting 108  Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

113 

The loss of double -ing The emergence of the passive progressive Variation across the verbal paradigm Clause types Adverbial modification Subject types Situation types The progressive of full verbs be and have Linguistic contexts of the type to be a-hunting

114  116  121  128  134  142  148  155  159 

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

163 

7.1  The progressive as marker of aspect 164  7.1.1  General overview of the development of the aspectual function 164  7.1.2  General imperfective, progressive and derived aspectual meaning 169 

7.1.3  Specific meanings of general imperfective and progressive markers 7.1.4  Derived aspectual meanings 7.1.5  A short reconsideration of the ‘imperfective paradox’ 7.2  The progressive and the nature of the situation 7.2.1  Duration 7.2.2  Stativity and dynamism 7.2.3  Agentivity 7.2.4  Overt and covert situations 7.3  The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion 7.3.1  The classification of subjective progressives 7.3.2  Subjective progressive with ALWAYS 7.3.3  Subjective progressive without ALWAYS 7.3.4  Interpretative progressive 7.4  The functions of the type to be a-hunting 7.5  Diachronic change in the functions of the progressive 7.6  Distribution of functions across genres 8.  8.1  8.2  9.  9.1  9.2  9.3 

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification Evidence for grammaticalization of the progressive Evidence for subjectification of the progressive Conclusion Results on the development of the English progressive Results concerning methodology and general theoretical assumptions Suggestions for further research

References

172  179  187  189  189  191  193  199  202  204  213  217  222  226  227  229  237  237  243  249  249  254  255  256 

1.

Introduction

1.1

General description of the study

The progressive, i.e. the construction consisting of the auxiliary be and a present participle as in I am working, is a grammatical marker in PDE. It is a periphrastic verb form that – roughly speaking, because here the controversies already begin – mainly serves to express an ongoing dynamic situation. In this use, the progressive in PDE is generally understood as a realization of the grammatical category of aspect and thus as part of the core grammar of English. In OE and ME, on the other hand, the corresponding combination did not have clear grammatical functions but rather seems to be used for stylistic reasons, as a means to convey emphasis or to provide a more vivid description. Furthermore, it generally seems to have been interchangeable with the simple form without a significant change of meaning (cf. Schopf 1974: 28). Overall, the form was much less frequent and certainly was not obligatory in any context. Its use or its absence vary greatly between individual writers (cf. Nickel 1966). In Shakespeare’s times, the grammatical status of the progressive still seems far from fixed, its occurrence still sporadic, and its absence from contexts where today it would be obligatory conspicuous (cf. Rissanen 1999: 216). It seems reasonable to assume, then, that the major developments that lead to the clear grammatical functions of the progressive occur after the EModE period. Indeed, investigations of 19th century language use show that even at such a recent period, the progressive is not yet obligatory in all the contexts where it would be today (cf. Denison 1998: 143). Also, certain combinations, such as a formally marked passive + progressive, only start spreading in that time. The question that set off this whole investigation was thus: How did this change of the status of the progressive – from a stylistic device in free variation with the simple form to a fixed part of the tense-aspect system – happen? This soon leads to more specific questions, for instance: What linguistic environments favor the use of the form, how does the development of its functions proceed through the centuries, and can a connection be established between the expansion of its formal paradigm and its functional development? Such questions can only be investigated satisfactorily by looking at actual language data. The analysis of all progressives in ARCHER-2 (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers, version 2) will therefore serve as the basis for the present study of the changes the progressive has undergone since the 17th century.

2 1.2

The Progressive in Modern English Brief overview of the state-of-the-art and aims of the present study

The development of the progressive has encountered a good deal of scholarly attention, so that there may be a need to clarify what the present work can hope to add. One main desideratum lies in the fact that there is no study to date which furnishes a complete, detailed, corpus-based description of the long-term evolution of this particular grammaticalization process. So far, there are only two studies that take a long-term approach to the development of the ModE progressive, Dennis (1948) and Hancil (2003), both looking at 16th to 20th century use. The size of the corpora they use is, however, too small to allow any detailed analysis. All they can really show conclusively is that the frequency of the progressive increases in the time span under consideration. Further studies on the development of the progressive in ModE either look only at a particular detail, such as the emergence of the passive progressive (e.g. Warner 1995, 1997, Pratt & Denison 2000, Hundt 2004a), or only consider the progressive in a shorter time frame, concentrating either on the EModE period (Elsness 1994, Núñez Pertejo 2004a, 2004b1), the 18th century (Smith 2004, Sairio 2006, 2009, Núñez Pertejo 2007a, 2007b), the 19th century (Arnaud 1983, 1998, 2002, Smitterberg 2000a, 2005), or the latter half of the 20th century, more precisely a comparison between 1961 and 1991 (Mair & Hundt 1995a, 1995b, Smith 2002, Leech, Hundt, Mair & Smith 2009).2 Smitterberg, Reich and Hahn (2000) combine a study of the 19th century and 20th century use of the progressive, but their investigation is limited to only two particular genres, namely political and academic language. The corpora used in the different studies are of very different sorts; some are not sufficiently large or representative for allowing generalizations (this point will be discussed in more detail in 5.1). What should be pointed out here is that it is not yet possible on the basis of the available studies to answer a number of pertinent questions, in particular concerning the semantic side of the development. It is not yet clear how the progressive function comes to emerge as the main function of the progressive construction, which role subjective functions of the construction play, and whether particular linguistic contexts trigger different readings of the progressive. Furthermore, no study has yet attempted to take into account the entire time span of the development from OE to PDE. Understanding the evolution of the progressive as a grammaticalization process makes it appropriate, however, to 1

2

Núñez Pertejo (2004b) is essentially a summary of her larger work, Núñez Pertejo (2004a), so that in general, only the latter will be referred to in the present work. The work referred to as Mair & Hundt (1995a) is largely identical to the work referred to as Mair & Hundt (1995b). The latter represents a slightly shorter version published in a different context. The only reason for referring to both articles is that only this overall shorter, later publication of their findings also explicitly refers to the type of use of the progressive highlighted by CouperKuhlen (1995), discussed in some detail in the present work (cf. 3.3.2).

Introduction

3

consider it from its origins to its present-day functions. The present study therefore dedicates one chapter to an overview of the functions of the present-day progressive and the following chapter to the form and function of the progressive in OE and ME (chapters 3 and 4). The subsequent detailed study of its use in the modern period (covering the 17th to 20th centuries) will then allow us to arrive at a complete picture of the diachronic development of the progressive. This in turn will help to gain a better understanding of its present-day use. Numerous studies have looked at the present-day progressive from a purely synchronic perspective, and many issues have not yet been satisfactorily resolved (cf. chapter 3). As Lass (1997: 9-16) has pointed out, often apparent irregularities of present-day linguistic forms are only explicable with reference to their diachronic development. In grammaticalization studies, it is well known that often the origin of a particular element or construction still determines certain particularities of its use once it is grammaticalized (i.e. lexical persistence, cf. Hopper 1991: 22). The present work thus also endeavors to provide the means for a better understanding of the present-day use of the progressive by allowing a clearer view of its long-term development. 1.3

Organization of the study

The present work is organized as follows: After the introductory remarks of the present chapter, chapter 2 will give an overview of the theoretical background assumptions informing the study and will outline the methodology. Chapter 3 starts with an overview of the general notions of aspect and the categories perfective, imperfective, and progressive, laying the basis for a discussion of the present-day English progressive. It goes on to present the diverse meanings ascribed to the progressive in PDE,3 evaluating the arguments that have been adduced to support the different analyses. Remaining controversial points will be re-evaluated on the basis of the analysis of the corpus data. Chapter 4 will present an overview of the development of the progressive from OE until the beginning of the ModE period. The findings on the origin of the progressive and its form and use in OE and ME will merely represent an evaluated summary on the basis of the available literature. No actual new data from these periods is considered, and this part will basically serve as a background to the corpus study. Chapters 5 to 8, in which the development since EModE is treated, will be more detailed, since here, controversial issues emerging from the evaluation of the literature will be re-evaluated through the analysis of the ARCHER-2 data. Chapter 5 deals with 3

Chapter 3 will focus on the functions that can be assigned to the progressive construction as such. More specific functions of the progressive that arise only in particular combinations with other markers, such as the particular semanticpragmatic effects in combinations of the progressive with a perfect, a modal, or a future auxiliary, as well as the specific use of a present progressive to refer to future situations will be discussed later, in the context of the analysis of the data (chapter 7).

4

The Progressive in Modern English

the changes in frequency and the impact of language-external factors on the rise of the progressive. Here the importance of factors such as genre as well as sociolinguistic variables will be considered. Chapter 6 looks at the relevance of language-internal factors, studying the extension of the progressive across the paradigm and its co-occurrence with adverbs, subject types, and situation types. Chapter 7 is the core of the work, as here the development of the functions of the progressive will be discussed. Chapter 8 brings together insights from all preceding chapters in the endeavor to find evidence for grammaticalization and/or subjectification. The work ends with a summary and general conclusions in chapter 9, which will also point out possible consequences for future investigations and highlight areas where further research would promise to be fruitful.

2.

Theoretical background and methodology

2.1

Grammaticalization as a theoretical framework

The changes that the progressive has undergone since OE times can profitably be discussed within grammaticalization theory. Grammaticalization was first defined as the development by which lexical items become grammatical. This is the definition given by Meillet (1912), who coined the term. The framework of grammaticalization theory has evolved considerably in the course of the last few decades through the work of such prominent scholars as Givón, Lehmann, Heine, Bybee, and Traugott, to name but a few.4 In the more recent work, a somewhat more extended view of grammaticalization is generally taken, as reflected in the following definition from Heine and Kuteva (2002: 2): “Grammaticalization is defined as the development from lexical to grammatical forms and from grammatical to even more grammatical forms.” It is in this sense that the term will be understood in the present work. ‘More grammatical’ in this context may be paraphrased as ‘fulfilling more clearly grammatical functions, becoming more paradigmatic in meaning’ (e.g. if a construction of a verb meaning ‘want’ + infinitive evolves into a future time marker, its meaning becomes paradigmatic in the sense that it is construed through the whole paradigm of tense expressions that the particular language has) (cf. Diewald 2007). Grammaticalization theory has furnished a number of invaluable insights into the nature of a particular type of language change that leads to the emergence and development of grammatical elements. Grammaticalization processes are characterized by the following four mechanisms: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

desemanticization or semantic bleaching, i.e. “certain components of meaning are lost” (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994: 6) extension or generalization, i.e. spread into new contexts decategorialization, i.e. loss in morphosyntactic properties characteristic of the source forms erosion, i.e. loss in phonetic substance (cf. Heine 2003: 579)

Lehmann (2002: 146) shows that processes that occur in grammaticalization can be situated on the paradigmatic or the syntagmatic axis. The processes along the paradigmatic axis are attrition, paradigmaticization, and obligatorification. That is, the grammaticalized element loses in semantic features, becomes part of a small, tightly integrated paradigm, and eventually its use becomes obligatory in certain contexts. The processes along the syntagmatic axis according to Lehmann (2002: 146) are condensation, coalescence, and fixation, that is, the 4

Good overviews of the history of the theory are provided by Hopper and Traugott (2003: 19-39), Heine (2003: 575-578), and Wischer (2006: 166-168).

6

The Progressive in Modern English

grammaticalized element loses in structural scope, becomes more bonded, and occupies a fixed slot.5 It should be pointed out, however, that certain processes, which have been discussed as grammaticalization processes, do not exhibit scope reduction or increased bondedness, as e.g. the development of discourse markers from clause-internal adverbs (cf. Traugott 2003: 642-645; cf. also Tabor & Traugott 1998). Rather recently, grammaticalization theory has been challenged (cf. Newmeyer 1998 and the articles collected in Campbell (ed.) 2001). Critical voices see grammaticalization merely as ‘an epiphenomenon’ and therefore doubt that a theory of grammaticalization is possible. Diewald (2004: 142) points out that the fact that several sub-processes take part in the complex process of grammaticalization is in fact one of the core assumptions of theorists working within the framework and not an insight that the critical scholars have first brought to light. Critics of grammaticalization theory hold that these processes occur independently of one another (cf. Newmeyer 1998: 237f.), while proponents of the theory, such as Heine (2003: 583), stress that the diverse mechanisms involved in grammaticalization are interrelated. In the latter view, the various sub-processes cause one another, semantic bleaching for instance being a prerequisite for the extension into new contexts. For a more detailed discussion of the criticism against grammaticalization theory and convincing counterarguments cf. Heine (2003: 581-584), Diewald (2004:140-143), Lehmann (2004), and Wischer (2006: 168-171). It is furthermore controversially discussed whether a restricted or extended take on the concept is more fruitful (cf. Diewald 2004: 140f.). We have seen that some scholars have a rather extended view of the phenomena covered by grammaticalization (e.g. Tabor & Traugott 1998, Traugott 2003, who include the development of discourse markers). Others stress that a more restricted understanding would be more profitable, i.e. that it would be best to classify only the step in the development from lexical to grammatical as grammaticalization (e.g. Fortson 2003: 654-656, von Mengden 2007). Limiting the concept in such a way brings with it the danger, however, of obscuring the point that the development from lexical to grammatical and the development from grammatical to more grammatical can often be fruitfully discussed as one long-term process. In the restricted view of grammaticalization, only the OE development of the verbal periphrastic construction through reanalysis of constructions containing a full verb be would be understood as the grammaticalization of the English progressive. It seems, however, reasonable to understand the development of the 5

‘Attrition’ refers to the same process as ‘semantic bleaching’, while the terms ‘paradigmaticization’ and ‘obligatorification’ refer to processes that in the overview based on Heine (2003) would be captured by the concept of ‘extension’. ‘Condensation’, ‘coalescence’, and ‘fixation’ make more precise the processes which can occur through ‘decategorialization’. For a much more detailed discussion of the mechanisms involved in grammaticalization cf. Lehmann (2002: 108-159).

Theoretical background and methodology

7

grammatical function, which is situated much later in the history of the language, as part of one long grammaticalization process. An argument in favor of this approach is that in the later development, as we shall see, the construction in some of its uses still shows characteristics that go back to the very early stages (cf. also Kranich 2008b). In general, the development of typical TMA-markers in the languages of the world can best be conceptualized as long-term changes which start with primary grammaticalization (combinations acquire the status of a syntactic construction, e.g. in a periphrasis the first element comes to be analyzed as AUX) and, later on, exhibit secondary grammaticalization (the construction acquires a more fixed grammatical meaning and enters paradigmatic relations with alternative grammatical forms) (cf. e.g. Dahl 1985/1987, Bybee & Dahl 1989, Bybee et al. 1994, Heine & Kuteva 2002).6 While the importance of the unifying features of primary and secondary grammaticalization is strong enough to view them as early and late stages of what can be conceptualized as one particular kind of change, one also needs to stress that the concept of primary grammaticalization and the concept of secondary grammaticalization need to be distinguished; authors ought to make clear what they are referring to. Thus, it is basically confusion of these two notions that has led to vastly divergent claims as to when the progressive grammaticalized (cf. also Wischer 2006: 172f.). Denison (1993: 407) states that “the progressive might have become grammaticised as late as the end of the eighteenth century”. This view seems to be shared by Fischer (1992: 254) when she says that “it was only in the modern period that the progressive form became grammaticalised and formed part of the aspectual system of English”. What both Denison (1993) and Fischer (1992) refer to is the secondary grammaticalization of the construction, the time when it acquired a clear grammatical function. The primary grammaticalization of the form, on the other hand, occurred much earlier, presumably already by OE times (cf. Traugott 1992: 188). 2.2

The relation between grammaticalization and subjectification

Concentrating on the emergence of the grammatical function of a construction entails an investigation of the concomitant semantic developments the construction undergoes. A general riddle is posed by the apparent contradiction between the general claim that grammaticalization entails semantic bleaching and the often equally general claim that grammaticalization leads to semantic and pragmatic enrichment (cf. Hopper & Traugott 2003: 98). A concept which is often introduced in the latter context is subjectification, i.e. the process by which “[m]eanings […] become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief state/attitude toward the situation” (Traugott 1990: 500). This definition by Traugott informs most work on the diachronic development of subjective meanings. Other uses of the term ‘subjective’ and ‘subjectification’, notably 6

The terms primary and secondary grammaticalization have been taken over from Traugott (forthc.).

8

The Progressive in Modern English

Langacker’s (e.g. 1999, 2000, 2006), refer to the construal of a particular situation.7 For Langacker, it is therefore not expressions or constructions but only “the status of a particular element within the overall situation” (Langacker 2006: 18), which can be more or less subjective. I think that it is necessary to keep the two concepts apart and make a clear distinction between meanings based in the speaker’s belief state or attitude on the one hand and on the other hand the way in which a speaker’s particular vantage point is reflected in the verbalization of a situation (cf. also Mortelmans 2004). I will use the terms ‘subjective’, ‘subjectivity’, and ‘subjectification’ in the present work only with reference to the former (i.e. the Traugott) type of meaning. It has often been claimed that subjectification in this sense commonly occurs within grammaticalization processes (cf. e.g. Traugott 1995, Brinton & Traugott 2005: 110, table 4.4). Common characteristics of subjectification and grammaticalization are sometimes unduly stressed in the recent discussion, which has even led some scholars to understand subjectification as a subtype of grammaticalization. Thus Fischer (2007: 260) speaks of subjectification as “the discourse-pragmatic type of grammaticalization”. Such a view confuses two independent types of development: Grammaticalization leads to the emergence of grammatical structures and/or grammatical meanings, while subjectification leads to new means of expressing speaker attitude. Subjectification can thus consist of the emergence of a subjective meaning of an element which also has a grammatical function (e.g. the pragmatic enrichment of the temporal subordinating conjunction while, as discussed by Traugott & König 1991), but it can also mean that a lexical element acquires a new attitudinal meaning (cf. e.g. Traugott & Dasher 2002: 95). Calling subjectification a type of grammaticalization is therefore misleading. The relation between grammaticalization and subjectification may be clarified when one strictly separates primary from secondary grammaticalization processes. Traugott (forthc.) underlines the importance of this distinction. In her view, it is only primary grammaticalization that can be linked to subjectification, while subjectification does not need to play a role in secondary grammaticalization. The early stages of grammaticalization can be assumed to be accompanied by subjectification, because it is through the use of a construction with pragmatically enriched meaning that grammaticalization occurs (cf. also Hopper & Traugott 2003: 71-98, Fischer 2007: 259). In the early stages of its grammaticalization, the progressive construction in OE and ME often exhibits, as we will see, more speaker-based or expressive meanings than clear-cut grammatical functions. Secondary grammaticalization, on the other hand, may 7

In Langacker’s view, maximal subjectivity can be observed when the subject remains “off-stage and implicit, inhering in the very process of conception without being its target” (1999: 149). Such a view also seems to be present in some of Traugott’s earlier studies (cf. e.g. 1989: 40, where she speaks of “subjective tenses” and defines these as “dependent for their interpretation on speaker-time”).

Theoretical background and methodology

9

rather show a trend for the opposite development, which I have termed ‘objectification’ (cf. Kranich 2008a, forthc.).8 Objectification, in a reversal of Traugott’s (1990: 500) definition of subjectification, is to be understood as the process by which meanings become less based in the speaker’s subjective belief system or attitude toward the proposition (one could also speak of ‘desubjectification’). A connection between secondary grammaticalization and objectification seems plausible: As the grammatical functions of a construction becomes more clear-cut and more defined by paradigmatic relations, the construction either loses its subjective uses or at least possible contexts for such subjective uses become more and more restricted. This claim is supported by purely logical relations, as “the more grammaticalization processes a given linguistic unit undergoes, […] the more does its use become obligatory in certain contexts and ungrammatical in others” (Heine & Reh 1984: 67). Obviously, once a linguistic unit is obligatory in a certain context, it cannot become enriched with subjective meaning in such uses anymore (cf. also Hübler 1998: 15). Heine and Reh (1984) in fact also note among their general observations (based on numerous grammaticalization processes in African languages) that a typical correlate of advancing grammaticalization is loss “in semantic complexity, functional significance and/or expressive value” and “in pragmatic significance”, while “syntactic significance” increases (Heine & Reh 1984: 67). We will see how these general tendencies are reflected in the secondary grammaticalization of the English progressive. 2.3

Choice of corpus

The choice of a corpus is, of course, determined firstly by the prerequisite that it contains data from the relevant period. However, it is subject to debate in which period the progressive undergoes its secondary grammaticalization. Rissanen (1999: 205) points out that the development of the progressive in EModE (15001700)9 represents one of “[t]he most dramatic developments” in EModE syntax, while Denison (1998: 143) notes that “[t]he progressive construction [...] has undergone some of the most striking syntactic changes of the LModE period”. Presumably, then, the striking and dramatic development in which the progressive acquires its grammatical functions represents a rather long-term process, covering both the Early and Late Modern period. In Strang’s (1982) description, this development appears more concise in its temporal extension: “we can classify the pre-1600 period as one of unsystematic 8 9

At least as far as I am aware no one has used the term with the present definition before. Although The Cambridge History of the English Language with its choice of important historical dates for period delimitations has called its EModE volume 1476-1776, Rissanen concentrates in his chapter on syntax on the period 1500-1700, as he assumes this to be the important period for changes in syntax (cf. 1999: 203).

10

The Progressive in Modern English

use, and the post-1700 period as one of systematic or grammatically-required use” (1982: 429). However, her own results point to a development that both takes longer and is situated later in time, as her study shows use of the progressive to be still in a massive state of flux between c1750 and c1850. What also signals a later time for the secondary grammaticalization is that the progressive does not acquire a full paradigm of combinatory possibilities until the late 18th and 19th centuries: only in this period does a formally marked passive evolve (cf. e.g. Denison 1998: 148-158, Pratt & Denison 2000, Hundt 2004a). Even in the 20th century, remarkable differences can be observed in the frequency of the progressive between earlier and later texts (cf. Mair & Hundt 1995a, who compare the use of the progressive in the 1960s and 1990s). Thus, the study definitely needs to take into account a long time span which should include or closely approach the present-day use of the language. It does not seem absolutely necessary, on the other hand, to include data from as early as the 16th century, as there seems to be rather firm evidence that the progressive did not yet show a clear grammatical function at the time. Quantitatively, the very low frequencies of the construction in EModE speak against such an early beginning (cf. 5.1), while insights into the meanings associated with the progressive in EModE seem to show that at the time, it was still very close to the OE and ME only loosely determined uses of the form rather than to its grammatical function in PDE (cf. Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 166). This speaks for a corpus that covers the 17th to 20th centuries − exactly the time span covered by ARCHER-2. ARCHER-2 represents an extended version of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers) and covers in its British English component the time span 1600-1999. It has the benefit of containing various genres: genres that represent personal styles of communication (journals and personal letters), prose fiction, popular expository prose represented by news reportage, and specialist expository prose represented by scientific and medical texts.10 Furthermore, it includes “speech-based registers” represented by drama and religious sermons. Fiction can be considered mixed, in this respect, as it contains narrative as well as conversational passages (cf. Biber 2004: 197). In order to get any meaningful results, the corpus must be of a sufficient size. What constitutes a sufficient corpus size is intimately linked to the relative frequency of the item or construction one wishes to investigate. For instance, a researcher who wishes to investigate the use of the personal pronoun I in personal letters will not need as much data as a researcher who tries to establish the typical contexts of use of the PDE subjunctive. As far as the English progressive is concerned, this means that studies of earlier stages of the language would need larger corpora than studies of later stages of the language. This is evident if one compares Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a) study of the progressive in the time span 1500-1710 with the one by Smitterberg (2005) of the progressive in the 19th 10

At the time of the corpus search, ARCHER-2 also contained data from the genre ‘law’ in two of the sub-periods, but the data from this genre was excluded in order to make the different sub-periods more comparable.

Theoretical background and methodology

11

century: Núñez Pertejo uses the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus, which contains 551,000 words; she finds a total of 178 progressives. Smitterberg (2005) uses CONCE, which contains 986,814 words,11 and his corpus yields a total of 2,440 progressives. Thus, as far as the ModE development of the progressive is concerned, one can say that the earlier the period, the larger the corpus has to be. With a total of 1,363,056 words in its British component, ARCHER-2 is, generally speaking, of a reasonable size, and it yields a total of 2,662 progressives (plus ten prepositional progressive constructions), but these are distributed very unevenly across the time spans, as will become apparent. ARCHER-2 contains a roughly equal number of words for each 50 year period (with the exception of the time span 1600-1649, cf. table 1 below). As the progressive is rather infrequent in the earlier part and very frequent in the later part of the data, the results for the earlier part are somewhat less reliable than for the later part of the data, particularly when the interdependence of different factors is analyzed and a refined categorization is applied. Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided in such a large-scale diachronic study. Certainly, taking into account even more data would have been still better, but for a study that is not merely interested in a quantitative but also in a thorough qualitative analysis and considers a development over a time span of four centuries, a fine-grained analysis of a considerably greater amount of instances would hardly have been feasible. This is also partly why the American part of ARCHER-2 was not included in the present work. Furthermore, at the time I accessed the corpus, the American English data only covered the time span 1750-1799 and the 19th and 20th centuries, and within these time spans, it did not contain texts from all genres yet. Thus, it would not have been fully comparable to the British part of the data. Furthermore, a recent study by Collins (2008) has shown that, while there are great differences between other national varieties, British and American English exhibit very similar patterns of use (e.g. in terms of overall frequency, of relative proportion of negated uses, as well as regarding collocation with situation types and with clause types).12 In his discussion, Collins actually often refers to them jointly as the “Northern Hemisphere pair” (e.g. 2008: 246). The detailed study of the progressive in British and American English in the latter half of the 20th century presented by Leech et al. (2009: 118-143) also exhibits only minor differences between the two varieties, e.g. in the frequency of the progressive passive. But overall usage between British and American English is, at least in the 20th century, very similar. This could be different for earlier periods of 11

12

CONCE is a balanced corpus of 19th-century English containing material from seven different genres. For a more detailed description, cf. Smitterberg (2005: 17-24). Collins (2008) investigates Australian, New Zealand, American, British, Kenyan, Indian, Philippine, Singapore, and Hong Kong English, using the ICE Corpora for all but the American variety, which is studied with the help of the Santa Barbara and the Frown Corpus. For a description of the corpora, cf. Collins (2008: 228).

The Progressive in Modern English

12

English, but since the number of progressives up for analysis was already quite high, the choice was made to consider only the British portion of the corpus in the present study. ARCHER-2 represents a great data base both for evaluating the many controversial issues concerning the meaning of the present-day progressive as well as for shedding light on the unsolved questions concerning its historical development. The only disadvantage to ARCHER-2 is that the version of the corpus accessible at the time of research was not tagged. Thus, it is not possible to relate the number of progressives to the number of verb phrases but only to the number of words. However, since verb phrases seem to be of roughly the same length in the different periods, as a small probe suggested, this is not a major disadvantage. What is more regrettable is that the absence of tags makes it impossible to make claims about the relation between simple and progressive use with regard to certain parameters, e.g. tense. For instance, if we observe a relative rise in use of progressives in the present tense in a particular century, the possibility cannot be excluded that this stems from an overall rise of present tense use in that particular time span. However, as we shall see in the analysis of the data, in practice this problem is not so serious, since most often it is clear that it is more plausible to assume that only the progressive, and not all verb phrases, underwent a certain development. A further weakness lies in the fact that ARCHER-2 was still under construction when the data were collected. The earlier part of the data is thus somewhat more restricted than the data for the later centuries. Furthermore, certain genres are over-represented overall, while others are under-represented. The following table shows the word frequencies: Table 1: Word frequencies in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

Drama

31961

29438

22607

24496

29525

33256

28267

28740

228290

Fiction

32960

37339

43561

50211

52793

48487

52743

61844

379938

Letters

0

12715

13363

12156

13876

10795

12483

11386

86774

Journal

0

21501

21424

21978

21987

22785

22272

22465

154322

News

0

24458

21720

26028

23101

23363

22258

24301

165202

Religious

0

11172

10674

11090

11107

10981

10610

10233

75867

Science

0

18526

20870

20720

18942

22061

21724

21726

144569

Medical

0

7532

16766

6621

26167

32095

20349

18564

144569

64921 162681

170985

173300

197408

203796

190706

Total

20/2 TOTAL

199259 1363056

The distribution of words across genres and time spans seems to reflect the greater or lesser availability of suitable texts: it is not difficult to find texts from

Theoretical background and methodology

13

fiction and drama for each period but less easy to collect a representative sample of scientific and medical texts for all periods (cf. Biber, Finegan & Atkinson 1994: 4-7). To make the results comparable, normalized frequencies will always be supplied in the discussion of the differences between genres, in addition to the absolute numbers.13 The normalized frequencies will be given in the form of the M-coefficient introduced by Mossé (1938), which presents the number of progressives per 100,000 words. Absolute frequencies and normalized frequencies will be presented in the present work,14 while frequencies of progressives per VP, which would be a more exact measurement of a true increase, can unfortunately not be calculated. I will assume that an increase in the normalized M-frequencies mirrors an increase in relative frequencies of progressive per VP. Such an assumption is supported by Smitterberg’s (2005: 62) results, which show that the frequency development visible from the M-coefficients is overall similar to the picture based on ‘Scoefficients’, establishing the relative frequency of progressives per VP in which a progressive can potentially occur.15

13

14

15

A sole exception will be constituted by the discussion of subjective uses of the progressive in the different genres, as the absolute numbers of these uses are so low as to make the reference to normalized frequencies appear inappropriate (cf. 7.5, table 40). Normalized frequencies will be provided where they are relevant, i.e. they will be omitted in those parts of the discussion where the crucial point is that the relative distribution of progressives across a variable changes. Smitterberg (2005) used an automatical tagger in his work to be able to study the progressive frequencies in relation to non-progressive VPs, excluding those that could not have taken a progressive, e.g. imperatives and performatives. He also notes that the automatic tagging cannot be fully relied upon and that manual checking of the automatic tagging is extremely timeconsuming. He thus restricts the calculation of his ‘S-coeffecient’ to only a part of CONCE (cf. Smitterberg 2005: 40-53). Although differences are apparent, showing that verb density did change to a certain extent within the 19th century, the overall results remain the same, showing a clear increase in the use of the progressive. This increase presents itself as somewhat more pronounced when one considers the M-coefficients (showing an 81% increase) than when one considers the S-coefficient (showing a 71% increase) (Smitterberg 2005: 62). We will see, however, that the increase of the progressive is so clear that even when some of it may need to be understood as due to an overall increase in verb density, it remains considerable enough to be relevant (cf. 5).

The Progressive in Modern English

14 2.4

Retrieval of progressive instances from the corpus

Progressives were retrieved using WordSmith 4.0.16 The search term was all forms of be + -ing with up to four words intervening. This had proved sufficient after trial runs. Spelling variants were taken into consideration.17 The context was extracted with a minimum of three lines before and three lines after the progressive, as had also proved sufficient in trial runs. As the corpus is not tagged, it was necessary to manually exclude cases such as he was the king, this is a great thing etc. There are other cases which were somewhat more difficult. The following types of constructions potentially pose problems (cf. also Denison 1993: 373-379, Arnaud 1998: 127f., Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 142-150, Smitterberg 2005: 26-37): 1. 2. 3. 4.

be + adjectival participle (as in example 1) be + appositive participle (as in example 2) be + gerund (as in example 3) be + going to + infinitive (as in example 4)

(1)

The road was undulating -- not exactly hilly, but up and down, up and down for the first half mile or so (archer\1800-49.bre\1845surt.f5)

(2)

Here was the Church Militant enjoying himself over the scenes of desolation (archer\1800-49.bre\1849brig.j5)

(3)

And this Uneasiness I have found increase so strongly upon me within these few Days since the Gin-Act’s taking Place, that I find a Life, attended with the Inconveniences ours is continually subject to, is not to be borne without the Assistance of Liquor (archer\1700-49.bre\1737anon.f2)

(4)

…You are not going to see any more patients to-day, I hope.” “Only two that lie quite in my road. If you send me away, you must take the consequences. Farewell, till to-morrow.” (archer\180049.bre\1839mart.f5)

In actual practice, it is mostly adjectival uses of the participle (or uses of adjectives in -ing) that are causes of ambiguity, while the other three potentially ambiguous constructions rarely pose any real problems. With regard to type (2), the instance does not represent a progressive when be has the status of a full verb, 16 17

For more information on the software, cf. http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/ index.html. Variant spellings of the participle (-inge, -yng, -ynge) and of the forms of be (e.g. beene, ys) were also searched for. They occur in a very small number of the early instances.

Theoretical background and methodology

15

i.e. if one can split the participle phrase from be, and the subject + the form of be still represent a well-formed complete sentence in the context, the instance was not counted as progressive. With regard to type (3), the nominal status of a gerund makes it distinguishable from a progressive (the Gin-Act’s taking place could be replaced by another NP, such as the decision to ban alcohol). With regard to type (4), the instance was not counted as a progressive when there was no obvious reference to already ongoing motion. In this regard, there were a number of examples which seemed ambiguous, but a close reading of the context generally allowed a firm decision. Thus in (4) the addressee of the utterance containing going to + infinitive is in fact about to leave, but the further context does not indicate that the speaker means ‘Are you leaving with the purpose of seeing more patients?’, since apparently, it was the speaker who sent the addressee away and thus should not have to enquire after the motives of the addressee’s leaving. The construction can thus be understood as indicating near future rather than motion + purpose. Concerning adjectival participles, it was easy to exclude cases in which the participle was modified by an adverb of degree or by a comparative adverb, such as in (5): (5)

To a generous mind few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted (archer\175099.bre\1791radc.f3)

Other clear adjectival uses are those where the notional object is expressed in a prepositional phrase, as in the following example: (6)

I know that every new discovery, in any branch of natural knowledge, gives you pleasure; and it is peculiarly flattering to me, that you consider some of those, which I have been happy enough to make, in a light of some importance. (archer\1750-99.bre\1775prie.s3)

Yet there are instances where no object is present, and these can indeed be very difficult to classify. Sometimes the collocation helped in the decision: If, as in example (1) the form in -ing is used in parallelism with an adjective (the road is undulating and hilly), the use was understood as adjectival. There are also cases which can be resolved by testing whether the supposed progressive can in fact be replaced with a simple form of the verb. This method allows one to categorize instances of to be stirring ‘to be up/awake, to be moving about’ as adjectival in the period under investigation. Concerning to be wanting and to be owing, one can note that clearly adjectival occurrences are much more common than verbal uses of want with the meaning ‘to be lacking’ and owe with the meaning ‘to be due to’,18 so that, if the context did not supply evidence to the contrary, such occurrences were excluded. 18

A search in the OED shows that in the cases of wanting, owing, and stirring in

16

The Progressive in Modern English

The application of these criteria, as well as a close reading of the instances, can be assumed to have allowed a safe basis for separating the looka-likes from the true progressives, although in a small number of individual cases, as has also been pointed out by Smitterberg (2005: 30), there is per force a certain amount of subjective decision-making involved. This may explain the difference between Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a) and Elsness’ (1994) results. Although they use the same corpus, the EModE section of the Helsinki Corpus, their numbers vary: Núñez Pertejo found 32, 51 and 95 progressives in periods I - III respectively, while Elsness found 33, 51 and 100 progressives in the same data set. This is probably due to diverging decisions concerning the inclusion or exclusion of particular examples. It is, however, a little unexpected that Núñez Pertejo (2004a) has classified less instances of be + v-ing as progressives than Elsness (1994), as her treatment of the ambiguous cases would lead one to suppose that she counts rather more instances as progressives than may be warranted. She states herself that “[t]hose examples which remain dubious as a result of their double nature, verbal and adjectival, have also been classified together with progressives proper” (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 149).

the time span under consideration in the present work, the adjectival interpretation is generally the likelier one. The verb stir in the sense ‘to move about’ is now obsolete. The last quotation of such a use is from 1607, while the use of the adjective stirring ‘moving, busy’ is common throughout the modern period up to the present-day. Thus, examples containing to be stirring in the data from ARCHER can safely be classified as adjectival uses. The use of the verb want with the meaning ‘to be lacking, missing’ is noted to be rare since the 17th century. The last quotation of a clearly verbal use is from 1830, while the use of the adjectival present participle with this meaning is wellestablished throughout the period. So in this case, one still has to take care to consider each individual occurrence of to be wanting and decide whether it is the more common adjectival or the less common verbal use. Concerning owing, the situation is again somewhat less clear, as one can still use the verb with the meaning ‘to be under an obligation to someone’ (e.g. She’ll come… She owes me E. Queen, Last Woman, II.135, example from OED, s. owe), but in the contexts in which to be owing generally occurs in the corpus what is owed is generally in subject position (the type Money is owing to me). From the citations in the OED, it seems as if the simple verb form does not normally occur in such contexts in the relevant time span: when used with the meaning ‘to be indebted’, the verbal uses of owe generally have the person owing the money as subject (the type They owe me money), which again allows one to arrive at firm classificatory decisions.

Theoretical background and methodology 2.5

17

How to see grammaticalization in a corpus

The basic assumption is that grammaticalization processes will be visible in the quantitative analysis of the data retrieved from the corpus. It is largely assumed that increasing grammaticalization will be apparent in a general increase in frequency, since grammaticalization, as we have seen, is accompanied by generalization and context expansion. Thus, Brinton and Traugott (2005: 110) state that “[e]xpansion to new hosts leads to increased type frequency/productivity and also increased token frequency. Increasing token frequency is not only a result of but also a contributor to further grammaticalization”. So, high frequency has been proposed as both a driving force in grammaticalization, in that it is normally high frequency lexical items that undergo grammaticalization, and as indicative of grammaticalization (cf. also Bybee 2003, Hopper & Traugott 2003: 126-130). It is the latter point which concerns us here. The question needs to be asked whether an increase in frequency truly reflects the grammaticalization of the function of the progressive. Heine and Kuteva (2005: 45) point out that “[t]he exact nature of the interaction between frequency of use, context extension, and functional change is still largely unclear”, and Mair (2004) notes that grammaticalization does not need to be accompanied by increases in frequency. He also points out, however, that when increases in frequency can be noted in a process which on other (qualitative) grounds can be classified as grammaticalization, these should be regarded “as a delayed symptom of earlier grammaticalisation having occurred” (Mair 2004: 138). The position taken here is that an increase in token frequency may point to grammaticalization, particularly when accompanied by an increase in possible contexts, but that it is the qualitative analysis of the instances that turns a potential sign of grammaticalization into significant evidence. Thus, the study of the functions of the progressive will show more clearly what kind of development the progressive has undergone (or is still undergoing) than a mere increase in frequency could ever tell us. The process of obligatorification, however, will be visible in the present work only in a further increase in frequency, since no systematic comparison with the use of the simple verb forms will be effected. But, as has been pointed out above in 2.3, one can assume that an increase in progressives can be taken to reflect an increase in the relative proportion of progressives among all verb phrases where the progressive-simple form distinction can occur. 2.6

The relation between evidence from corpora and actual language use

It should only be recalled briefly that the idea that corpora represent actual language use faithfully and that statistical tests are therefore applicable is based on an idealistic assumption, namely, that the corpus constitutes a representative (i.e. random, balanced) sample of the actual whole to be studied. Evert (2006)

The Progressive in Modern English

18

uses the metaphor of a huge library, which contains all utterances ever made. A truly representative and balanced corpus would contain snippets from books from all the main sections in the library. It is clear that such a corpus cannot exist. If we do, then, use statistical tests, we should always be aware of the fact that we cannot use them to verify the validity of our findings in the same way that e.g. sociologists can use them, who have a much better knowledge of their population,19 and their population consists of actual, countable individuals, not of an infinite mass such as that of all sentences uttered or even utterable in the language. Furthermore, one should recall that we can say very little about actual spoken language use in earlier periods. Everything that we can say is basically reconstructed from more ‘speech-based’ text-types. Biber, Conrad and Reppen (1998: 252f.) emphasize that none of the speech-based genres should be understood to represent truly natural speech. At the same time they correctly point out that “these [drama, sermons, and dialogue in fiction] are some of the most ‘spoken-like’ registers available from earlier historical periods, and as such they provide useful comparative data to the analysis of written registers”. Thus, cautious suggestions can and should be made. Scholars even reconstruct stages of languages for which absolutely no evidence exists (proto-languages), following rigorous methods and principles. Similarly, one should try to reconstruct spoken language use as much as possible, comparing more ‘spoken-like’ registers with more typical written ones, remaining aware, however, that one should not take for prima facie evidence things which are just reconstructions (cf. Lass 1997). 2.7

Statistical methods

Statistical tests, in general, only allow one to verify whether the quantitative results arrived at on the basis of a particular sample can support a prior hypothesis. A statistical test cannot say whether the hypothesis is correct or not. This cautioning remark is valid for any use of statistical tests (cf. Voß 2004: 421). Their use in linguistic studies should go hand in hand with even greater caution, firstly because one rarely has a satisfyingly representative sample of the whole population ‘language’, as has been pointed out above, and secondly, because of the specific properties of language. In his programmatic article “Language is never, ever, ever random”, Kilgarriff (2005) warns against confidence in the results arrived at using the chi2-test under particular conditions. He notes that four different relations between two phenomena can be distinguished: random, 19

‘Population’ here denotes the statistical sense of the term, i.e. it refers to the total of elements about which one wishes to make statements, using a ‘sample’ which is supposed to constitute a representative, randomly selected part of the population. In the case of corpus linguistics, the ‘population’ is language (the language of a speech-community, of a particular period, of a specific text type − that depends on one’s ultimate descriptive goal), and the sample is the corpus.

Theoretical background and methodology

19

arbitrary, motivated, or predictable. Linguistic investigations normally wish to find out whether a relation is arbitrary or motivated, but this is impossible to model mathematically. What is possible to calculate with considerable certainty is whether a relation is random or not. This can be done using a chi2-test, which can tell us with what kind of probability one would get a certain distribution randomly. If the probability is very low, this can be taken to signify that the relation between the two phenomena is not random. The problem is, according to Kilgarriff, as the title of his paper suggests, that the relations are never, ever, ever random where naturally occurring language is concerned, so that, if a sufficiently large amount of data is considered, the chi2-test will always produce the result that the relation is non-random (Kilgarriff 2005: 263f.). Evert (2006: 185f.) speaks of the “inherent non-randomness of corpus data”. He explains that naturally occurring language shows clustering effects. If, for instance, a lexical item is very rare, the probability assumption underlying statistics would predict that it would not occur more than once in a given document.20 In a particular corpus, however, such a rare lexical item may occur in only one out of 100 documents included in this corpus, but in this document it may be topical and occur ten times. Inclusion or exclusion of this one particular document may thus alter the results concerning this lexical item drastically (cf. Evert 2006: 184f.). Regarding constructions, such as the progressive, the problem is similar. Evert (2006: 187, figure 1) has shown that the distribution of passives in the Brown Corpus shows a much more varied distribution across texts than the random sample model would predict. This is partly explicable by priming effects, that is, if a particular element or construction is used, its recurrence becomes likelier (cf. e.g. Jäger & Rosenbach 2008). It would be possible to work this into a calculation, if one was able to establish a factor which generally captures the differences. Evert (2006: 187) thus has shown that the variation of the passives per text is greater by a factor of two, but this does not allow the generalization that this would be the appropriate factor in studies of other linguistic phenomena. As his further discussion of rare lexical items shows, there are sometimes much more considerable variations between statistical prediction and empirical result. These cautioning remarks notwithstanding, the chi2-test will still be used in the present work, but it should be kept in mind what it can and what it cannot do. It will be assumed that it will tell us whether the idea that a certain distribution is significant − an idea primarily based on other grounds, such as consideration of cognitive plausibility, support from typological general trends etc. − is supported by the quantitative results. Kilgarriff’s (2005) warning is particularly aimed at very large corpora (100 million words and larger), where using the chi2-test will generally produce the result that high frequency items show significant distributions across two variables.21 We do not have such a large 20

21

‘Document’ is used here in the way Evert (2006) uses the term, to define the unit of sampling, i.e. the extracts from particular texts included in a corpus would be referred to as the documents which make up the corpus. For instance, a comparison between the corpora Brown and LOB showed a

The Progressive in Modern English

20

corpus here, and the progressive cannot be deemed a high frequency item in this sense. So, as the corpus is not huge and the element not overly frequent, one can say that if, under such conditions, the chi2-test produces the result ‘non-random’, then this does not merely point to non-randomness but in fact to a high likelihood of a motivated relation. Kilgarriff (2005: 272) proposes the use of large corpora and states: “Where the data is not sparse, the difference between arbitrary and motivated connections is evident in greatly differing relative frequencies.” Since the data for historical periods is, unfortunately, rather scarce as far as computersearchable data bases are concerned, we will have to say that, where the data is rather sparse, a chi2-test that produces the result that we are looking at nonrandom distribution speaks in favor of viewing the distribution as motivated. The result of the chi2-test will be said to be indicative of a significant relation or nonrandom distribution where it allows us to reject the null hypothesis with 95% confidence (as is the general procedure). The results of the chi2-test will only be presented when the conditions for its applicability are met, i.e. that the input fulfills the criteria that all e > 1 and 20% of all e > 5 (Voß 2004: 446f.).22 2.8

Terminology and conventions

The conceptualization of the terms ‘grammaticalization’ and ‘subjectification’ underlying this work has already been clarified in 2.1 and 2.2. A brief comment may be warranted concerning the denomination of the construction under discussion here, which is called the ‘progressive’ throughout the present work. The term has been chosen as it is the most well-established one for a construction which has also been called ‘continuous form’, ‘expanded form’, and ‘definite tense’, to name the most common terms. While a denomination that makes reference to the form of the construction rather than its function, such as ‘expanded form’, may be more neutral, particularly for a construction whose meaning has undergone considerable changes, the fact that the term ‘progressive’ is the most well-established term is considered to overrule this benefit. However, it should be kept in mind that this is purely a denominating convention and not an a priori claim that the construction has the expression of progressive aspect as its basic function. (In particular for earlier periods, this is clearly not the case.) Examples cited in the present work are of three different kinds: invented examples, real occurrences cited in other studies, and evidence from ARCHER-2. The invented examples are mostly found in chapter 3, since it offers an evaluative overview of the existing literature on the present-day progressive and thus the examples cited in chapter 3 mostly originate from these sources or represent only somewhat altered versions. In some cases, I have introduced additional invented

22

significant difference between the use of high frequency items in American and British English (cf. Hofland & Johansson 1982). Their method is criticized by Kilgarriff (2005: 270). The calculation has been effected using a programme by Miguel Quintanilla which works within Excel.

Theoretical background and methodology

21

examples in chapter 3 for the sake of argumentation. These have been checked with a native speaker for their acceptability. It is clear that for a true investigation of the semantics and pragmatics of the progressive, the context is vital, but in many studies of the progressive today, and also in reference grammars and handbooks, a severe weakness is that examples of progressive use are given without sufficient context to let the function of the progressive become apparent. This is particularly true of analyses conducted in formal semantics, where examples are often extremely contrived and thus do not reflect actual usage adequately – a problem which becomes apparent when one compares these examples with the real examples from ARCHER-2. The real occurrences from other sources than ARCHER-2 are cited particularly in chapter 4, where the OE and ME use of the progressive is discussed, since for the study of OE and ME no own data was collected. This type of example is also cited in the following chapters, when preceding studies of the EModE and LModE use of the progressive are evaluated. The examples are cited in the form in which they appear in the literature. Translations of OE and ME examples are mine, unless otherwise noted. The same is true for examples from other languages as well as for direct quotations from scholarly literature written in languages other than English. The majority of the examples cited in the present work originate from ARCHER-2. A great number of examples from ARCHER-2 are cited within the work for the sake of illustration. The examples are cited as they appear in the corpus and are supplied with a reference in the form already used in the examples cited above, e.g. ‘archer\1750-99.bre\1791radc.f3’. The first element refers to the corpus, archer or archerii, but this is not significant and is due to the fact that searches in some half-centuries were carried out on the original version of ARCHER rather than on ARCHER-2 (for practical reasons), but this was only done in those cases where ARCHER and ARCHER-2 are identical. In the remainder of the present work, the corpus will be generally referred to simply as ‘ARCHER’, except when differences between earlier and later versions of the corpus are explicitly addressed. The second element denotes the half-century from which the occurrence originates (in the example, 1750-1799), and the third element shows whether it comes from the British or the American English part of ARCHER. In the present investigation, as has been pointed out, only the British part was used, so the abbreviation here will always read ‘bre’. Then, the exact year of the publication, if known, is supplied (with regard to journals, of the original entry); in the example, this is 1791. Then an abbreviated form of the name of the author is supplied, which stands for a particular text included in ARCHER (in the example ‘radc’ stands for a text by Ann Radcliffe: The Romance of the Forest). The following letter gives information about the genre: d - drama f - fiction

The Progressive in Modern English

22 h - religious sermons j - journals and diaries m - medical texts n - newspaper writing s - scientific texts x - private letters

The last number refers to both period and variety, thus offering no additional information. Below follows an overview:23 0 - British English 1600-1649 1 - British English 1650-1699 2 - British English 1700-1749 3 - British English 1750-1799 5 - British English 1800-1849 6 - British English 1850-1899 8 - British English 1900-1949 9 - British English 1950-1999 A last convention that deserves explanation lies in the reference to predicated situations in the form [Paul work now], i.e. in square brackets with no inflectional morphology or other means of tense/aspect/mood marking. This form of denotation is used when examples are discussed in detail regarding the temporal make-up of the situation represented. In these cases, the ‘situation radical’ (the proposition without any temporal or aspectual marker, the mere lexical elements of reference to a situation in the real world) is presented in this way.24

23 24

Numbers missing from the enumeration (4, 7) refer to American English subperiods and will thus not occur in the present work. This convention appears to be fairly well-established in the literature on tense and aspect, used e.g. by Smith (1997) and Michaelis (2004). One can use this form of denotation for instance to state that a sentence of the form Paul is working contains the proposition that [Paul work] denotes a situation that holds at the moment of speaking.

3.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

For an investigation into the evolution of the functions of the progressive, it is clearly important to state what its functions actually are today. This is, however, not an easy task, since the issue of the present-day functions of the progressive is highly controversial, as will become evident in all sections of this chapter. I will start by looking at the English progressive as an aspectual category (3.1), the meaning most generally attributed to it. The second section (3.2) will concern various semantic concepts which have been associated with the progressive, such as dynamism, agentivity, and overt and covert situations. In many cases contradictory notions have been associated with the use of the progressive, so that many open questions for further investigation using the corpus data will emerge in this part of the discussion. We will then go on to consider subjective meanings of the progressive, such as speaker attitude or the speaker’s desire to portray the situation in a particularly vivid way (3.3). The final section (3.4) will in a way serve as a summary to the present chapter, with a particular focus on the question whether a justified description of the functions of the progressive in PDE can depart from the assumption of one basic meaning (and possibly several secondary meanings derivable from it) or whether a classification of several distinct meanings does more justice to what is actually observable in usage. These questions will only be answered tentatively on the basis of the arguments presented in the relevant literature and will be taken up again in the chapters 5 to 8, where the evaluation of the corpus data is presented. 3.1

The progressive as a marker of aspect

3.1.1

Definitions of aspect

3.1.1.1

The subjective nature of aspect

When one sets out to study the aspectual functions of the English progressive, one soon becomes aware of the problems connected to defining the term ‘aspect’. The widely-used definition given by Comrie (1976: 3f.) is intuitively quite satisfying: “aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation”25 and “the perfective looks at the situation from

25

Comrie uses a slightly modified version of a definition given by Holt (1943: 6), who sees aspect as expressing “les manières diverses de concevoir l’écoulement du procès même”, replacing the term procès by the more general term situation. Comrie is much cited in the literature, but oftentimes it is forgotten to refer to the original source (e.g. in Bache 1997: 258), which is fully credited by Comrie himself.

The Progressive in Modern English

24

outside […], whereas the imperfective looks at the situation from inside”.26 It is criticized by Bache (1997: 258), however, who points out that it is the speaker who chooses to look at a situation in either of these two ways. The subjective element that is inherent to aspectual choice is thus brought out more in Bache’s own definition: “The aspect category is […] basically concerned with how the locutionary agent refers to situations, i.e. situational reference rather than situational referent” (Bache 1997: 259). We will come back to this point again in the following sub-section. 3.1.1.2

Grammatical aspect and situation type

Smith (1983: 479) seems to make a similar point to Bache (1997) when she says that “sentential aspect […] represents the speaker’s choice of perspective on the situation”. Her definition is different from Comrie’s (1976) definition in so far as Smith’s term ‘sentential aspect’ comprises two different aspectual categories, called ‘situation aspect’ and ‘viewpoint aspect’ by Smith (1983: 479),27 which closely interact with one another. The distinction between them is extremely important, and the need for it has been generally recognized at least since the 1970s (cf. e.g. Schopf 1974, Brinton 1988, Binnick 1991, Kortmann 1991, Comrie 1995, Bache 1997, Xiao & McEnery 2005).28 The former, situation aspect, refers to lexically encoded information concerning distinct types of situation, such as states or activities (Smith 1983: 480). Well-known categorizations of such situation types are those of Vendler (1957/1974) and Kenny (1963), but the basic distinction is much older, going back to Aristotle (cf. Binnick 1991: 457f.). 26

27 28

Comrie’s definition is probably the most often cited one, used e.g. as a starting point in Bybee et al.’s (1994) typological investigation into grammaticalization of aspect markers in the languages of the world. See also Smith (1997: 3-134), where she elaborates the system outlined in her 1983 article. One of the few voices arguing in favor of giving up the distinction is Sasse (1991), who states that “[a]spectuality is always a matter of the correlation of lexical semantics and TAM categories”, although he does concede that for certain languages, which clearly encode Aktionsart information lexically and have a grammatical aspect marker, the distinction might seem appropriate (Sasse 1991: 44). Sasse’s criticism is typologically motivated: there are languages which encode all aspectual information grammatically, e.g. Samoan, and languages such as German – ignoring the am Arbeiten sein progressive – which encode all aspectual information on the lexical verb (Sasse 1991: 38-41). Michaelis (2004) makes a similar argument from a construction grammar perspective, but one should note that her own analysis works with the distinction between lexical input to the progressive and coerced outcome in the progressive construction, which seems to be letting in again the aspect– Aktionsart distinction through the back door.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

25

The most widely-used categorization today is probably Vendler’s, which is also at the basis of Smith’s categorization, who, however, adds the category ‘semelfactive’, thus making the categorization more parallel. The following table reproduces Smith’s model, which serves as the basis for my categorization: Table 2: Temporal features of the situation types Situation State

Static [+]

Durative [+]

Telic [-]

Activity

[-]

[+]

[-]

Accomplishment

[-]

[+]

[+]

Semelfactive

[-]

[-]

[-]

Achievement

[-]

[-]

[+] (Smith 1997: 20)

Situation type has been called by various other names, e.g. ‘inherent aspect’ (Givón 2001), ‘action’ (Bache 1997) or, more commonly, ‘Aktionsart’ (e.g. Brinton 1988). In the following, the term ‘situation type’ will be preferred to ‘situation aspect’, because it seems more fitting and less susceptible to confusion. Smith also uses this term, both in her early article (1983) and her later monograph (1997), speaking e.g. of “idealizations of situation types” (Smith 1983: 494). A further advantage of this choice of term is that it is clearly distinct from its counterpart ‘(grammatical) aspect’, that is Smith’s ‘viewpoint aspect’, with which we will be mainly concerned in the rest of this sub-chapter. The term ‘grammatical aspect’ or simply ‘aspect’ is mostly widely used in the literature (e.g. Brinton 1988, Binnick 1991, Bache 1997, Givón 2001, to name just a few) and is therefore preferred here. Various means of distinguishing between the two types of aspectual categories have been brought forward. Quite often, the difference is seen as one between lexical and grammatical means of expression. Brinton (1988: 3) summarizes this view as follows: “Aspect is grammatical because, broadly speaking, it is expressed by verbal inflectional morphology and periphrases, aktionsart by the lexical meaning of verbs and verbal derivational morphology.”29 Chilton (2007: 96) makes a similar point when he states that 29

This is also reflected in Chung and Timberlake’s (1987: 212-240) terminological choice, who distinguish between “lexical aspect” of verbs and predicates (i.e. situation type) on the one hand and “aspect at the proposition level” (i.e. grammatical aspect) on the other. They also state that there is a general tendency for lexical aspect to be marked by prefixes or verbal particles (mostly such with spatial meaning), while “generally […] languages that encode aspect by obligatory choices of verbal morphology make reference to aspect parameters at the level of the proposition” (Chung & Timberlake 1987: 218).

The Progressive in Modern English

26

Aktionsart refers to a “relatively stable conceptual schema” encoded in verbal meanings, whereas aspect refers “to operations on verbal meanings (a crucial part of which is their Aktionsart meaning) that occur through a speaker’s choice of verb morphology and adverbials”. Chilton’s account also already addresses another difference between situation type and grammatical aspect that has often been noted, namely that situation types can be taken to be relatively more fixed by the (typical conceptualization of the) state of things in the world, while aspect is based on the speaker’s subjective viewpoint (cf. e.g. Brinton 1988: 3, Givón 2001: 288).30 As an illustration of this, imagine a situation in the reference world that [Paul run]. This situation is a typical activity, and it would be a very marked choice to view it any differently. Grammatical aspect, on the other hand, is more subjective, more dependent on the view the speaker takes on the situation. Thus, if we talk about a past situation, this event may either be referred to as in (7a) or as in (7b): (7a)

Paul ran.

(7b)

Paul was running.

In (7a), the speaker can be said to “invite[…] the addressee to look at the situation from the outside, as a whole situation”. In (7b) the addressee is invited “to look at the situation from the inside, as something in progression” (Bache 1997: 259). At first glance, these two utterances could refer to the same situation in the real world. But one should note that in context, choice of grammatical aspect is often quite clearly determined by the characteristics of the situation in the world, so that Bache’s (1997: 259) view that the speaker is free to choose how to present the aspectual make up of a certain situation31 is certainly not valid for all cases. Compare the following pair of sentences: (8a) 30

31

Paul ran when he noticed me.

Brinton (1988: 247, note 2), however, adds quite rightly that “[i]n a certain sense, aktionsart is as ‘subjective’ as aspect. That is, in order to name a situation, a speaker must conceptualize that situation in a particular way. Different speakers may choose to conceptualize the same situation differently; for example, ‘dominating’ might be considered either a state or an action.” Still it would seem that speakers are more restricted in their choices here by the realities given in the outside world than in their choice of grammatical aspect. A similar view is advocated by Dagut (1977: 51) who claims that “the fundamental feature of aspect […] is its ‘subjectivity’; that is to say, the selection of one or other [sic!] of the aspect forms depends primarily on the speaker’s intention, on how the speaker regards the event rather than on the supposed actual nature of the event itself.”

The functions of the progressive in present-day English (8b)

27

Paul was running when he noticed me.

In (8a), both events are presented as complete wholes and have no temporal overlap. The first-mentioned event is thus understood to follow the secondmentioned event and pragmatically inferred to have been caused by it. In (8b), however, the running event is presented ‘from the inside’, without a final endpoint, so that the second event falls within its occurrence and possibly – but this has to do with world knowledge and inferences – puts an end to it (e.g. Paul is out in the park, jogging, and pauses when he notices me to say hi). 3.1.1.3

More formalized approaches to aspect

This rather traditional definition of aspect brings out the most important difference between perfective and imperfective aspect. However, it is not without weaknesses. Klein (1994) criticizes the “viewing” metaphor in aspect definitions stating that “it is hard to understand what this metaphor means”, while the terms “from inside” and “from outside” are seen by him as “captur[ing] an important intuition about aspect, but they are hard to make precise” (1994: 28f.). And this is indeed often a problem: Can one, without giving too much room to the subjective interpretation of the individual linguist, use a definition as Comrie’s or Bache’s in the analysis of corpus data? How does one decide whether the speaker ‘invites the addressee to look at the situation from inside or outside’? Obviously, in the majority of cases the distinction between the aspects is less clear-cut than in our example of Paul’s running and meeting someone. As far as general applicability of the definition is concerned, Klein points out that Comrie’s “internal temporal constituency” is difficult to establish for non-dynamic situations. Thus, Comrie’s definition will not help us to establish the difference between the following minimal pair taken from Klein (1994: 29): (9a)

He aimed for a better solution.

(9b)

He was aiming for a better solution.

So how can one make the definition of aspect more universally applicable and more precise? Klein (1994) comes up with a model that furnishes a practicable framework in which to discuss aspect. His approach follows the Reichenbachian tradition of distinguishing three different times. Reichenbach (1947) called these event time, speech time, and reference time. The definition of the first two is quite straight forward and in this respect, there are no significant differences between Reichenbach and Klein. Event time is simply the time at which an event takes place. This corresponds to Klein’s ‘time of situation’. Speech time is the time at which something is said about the situation. This corresponds to Klein’s ‘time of utterance’. In regard to the third temporal parameter, however, Klein’s approach has the advantage of being more precise. A definition of reference time

The Progressive in Modern English

28

is not really provided by Reichenbach, as Klein (1994: 25) points out. It is understood, however, that a reference point is somehow provided by the textual context, as may be seen in this example taken from Klein (1994: 25): (10)

Mary looked pale. She had been very ill.

The event of Mary’s having been ill is located prior to the event of Mary’s looking pale. Both are located before speech time, but the past perfect signals that the second mentioned situation occurred before the former. The immediate reference point of situation B [Mary be ill] is thus situation A [Mary look pale]: it is located before it. However, as Klein notes, this analysis does not work for all naturally occurring sentences. In some cases, a definition of reference point as the time at which some other event occurred cannot be appropriate, e.g. in the following example: (11)

At nine o’clock, Mary had left the building.

As Klein (1994: 25f.) rightly points out, the situation of Mary’s leaving the building is not situated in time through reference to another event. The parameter ‘reference point’ thus remains too vague a notion. Klein therefore proposes ‘topic time’ (TT) as the third parameter next to time of situation (TSit) and time of utterance (TU), and he defines topic time as “the time for which the particular utterance makes an assertion” (Klein 1994: 37). In this view, tense relates TT to TU, while aspect has to do with the relation between TT and TSit (Klein 1994: 6). If we return to our example sentences, we may illustrate this model: in both (7a) Paul ran and (7b) Paul was running, the past tense situates the TT before the TU. An assertion is made by the speaker for a time that precedes the moment of talking about the situation. The simple past views the situation perfectively: the time of situation, TSit, is fully included in topic time, TT. The progressive, on the other hand, views it imperfectively: TT is included within TSit. Based on Klein (1994: 41), this can be visualized as follows: Figure 1: Formalization of aspectual meanings adapted from Klein (1994) Imperfective: --------++++[+++++++]+++--------TSit includes TT Perfective --------------[++++++++]-----------TT includes TSit

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

29

The plus signs indicate one situation, the short lines indicate that this situation no longer holds. The brackets indicate TT. With an imperfective marker, a claim is made about some middle part of the situation, not about its endpoints,32 while a perfective marker makes a claim about the whole of the situation, including its endpoints. Klein’s approach is not without weaknesses either, as has been pointed out by Lucko (1995). Lucko objects that Klein’s system cannot account for uses of the perfect progressive. Klein establishes for the perfect that the TT is after TSit. Now, if the progressive signals that TT is included in TSit and the perfect signals that TT lies after TSit, these two markers should never actually co-occur – which of course they do (Lucko 1995: 173).33 One may still conclude that, in spite of its failure to account for the perfect progressive, Klein’s approach presents a usable framework for the analysis of tense and aspect.34 In regard to the present and past progressives, the analysis of the data will rely on this criterion: a progressive form will be classified as having aspectual, progressive meaning if and only if one can say that TT is included in TSit. But this is not yet a sufficient criterion, since it cannot be used to distinguish progressive meaning from general imperfective meaning. Particularly in view of the discussion whether the English progressive represents a progressive marker or is on its way of becoming a general imperfective marker 32

33

34

This resembles definitions of progressive aspect that come from truthconditional approaches, e.g. Dowty (1977), Johnson (1981: 152-157). We shall discuss these under 3.1.3 in more detail. The combinatory possibilities of the English system present no difficulties for Kortmann’s (1991) model, which understands the perfect as a type of ‘anterior’ which in turn is understood as a realization of the category ‘orientation’, distinct from tense, aspect, and Aktionsart, and freely combinable with markers from these categories (Kortmann 1991: 20-25). Kortmann’s (1991) model does not, however, help to understand what exactly the combination progressive + perfect expresses in English, as he presents only a general overview of the field and does not offer more precise definitions of the members of the categories (the progressive is e.g. simply stated to be a sub-type of imperfective, for which Comrie’s definition is used, i.e. presenting a situation “from within”, cf. Kortmann 1991: 19). A more recent formalized representation of temporal, aspectual, and modal distinctions can be found in Chilton (2007), who presents the model of Discourse Space Theory and shows how it can be applied to the English progressive. The analysis of the progressive is insightful and captures the aspectual function of the construction in present and past tense use very well. Combinations with other markers, such as the perfect or modals, are, however, not dealt with. Furthermore, the model, which represents all linguistic meanings as based on spatial cognition, is highly complex, so that Klein’s formalization has been considered more suitable for being applied to the classification of data.

The Progressive in Modern English

30

(cf. 3.1.2.4), it is important to distinguish between these two meanings clearly in the classification of the instances found in the corpus. We will therefore need to take into account further characteristics and modify the definition by Klein accordingly (cf. 7.1.1). 3.1.2

General imperfective and progressive markers

3.1.2.1

The differences between general imperfective and progressive markers

The term ‘progressive’ is generally used to refer to a subtype of imperfective.35 A good definition, which reflects a widely accepted view of the term, comes from Bybee and Dahl, who define the progressive as “indicating the situation is in progress at reference time” (1989: 55). Put differently, progressive aspect “refers to the combination of (non-habitual) Imperfective aspect with dynamic (as opposed to stative) semantics” (Comrie 1995: 1245). Prototypical progressives are thus used to refer to dynamic situations only. Furthermore, being dynamic, they are generally connected to limited duration (cf. also 3.2.1), not to permanent states of affairs. Progressives, as opposed to general imperfective markers, do not very commonly refer to habits (Dahl 1985/1987: 93). This is not surprising. If a marker is generally used to refer to non-stative situations (namely situations in progress at TT), then the expression of habits – which share many characteristics with statives (cf. Brinton 1987) and are clearly not progressing at a particular moment or period of time – does not fall into the marker’s normal field of use. Through the association of progressives with temporariness, markers of this type can, however, acquire the function to mark temporally limited habits. Once a progressive marker in a particular language spreads to the expression of habitual situations in general, one should stop considering it a progressive and speak of an imperfective marker – a common grammaticalization pathway, which we shall discuss in the following sub-chapter. Another difference between general imperfective and progressive markers lies in the different nature of the alternative choice that exists in the system: languages with a general imperfective will have a perfective marker, while languages with a progressive marker will have a non-progressive, default form.36 35

36

This view is voiced for instance by Smith (1997: 73) who states that “[t]he two most common imperfectives are the general imperfective and the progressive. The former focuses intervals of all situation types; the latter applies only to non-statives.” The progressive is generally recognized as the most common subtype of imperfective (cf. e.g Dahl 2000: 18). Comrie (1976: 25) also suggested the category ‘continuous’, but Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994: 127, 138f.) have not found evidence of such a cross-linguistic type in the languages of the world. Dahl’s typological investigation shows that when a language has a perfective

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

31

Thus, the simple form in English is, of course, not a perfective, as it can cover everything for which the progressive is not an option as well as being an acceptable alternative in a number of cases where a progressive can also be used. Another striking difference can be seen in Dahl’s typological investigation, which shows that also in regard to their formal characteristics, general imperfective and progressive markers vary quite drastically. In his survey of a sample of the languages of the world, he finds that in languages with a progressive marker this marker tends to be a periphrastic expression (18 out of 19 languages in the sample used by Bybee & Dahl 1989), whereas in languages with a general imperfective marker this marker is normally a bound morpheme (seven out of seven languages in their sample) (cf. the table in Bybee & Dahl 1989: 56, which summarizes the results of Dahl 1985). Thus, one should not throw progressive and imperfective together (as unfortunately happens sometimes, cf. Binnick 1991: 154), since they are quite different in nature, both formally and functionally. 3.1.2.2

Clines of grammaticalization of imperfectives and progressives

Although the preceding section has shown that in a synchronic semantic analysis it is helpful to make a clear distinction between imperfectives and progressives, from a grammaticalization perspective, one must note that it is often not possible to draw the lines all that clearly. Dahl (1985/1987: 93) notes that “a category can shift from IPFV [imperfective] to PROG [progressive] or vice versa”. In fact, more recent studies show that it is the development from progressive to general imperfective that is commonly attested (cf. Bybee & Dahl 1989: 56f., Heine 1994: 279f.). Intermediate stages thus also exist, i.e. grammatical markers that can be classified as progressives, although they also have some uses that are rather associated with general imperfective markers, such as reference to stative situations. One might think that this is the stage the English progressive has reached, since it is occasionally used for habits (cf. e.g. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik 1985: 199), as in the following example: vs. imperfective distinction it is normally not possible to choose one of the members of this pair as unmarked, while in languages that have a progressive category, “the marking relations are much clearer in that the ‘durative’ member of the opposition is in fact always marked” (Dahl 1985/1987: 72f.). With regard to present tense use in English, Smith (1997: 185f.) points out, however, that the progressive is rather the default choice when a situation that holds at the present moment is referred to, while the simple present is restricted to the expression of habits and general truths. While the present would seem to be a typical context for the use of the progressive (cf. also Nehls 1974: 60-63), one should note that the simple present can also make reference to actual situations, as long as they are statives, e.g. I feel tired, and also in other specific contexts, such as sports commentaries (cf. Scheffer 1975: 115-123).

The Progressive in Modern English

32 (12)

Mary’s working at the library this semester.

However, in this use the progressive typically refers to habits of limited duration (as in example 12), so that it still exhibits a trait associated with progressives rather than with general imperfectives (cf. Heine 1994: 280). One can see that the typical direction of the diachronic development is related to the formal characteristics observed by Dahl (1985/1987), i.e. that imperfectives are typically expressed by bound morphemes, and progressives by periphrasis – the greater degree of boundedness reflecting the more advanced grammaticalization process (cf. Bybee & Dahl 1989: 56). The meaning change from progressive to imperfective can be understood as a change that exhibits greater generalization and loss of specific meanings, which is also typical of later stages of grammaticalization (Bybee & Dahl 1989: 56, cf. also 2.1). In regard to the progressive–general imperfective cline one may, then, speak of “focal points where phenomena may cluster” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 6). There are prototypical progressives that are only documented in uses that are clearly dynamic, ongoing situations. They often do not have a complete paradigm and are restricted in use (e.g. in Standard Italian stare + gerund).37 Compared to this the English progressive has a much more extended application (cf. Heine 1994: 280). At the extreme right-end of the cline, we then find long grammaticalized imperfectives such as the French imparfait. 3.1.2.3

The English progressive today – general imperfective or progressive?

We have already mentioned possible evidence suggesting that the progressive form in PDE apparently cannot be regarded as a prototypical progressive any longer, as it is used in a much greater variety of contexts than just for the expression of dynamic situations ongoing at TT. At the same time, one must stress that when used with statives and habits, the English progressive generally refers only to temporary situations. So the next step in the cline, as postulated by Heine, has not yet been reached, as this involves the loss of association with limited duration (Heine 1994: 280). The question is therefore whether the extension of the uses of the progressive construction is so far advanced as to make it more plausible to speak of a general imperfective. Different scholars have answered this question in different ways. Hirtle (1967), Goyvaerts (1968), Hirtle and Bégin (1990), Goosens (1994), Bache (1997), and Williams (2002) all refer to the function (or one function) of the progressive as expressing imperfective aspect. Sometimes this merely reflects a different kind of terminological choice, as some scholars 37

The stare + gerund construction in Italian is grammaticalized to very different degrees in the different dialects, typically having much more extended uses in the southern dialects e.g. in Napoletano, Calabrese (cf. Rohlfs 1969: 108).

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

33

use the term ‘imperfective’ in a more general sense that covers both general imperfective markers and progressive markers.38 Among the scholars referred to above, only Goosens (1994) explicitly states that the English progressive has broadened its functional scope (compared to a typical progressive) sufficiently to be already viewed as an imperfective, albeit an “incipient (and) partial realization […] of the imperfective” (1994: 165). He correctly points out that “the specific meaning contribution is not always “progressive” (in the sense that the state of affairs is viewed as “going on” or “in progress”)” (1994: 169). However, the English construction still has characteristics which are more typical of progressive than of general imperfective markers, such as its association with dynamism, which Goosens (1994) also addresses. Other linguists have expressed the view that the English progressive construction should be classified as a marker of progressive, not general imperfective, aspect. Thus, Comrie (1976: 25), who makes an explicit distinction between different types of imperfective markers, classifies English as possessing a marker of progressive aspect as in the example John was working (when I entered). He stresses, however, that the English progressive form has a particularly wide semantic range for a progressive marker, being also used with “lexically stative verbs used dynamically” and for temporary habits (Comrie 1995: 1245, cf. also Comrie 1976: 33). Ljung (1980: 27) sees the progressive as “a special imperfective construction which allows us to view a dynamic, nonstate, predicate ‘from within’ without loosing [sic!] its dynamic character”. Dahl (2000: 21) also states that English is one of the few European languages that has a “[f]ully grammaticalized progressive”. However, all three authors are highly aware of the fact that the English progressive construction is used in a greater variety of contexts than is typical of a progressive marker.39 38

39

Hirtle (1967) uses the terms ‘imperfective’ and ‘progressive’ more or less as synonyms in his discussion of the English system. It is, however, evident that in his view the English progressive rather functions like a typical progressive, since he says that it is not used to refer to states (Hirtle 1967: 27 and passim). Hirtle and Bégin (1990) continue this idea in their analysis of the development of using the progressive of the verb be, which will be discussed in 6.8. Goyvaerts (1968) also would not seem to see the English progressive as a general imperfective, in our understanding of the term, as he points out that it is normally not used with reference to habits (1968: 119). Dahl corroborates Comrie’s (1976) classification of the English progressive as extended progressive in his survey of tense and aspect in the languages of the world, where the English progressive “ranks as third in frequency among the PROG categories in the material” (Dahl 1985/1987: 94). The study is based on sentences elicited through a questionnaire from native speakers of over 60 languages from all the large language families. Among the more unusual uses of the English progressive, Dahl (1985/1987: 93f.) notes uses with verbs of saying, reportive present, and uses of the perfect progressive.

The Progressive in Modern English

34

Smith (1997: 171) also states that “the main English imperfective is a progressive, available neutrally only for non-stative events”. Building on her categorization of situation types, which has been summarized in table 2, she shows that the English progressive can easily be used with activities (Mary was walking in the park) and accomplishments (Sam was eating an apple) but does not normally occur with statives (*He is knowing the answer) nor with semelfactives (a sentence like Jane was knocking at the door is no longer semelfactive, but iterative). But in fact the English progressive can also be used with certain stative predicates. Smith recognizes this and provides examples of this use, as in the example rendered in (13) below (taken from Smith 1997: 11). (13)

Peter is believing in ghosts these days.

Discussing the example in (13), Smith states that sentences of this kind should be understood as marked uses. Using the progressive here produces a presentation of a state as an event – since the progressive is normally reserved for events, it endows the states with the dynamism of an event (Smith 1997: 11). It is not quite clear to what extent the use of the progressive in (13) presents the state as dynamic (the situation is presented as temporary but not as requiring an input of energy), but it certainly seems right to call this a marked use. However, certain other stative situations occur much more frequently in the progressive, as the examples below (taken from Smith 1997: 173) illustrate: (14a) Your drink is sitting on the table. (14b) The picture was hanging on the wall. (14c) The statue was sitting on the corner. According to Smith (1997: 173), these examples actually illustrate a different grammatical marker, the “resultative imperfective viewpoint which appears with verb constellations of position and location”, where “the viewpoint focuses an interval that follows a change of state into the position. The interval is not dynamic.” It is supposedly coincidental that “[s]entences with this viewpoint have the same form as progressives” (Smith 1997: 173). In order to decide whether the sentences rendered in (14a) to (14c) could truly be read as resultatives, it would be necessary to provide a more extended context − a general weakness of many of the invented examples used in the literature. With regard to examples with agentive subjects, this analysis becomes even less convincing: (15)

John was sitting in the chair.

Here, Smith (1997: 173) claims that this sentence is ambiguous between a resultative and a stative reading. A few native speakers with whom I have

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

35

checked shared my view that only the latter reading is acceptable. The other meaning is normally expressed in English by John was sitting down in the chair or a similar phrase where the ‘resultative’ component is expressed lexically. To conclude, it does not seem possible to explain away the common occurrence of progressives with certain stative predicates through recourse to this resultative analysis. The question whether the English progressive is developing or has developed into something closer akin to a general imperfective than to a typical progressive thus remains a legitimate one to ask. 3.1.2.4

Specific aspectual meanings: time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’

Some descriptions of the meaning of the progressive form in English have an understanding of it that is even more specific than regarding it as a subtype of imperfective limited to dynamic situations. There are thus several analyses of the English progressive which attribute to it a function which can be understood as specific subtype of progressive meaning. Thus, Jespersen (1931: 180) views the progressive, as is well-known, as an expression of a “temporal frame encompassing something else which as often as not is to be understood from the whole situation”. There are, of course, actual uses of the progressive for which this is a fitting description. Thus, the progressive in example (8b) can be felicitously classified as an expression of a time-frame, where [Paul run] provides a frame for [Paul notice]. To see the temporal frame as the only function of the progressive does not, however, work very well for all examples, e.g. for the following: (16)

Paul’s dissertation is not coming along all that well. He’s been sick for a while.

In such a use of the progressive, one cannot really see that another event is encompassed by the situation referred to by the predicate in the progressive. Nehls (1974: 80ff.) also criticizes Jespersen for overgeneralizing one particular use of the progressive, as does Leech, who points out that [t]he temporal frame effect is not an independent feature of the Progressive form’s meaning; it follows, rather, from the notion of ‘limited duration’. Whenever a point of time or an event is in a contemporaneous relation with a happening of duration, it is natural that the durational happening should overlap the durationless event or point in both directions. Leech (1987: 22) We shall look at the importance of the notion of ‘duration’ in 3.2.1. As far as the time-frame hypothesis is concerned, one might still assume that the use of the progressive for the expression of time-frames is predominant or prototypical in some way, and we shall search the data for evidence of this.

The Progressive in Modern English

36

Although Nehls (1974) discusses a variety of different functions, he seems to accord particular significance to the function which he calls ‘Aktuelles Präsens’, and which is in fact a subtype of the time-frame function (which itself may be understood as a subtype of the progressive function). The ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ is understood as an independent category defined as answering the question “What are you doing right now?” (Nehls 1974: 60).40 Nehls divides the contexts of the present-day progressive into those in which using the progressive or the simple form results in clear semantic differences and those in which the two can alternate with only subtle differences in meaning. Among the former, the use of the progressive for the ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ is the most clear-cut case, as it is basically the only context where the use of the progressive is obligatory in PDE (cf. Nehls 1974: 63). The contrast to the simple form in present tense, dynamic predicates is clear: The progressive refers to something happening at the moment of speaking, while the simple form produces a habitual reading, as in the following minimal pair: (17a) Paul plays tennis. (17b) Paul is playing tennis. The use of the progressive in (17b) would indeed seem to be obligatory in PDE if one wishes to refer to a situation ongoing at the speaker’s origo. That the use of the progressive in such contexts can be subsumed under time-frame is evident from Jespersen’s diagram (1931: 180): Figure 2: Jespersen’s (1931) time-frame diagram he is writing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(he has begun writing) NOW (he has not stopped writing) he was writing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(he had begun writing) THE MOMENT (he had not stopped writing) OF MY ENTERING But there is a clear difference between use in the present tense and in the past tense sphere. If one transposes the example in (17) into the past tense, one notes that here the speaker is not obliged to use the progressive. In the past, a simple form can also refer to a situation viewed without its final endpoint, as can be seen from the following pair in (18): 40

One might want to phrase it more generally and say that it answers the question “What’s happening right now?”.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

37

(18a) Paul played tennis, while Sue talked to the coach.41 (18b) Paul was playing tennis, while Sue talked to the coach. The special status of present expressions is not all that surprising, if one looks at correlations between aspect and temporal reference. Raith (1968/1974) already states: “Die Gegenwart ist immer imperfektiv” (‘The present moment is always imperfective’) (cf. also Chung & Timberlake 1987: 206). Dahl (1985/1987: 94) has found that there are time-restricted progressives in certain languages (i.e. progressive markers that can only be used with certain tenses) and assumes, on the basis of his data, that “if there is a restriction on temporal reference in a progressive, it is to the present”. In a way, this may seem puzzling. If the present is, in its very nature, imperfective – Bache (1997: 292) speaks of an “incompatibility relation between present time and perfectivity” – one would expect that there is no need for the common use of an imperfective marker particularly in this tense. An answer might come from the semantic difference between general imperfective and progressive markers: contrary to general imperfectives, progressive markers express more than mere unboundedness of a situation. They add the information that the situation is currently (during TT) in progress. This can be very valuable information when talking about situations in the present, since the present tense can also cover other kinds of situations – general truths, habits, generic statements (cf. Bybee et al. 1994: 152). Thus, two main questions crystallize from this overview of the aspectual function of the progressive, which will be addressed in the analysis of the data. Firstly, we will investigate whether changes in the use of the English progressive are far-reaching enough to conclude that the construction is rather a general imperfective marker than a progressive marker in PDE. And secondly, we will examine whether among the examples where be + v-ing expresses progressive aspect, we can make out typical contexts – be it ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ or generally the use to refer to a temporal frame. 3.1.3

The ‘imperfective paradox’

The use of a form as a marker of imperfective aspect goes hand in hand with its use to refer to incomplete situations when occurring with specific situation types. Some scholars have thus pointed out that the reference to incomplete situations is an important function of the progressive. Leech (1987), for instance, sees incompletion as one of three main aspects of meaning of the progressive, together with duration and limited duration, which we will discuss in the following chapter. 41

This example shows that Palmer’s (1988: 55) view that “[t]he non-progressive specifically excludes overlap, as is shown where a number of actions are reported” is not tenable in its generality.

38

The Progressive in Modern English

One should stress that incompletion can only play a role where a situation type in its idealized representation has a natural endpoint. If one follows Vendler’s categorization, this is the case for accomplishments and achievements but not for states and activities (cf. Vendler 1957/1974). Achievements have been claimed to occur rarely in the progressive (Dowty 1977: 49). This would seem to be plausible, since they lack duration and are thus difficult to view imperfectively.42 However, Vlach (1981: 279) has pointed out that “there seems to be nothing odd or unusual about such sentences as Max is dying, Max is winning, or Max is reaching the top”. One may argue with Smith (1997) that these no longer constitute achievements but ought to be considered as ‘derived accomplishments’. This is actually supported by Vlach’s analysis, as it stresses the similarity between achievements and accomplishments in the progressive. In his analysis, which is based on the idea that “the progressive of φ says that Proc [φ] is going on”, he offers the common analysis for both telic situation types: “For achievements and accomplishments, Proc [φ] is a process that leads to the truth of φ” (Vlach 1981: 288). But the definition of ‘achievement’ is that it is [- durative]. Thus, as soon as the process leading up to the change of state is included in view, as in Max is winning, we should instead speak of an accomplishment situation type: the speaker refers to a situation in which an activity is in progress that is related to achieving the eventual change of state expressed neutrally by [Max win]. This is exactly the same as what we find with primary or original accomplishment predicates such as [Max build a house], which, as Vlach (1981) points out, can be understood as containing diverse activities (putting stones on one another, sawing wood, hammering etc.) which are related to achieving the eventual result (cf. also Michaelis 2004). But one does not need to conclude from this that the function of the progressive is to change the situation type (as Vlach 1981 does, who assumes that the progressive turns all situations into statives). Instead, one can stick with the analysis of the progressive as a marker of aspect (following Klein 1994) and combine it with the insights from Smith (1997) that situation type and grammatical aspect considerably interact with one another. Accomplishments are situations that consist of (1) an activity or a set of activities and (2) a change of state which is the result of these activities. So, when the speaker chooses to exclude the final endpoint (i.e. the change of state) from TT, all one is left with is an assertion of the activity or activities which would typically lead up to the change of state. No claim is made, however, about the reaching of the change of state. We can thus assume that telic situations expressed in the progressive are generally to be considered accomplishments, since they consist of an activity part 42

If one dislikes the viewing metaphor, the same claim can be made within Klein’s framework: if the situation is of momentary duration only, the speaker would not normally make a claim about only some internal part of this situation. Put differently, in order to get a TT that lies within the TSit, TSit must be conceived of as having a certain duration.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

39

and a change of state part and not just of a non-durative change of state. There might be exceptions where the progressive refers to a true achievement, as in the following construed example: (19)

Mary was just noticing the spot on her blouse, when her mother began to chide her for it.

But this would seem rather artificial, and we will have to see whether such examples actually occur in the data. Our analysis predicts that in general, imperfective markers should refer to incomplete situations when combined with accomplishments and thus exhibit the ‘imperfective paradox’. If one compares the following examples, all referring to a similar scenario, one can see that both the French imparfait, the French progressive construction with être en train de,43 and the Italian progressive construction with stare + gerundio express the same incompletion of the situation as the English progressive: (20a) Paul préparait une surprise pour Jeanne, quand elle rentra. (20b) Paul était en train de préparer une surprise pour Jeanne, quand elle rentra. (20c) Paolo stava preparando una sorpresa per Gianna quando è ritornata a casa. (20d) Paul was preparing a surprise for Jean when she came back home. However, it seems that only the English progressive has attracted major scholarly attention for this phenomenon,44 which has become known as the “imperfective paradox”, due to Dowty’s seminal article (1977). The paradox lies in the fact that the speaker chooses an accomplishment predicate, which normally should make reference to the reaching of a result-state, but this result-state, as we have said, is ‘excluded from view’ through the choice of the progressive, or, as Dowty puts it, “this entailment that such a result-state comes about […] fails when the accomplishment verb phrase appears in a progressive tense” (1977: 46). How, then, does a speaker decide when he can felicitously refer to a situation in such a 43

44

One might find that the progressive marker conveys the idea of ‘interruption’ by the situation referred to in the following predicate more strongly than the imperfective marker. This most likely has to do with the dynamic character of progressive markers: they express that the situation was dynamically in progress at the time when the next event occurred. Thus, the ‘imperfective paradox’ presents itself more obviously in uses of progressive than general imperfective markers. Higginbotham (2004) is an exception, discussing the phenomenon also from a crosslinguistic point of view.

The Progressive in Modern English

40

way even though s/he may know (as in the examples in 20) that the result-state contained in the predicate in its neutral form, [Paul prepare a surprise], is never reached? The intuitive solution to this problem, namely to refer to the intention of the agent, has been found inadequate by Dowty, who presents examples with inanimate subjects where clearly intention cannot play a role. His eventual solution makes use of a branching time model and states basically that for a progressive operator to be truthfully applied to an accomplishment predicate, the result-state must hold in one of the possible futures of the situation referred to (cf. Dowty 1977: 62-66). Scholars have revisited the imperfective paradox ever since, having found ‘loop-holes’ in Dowty’s analysis that they wanted to remedy or criticizing the idea of inertial worlds as “not correctly defined” (Asher 1992: 465; cf. also Glasbey 1996: 331-338 for a summary of the most influential analyses). These analyses have come up with quite diverse answers:45 Asher thus offers the concept of default outcomes, i.e. that if an accomplishment can be expressed with the progressive aspect, we conclude that the result-state will be reached in the future unless we are told otherwise (Asher 1992: 470). Landman (1992) suggests a refinement on the idea of possible worlds. He proposes that in order to find out whether an accomplishment in the progressive can be true, one always needs to go to the closest possible world, “and you continue until either in some world it doesn’t stop (and then you stay in that world) or, the more normal case, your [sic!] reach a point where going to the closest world is no longer reasonable and you stop there” (1992: 27). The problem is that the more applicable to actual usage these analyses get, the less formalizable the involved concepts become, which is apparent in Landman’s analysis of the following examples: (21)

Mary was crossing the street (when she was hit by a truck).

(22)

Mary was wiping out the Roman army.

Landman’s proposal is basically that the reason a sentence like (21) can be truthfully uttered, but not the sentence in (22), lies in the idea that the former example refers to a “kind of process of which it is normally reasonably within 45

A pseudo-solution comes from Gabbay and Moravcsik (1980: 70), who, after presenting an analysis of situation types that is not fully convincing, claim that “[their] analysis can resolve the problem mentioned by Dowty 1977” but then go simply on to state: “Since drawing a circle is a process VP from John was drawing a circle it does not follow that John drew a circle. Pushing a cart, however, is not a process VP, hence from John was pushing a cart it does follow that John pushed a cart” (1980: 70). This is, however, not a solution to the imperfective paradox but simply a reformulation of one of its characteristics. Obviously, the paradox only occurs with, to use their terminology, processes (i.e. accomplishments in Vendler’s terminology). Dowty (1977) was also fully aware of that.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

41

Mary’s capacity that she will complete it” (1992: 25). This may well be right, but one should point out that within a formal semantic framework it is hardly an appropriate concept, since the notion of “what it is reasonable to assume” is too vague to be formalizable and therefore too vague to yield the kind of general predictions that truth-conditional semantics aims at (cf. also Portner 1998: 766). More clarification of the relation between situation types and the progressive comes from Smith (1997), who views “nothing paradoxical” about the imperfective paradox (1997: 83). Smith supposes that “[s]ituation type is transparent to the receiver whatever the viewpoint of a sentence” (1997: 83). Receivers of a sentence like the one in (23) below know that only part of the event is semantically visible. (23)

We were walking to school.

But, according to Smith, they know at the same time what type of an event it is, namely one that is telic, with a natural final endpoint. She explains this with reference to what we may call ‘general vagueness’ in language use: The problem, I take it, is to recognize that a fraction of an event belongs to a larger event. In fact we make such conclusions all the time on the basis of partial knowledge. If I see Jane walking along a certain street early in the morning, I may think that she is walking to school. […] Of course I may be wrong. The point is that people often categorize events without full, conclusive evidence of their nature. (Smith 1997: 83)46 Smith claims that this is also true of non-telic situations. One should note, however, that there is a difference between accomplishments viewed imperfectively and ‘being wrong’ because one has categorized a situation on the basis of only partial evidence. ‘Being wrong’ is always possible, regardless of the situation type. Using a progressive although the telic end-state included in the meaning of the lexical predicate never becomes true (and still ‘being right’) is, however, a characteristic limited to accomplishments. Thus, if a speaker says something like “Mary and Anne were walking to school” (adapting example 23), s/he may be considered to have made a correct assertion if Mary and Anne were indeed walking to school at TT, even if they later were kidnapped and never 46

A similar idea is mentioned by Girard (2002: 91) who asserts that “il y a bien une inférence à partir de données incomplètes, et possibilité donc d’erreur d’appréciation” (‘there is in fact an inference on the basis of incomplete information and thus the possibility of being mistaken’). Imagining a context where a movie shows a person who almost drowns but then is saved, she asserts, quite rightly to my mind, that while when first seeing the film, one may exclaim “He’s drowning!”, one would not say so when watching the film a second time.

The Progressive in Modern English

42

arrived at school. On the other hand, the speaker may be said to have inadvertently made a false asssertion if in fact Mary and Anne never intended to walk to school but were really on their way to the park. One finds examples in the literature that further speak against the analysis suggested by Smith, such as the following example by Asher (1992: 406): (24)

Irene is cooking fish stew, but the cat is eating the fish.

This is problematic for Smith’s idea of a wrong classification of an event on the basis of only partial information, since a speaker who utters (24) would in fact already know all the facts and just chooses to present them in a certain way, e.g. for comic effect.47 Asher (1992: 406) chooses this example to demonstrate that an analysis using inertia worlds cannot work, as it would not be able to account for the occurrence of (24). The example presents no problem for his default analysis: one can paraphrase it as ‘Irene is doing something that would normally lead to a fish stew being cooked, the cat is doing something that would normally lead – and in the given context probably will – to the fish being eaten’. Wulf (2009) does not accept this analysis. The analysis he proposes instead for examples of the ‘imperfective paradox’ assumes an underlying ‘except’-structure, i.e. example (24) is understood by him as expressing the idea that ‘Irene is cooking fish stew, except that the cat is eating the fish’ (similarly, the second progressive is read as expressing that ‘the cat is eating the fish, except if Irene stops it’). But one would then need an explanation as to where this ‘except’-reading comes from, since no overt element in the sentence expresses it. Wulf (2009: 217) hypothesizes that uses of the progressive with accomplishment predicates followed by a whenclause or a clause introduced by but function as markers of the exceptive construction. However, the idea of interruption, and thus of eventual noncompletion of the event, does not emerge from all such uses, as the following example indicates: (25)

Mike was knitting a sweater, when Sue came home.

After hearing or reading (25), one would not be surprised to hear later that Mike continued knitting and actually finished the sweater that night, while the examples in (18) and in (24) imply that at least one of the end states is extremely unlikely to be reached. The progressive simply does not refer to the endpoints of a situation. If the speaker chooses not to make any claim about an endpoint, it 47

A similar point is made by Girard (2002: 92), who, in her discussion of an example similar to (21), explains that a narrator, fully aware that the subject of the sentence is about to be hit by a truck and never makes it to the other side of the street, may choose to present the events in exactly such a way that the reader first assumes the subject will finish crossing the street, thereby achieving a more dramatic mise en scène.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

43

might be because s/he wishes to convey that the point was never reached. But this does not need to be the motivation for using an imperfective or progressive aspect with an accomplishment predicate. As in the “knitting” example, the motivation might simply be to state that a certain situation [Mike knit a sweater] was in progress as another event [Sue come home] occurred, without making any sort of prediction about the first situation reaching its endpoint. A valid solution to the paradox is presented by Michaelis (2004) in the framework of construction grammar. Some kinds of lexical input immediately fit the construction in which they are used, e.g. when an activity is referred to by using a progressive construction. If, on the other hand, the semantic properties of the lexical content that fills the construction are somehow in conflict with the semantic properties of the construction, some sort of resolution needs to be arrived at. Michaelis (2004: 25) speaks of ‘the override principle’, which she describes as follows: “[I]f a lexical item is semantically incompatible with its morphosyntactic context, the meaning of the lexical item conforms to the meaning of the structure in which it is embedded.” In the case of the progressive, this is achieved via what Michaelis terms ‘type-shifting’. The progressive construction is seen as requiring an activity radical as its input.48 When it is used with another situation type, a shift occurs. States are claimed to be turned into activities.49 In the case of accomplishments, consisting of two components (activity and change of state), a process called ‘permutation’ allows only the former component to be chosen by the progressive construction, so that a speaker only makes reference to the ‘preparatory activity’ that the accomplishment entails. It logically follows that the speaker does not make any claim concerning the culmination of the activity in a final result (cf. Michaelis 2004: 34-41). It is therefore not a question of ‘being wrong’ if the result does not occur, since the speaker never claimed that it would. The effect with an achievement radical is rather similar, albeit requiring an additional step: [T]he interpreter of a progressive-form achievement predication is induced to “find” an activity phase within an event which would otherwise represent a momentaneous transition. An achievement predication which entails the occurrence of a preparatory activity is for all intents and purposes an accomplishment: the sentences She was winning the race and She was fixing the fence are identical so far as the contribution of the progressive is concerned. (Michaelis 2004: 40)

48

49

A situation type radical is understood as the basic situation type a verbargument structure would have without any tense or aspect marker, e.g. the radical [Mary run] denotes an activity, the radical [Mary run home] an accomplishment (cf. Michaelis 2004: 3). This hypothesis will be dealt with in detail in 3.2.2.1.

The Progressive in Modern English

44

Michaelis’ (2004) account is seen as an adequate solution to the imperfective paradox. It is compatible with the analysis given by Chilton (2007) within the framework of DST (Discourse Space Theory), which also provides a coherent picture of the different outcomes of the interaction of the progressive with the various situation types (in a more formalized way). Although these two approaches already provide a good description, a data-based look at actual uses of the progressive with telic situation types will nevertheless be very profitable, since it can show us by what factors the choice of a progressive with an accomplishment input is actually determined. One still open question is, for instance: Do accomplishment and achievement radicals occur equally readily with the progressive in PDE? Since the coercion mechanism described by Michaelis is more complex in regard to achievement predicates, this situation type may be harder to combine with a progressive construction. Furthermore, it would be worthwhile to see whether, in actual use, there is evidence for a default of the kind proposed by Asher (1992), or whether the progressive aspect is in fact typically chosen when the speaker wishes to convey that the situation thus expressed gets interrupted in its course (as suggested by Wulf’s (2009) idea of an ‘exceptive construction’). Naturally occurring examples will give us a better idea about the interaction between progressive aspect and accomplishment situation type than the constructed (often very artificial) example sentences that the literature on the ‘imperfective paradox’ uses. 3.2

The progressive and the nature of the situation

Besides definitions that classify the English progressive strictly as an aspectual marker, other analyses focus on particular properties of the situation that determine whether or not it is referred to using a progressive. There are four main motivating factors which have been suggested as significant in this context. These have to do firstly with duration, secondly with stativity and dynamism, thirdly with agentivity, and finally with the overt/covert nature of an event. 3.2.1

Duration

3.2.1.1

The progressive and reference to duration

Among the factors discussed in this chapter, duration is most closely linked to the ideas treated in the preceding chapter. Actually, sometimes the term ‘durative’ is simply used as a synonym of what we call the ‘progressive function’ (e.g. by Hatcher 1951/1974). Other authors indeed make the claim that there is a strong association between progressive use and the (actual or conceptualized) duration of an event. Palmer (1988: 36), for instance, stresses that when a progressive is used, “attention is drawn” to the fact that the situation has duration.50 With regard 50

In this regard, Palmer’s analysis of the progressive is highly reminiscent of the view already expressed by Jespersen (1931: 180) that “[t]he expanded tenses

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

45

to habitual (simple present) vs. non-habitual (progressive) use in the present, the relevant concept in Palmer’s view is duration: “[T]he simple form merely reports an activity, while the progressive specifically indicates duration or some feature closely associated with it” (1988: 58). There are, however, examples of progressive uses for which the concept of increased ‘attention to duration’ is not an adequate explanation. Consider the following pair taken from Palmer (1988: 75): (26a) I wonder whether he’ll come. (26b) I’m just wondering whether he’ll come. Palmer (1988: 75) wishes to explain the use of the progressive in (26b) as indicating “mere duration or limited duration”. But the difference between (26a) and (26b) rather seems to lie in the fact that (26b) expresses (26a) in a more tentative way (cf. Quirk et al 1985: 210). The (intuitive?) addition of the downtoner just that Palmer made to the example cited in (26a) (which he does not explain) points in a similar direction. There is no reason to assume that a speaker who utters (26b) wishes to lay a focus on the duration of the situation expressed by [I wonder]. One can thus share the view of Van Ek (1969: 582) who criticizes Palmer for his “extreme” attempt to derive all uses of the progressive from the meaning ‘duration’. A possible conclusion is that the idea of the progressive expressing ‘duration’ can be accepted in a somewhat modified version: The progressive does not serve to express duration, but it can only be applied to events which have enough duration to be viewed in the way formulated by Klein (cf. 3.1.1.3). The duration of the situation must be long enough to be divisible, i.e. the speaker must be able to make a claim only about a part of the situation and not about some other part (the latter including the final points of the situation). One could assume that certain events are so short that they are never viewed in the progressive aspect. Instead, when a progressive marker is used with a typical semelfactive predicate (i.e. single-stage events with no result or outcome) such as [cough], this results in a situation type change, leading to the semelfactive’s re-interpretation as multiple-event activity (cf. Smith 1997: 29f., cf. also Chilton 2007: 104), as the following example shows: (27)

Mary was coughing (for five minutes).

An alternative view would be to suggest that it all depends on the speaker’s conception of a situation. One can imagine a counter-example, such as:

[…] call the attention more specially to time than the simple tenses, which speak of nothing but the action or state itself.”

The Progressive in Modern English

46 (28)

Our Scots speaker pronounced the word containing the phoneme we were most interested in just as Mary was coughing.

While (27) expresses an activity consisting of multiple sub-events, (28) more likely refers to a single instance of Mary coughing, thus still to a semelfactive. The latter example is, of course, an invented one, just like the example of an achievement in the progressive given in (19), and we will have to see whether any such examples of the non-durative situation types semelfactive and achievement occur with the progressive in the data without a change of situation type (to multiple-event activity viz. to accomplishment). The results of the corpus analysis by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) indicate that such uses are rare in PDE, but the present study will be able to add a more detailed qualitative analysis of such uses as well as a diachronic dimension of analysis (cf. 6.7, 7.1.5). 3.2.1.2

The progressive and reference to limited duration

Some authors have claimed that the basic meaning of the progressive is “transient/non-permanent duration” (Mufwene 1984: 36),51 while others merely understand the progressive as closely associated with situations of limited duration (e.g. Buyssens 1968: 38; for a general overview of this view in the literature, cf. Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 23-25). While the stronger claim – that limited duration constitutes the basic meaning – cannot rival the analysis by Klein (1994), there is certainly some truth in the latter idea. This is supported by the findings of Biber et al. (1999: 473), who have shown that the progressive hardly ever occurs with verbs that denote states of unlimited duration, such as that expressed, for example, by the verb believe. We have in fact seen that this verb can occur with progressive aspect, as in (13), repeated below: (29)

Peter is believing in ghosts these days.

However, (29) represents a rather exceptional use of the verb, as believe in the context denotes a state-of-affairs of more limited duration than would be typical of the verb. An approach to this apparent relation between progressive use and limited duration which has been widely discussed (cf. e.g. König 1980, CouperKuhlen 1995, Núñez Pertejo 2004a) comes from Joos (1964), who calls the progressive “temporary aspect” and explains: 51

A similar point is made by Broccias (2008) in his discussion of the progressive in as- and while-clauses expressing simultaneity. Broccias understands the progressive as marking imperfective aspect in as-clauses but as typically expressing transience in while-clauses. Broccias proposes that the overall meaning of the progressive is essentially constituted by these two components, imperfectivity and “susceptibility to change” (2008: 169).

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

47

[T]emporary aspect means: Assuming that the prediction is completely valid for the time principally referred to, then it is 99 percent probably valid […] for certain slightly earlier and later times, it is 96 percent probably valid for times earlier and later by somewhat more than that, and so on until the probability of its validity has diminished to zero […] for times sufficiently earlier and later. (Joos 1964: 107) One may immediately point out that Joos’ approach does not fare much better than Palmer’s at explaining the difference between I wonder and I’m wondering as exhibited in example (26). Furthermore, his analysis would seem to work well only for present tense uses where the simple form generally expresses generic statements, habits, general truths etc., whereas the progressive refers to an actual occurrence, as one can see in (17). But Joos’ analysis fails as soon as we look at the same example in a past tense context, as in (18), both repeated below: (30a) Paul plays tennis. (30b) Paul is playing tennis. (31a) Paul played tennis, while Sue sunbathed. (31b) Paul was playing tennis, while Sue sunbathed. In the past tense, the proposition [Paul play tennis] is claimed to be true for the same time span in both the progressive and the simple occurrence, the only distinction being that in (31a) it is presented with its final endpoint, just like the situation [Sue sunbathe], while in (31b) it is presented without its final endpoint. Leech (1987: 19) states that while the progressive gives more duration to ‘event verbs’, the duration expressed by ‘state verbs’ is “compressed” when they are used in the progressive.52 He stresses the expression of limited duration as one of the major functions of the progressive, however (1987: 31). This function is visible in the context of stative situation types as well as when the progressive is used for habits of limited duration (Leech 1987: 32, cf. also Palmer 1988: 62f.). Still, Leech (1987: 33) is aware of exceptions to this: (32)

Day by day we are getting nearer to death.

Having pointed out this supposed exception, Leech (1987: 33) claims that such uses exhibit “a special idiomatic meaning of the Progressive”. This is difficult to

52

Leech uses the idea of duration in the sense of “psychological rather than real time” (1987: 19).

The Progressive in Modern English

48

accept. The use exemplified by (32) is not very different in kind from the following: (33)

Paul’s getting better day by day.

The only major difference between (32) and (33) is that (32) refers to a significantly longer time span, but that doesn’t justify seeing it as a ‘special idiomatic meaning’. It is much easier to explain both (32) and (33) without any specific reference to the duration of the event. Rather, in both sentences a marker of progressive aspect is used: thus, the dynamic situations referred to by the predicate are viewed as in progress at TT. There is simply nothing within the semantics of the progressive as such that says how long a situation can be overall and how long the TT chosen by the speaker can be. In sum, the association of the progressive to situations of limited duration is just a general tendency and not observable in all examples. Moreover, as is shown by the following example from Ljung (1980: 28), exceptional situations can always force speakers to think in time-frames far beyond the conventional measures: (34)

The universe is forever expanding.

As Ljung remarks: [I]t is part of our knowledge of the world that events progress […] [and that] this progression from beginning to end does not take very long. Because of this, it is natural to associate all dynamic constructions with temporariness. However, it is also part of our knowledge that the progression from beginning to end may sometimes take very long, and it is not inconceivable that there are events which go on for ever. (Ljung 1980: 28) Hence, one might expect to find a majority of situations in the progressive which are of limited duration but also some in which reference to situations of unlimited duration is made. Uses with adverbs indicating unlimited duration occur not only in the type evidenced in (34) but also in the type exemplified in (35b), where, compared to the simple form in (35a), which neutrally refers to a habitual situation, the progressive seems to indicate that the speaker has a more subjective reason for stressing the undue length or frequency of recurrence of the situation: (35a) Paul always sleeps at our apartment. (35b) Paul’s always sleeping at our apartment.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

49

In such uses the reason for choosing a progressive does not appear to be aspectual (both (35 a) and (35 b) can be used to refer to imperfective habitual states of affairs; they do thus not refer to aspectually different situations) but rather speaker-based and attitudinal, so that we shall postpone their discussion to 3.3. Concluding the section on duration, we can pose the following research questions for the subsequent analysis of the data: Firstly, is it only ‘psychological duration’ that plays a role, as Hatcher (1951/1974) assumed, or are there restrictions, such as the one formulated by Smith (1997), who assumes that semelfactives cannot be viewed in the progressive without changing into a different situation type (i.e. activity)? Secondly, how important is the association of the progressive with limited duration? Since the association of the English progressive with temporariness has been taken as a major argument for continuing to classify it as a progressive rather than general imperfective marker (cf. 3.1.2.4), a diachronic analysis of uses of the progressive used for situations of unlimited duration will provide important arguments for or against the view that the English progressive is developing into a general imperfective. 3.2.2

Stativity and dynamism

So far, a good definition of the progressive (although not a perfect one, not being able to deal with such examples as (26) and (35b)) needs to contain two elements: firstly, that reference is made to an internal part of the situation, excluding its endpoints and secondly, that reference is made to a dynamic situation. The first part of the definition follows Klein’s (1994) view. This idea is also the main element of the truth-conditional definitions taken into account here; it is also, in a different way, expressed in many traditional approaches. The second part of the definition is necessary to distinguish the progressive from a general imperfective, but it is challenged by the fact that, as we have seen, the English progressive is occasionally used with stative predicates. The views to be discussed in the first section of the present sub-chapter are different in orientation from the debate about the construction’s ‘general imperfective’ or ‘progressive’marker status. They do not discuss the general occurrence of the progressive with dynamic or stative predicates. Rather, they assume that a function of the progressive is to give dynamism to the situation referred to. In 3.2.2.2 we will encounter the view – paradoxical at first sight – that the progressive serves to present situations as statives. 3.2.2.1

The progressive turns statives into dynamic situations

Various authors have noted that the progressive, when used with statives, attributes a certain dynamism to the situation referred to. Smith (1997: 77) thus states that “[t]he progressive viewpoint inherits the property of dynamism from the events to which it neutrally applies. Progressive stative sentences are marked, and convey the dynamism of an event”. Chilton (2007: 110) also notes that “application of the progressive operator switches the stative verb type to process

The Progressive in Modern English

50

verb type”. Some occurrences of the progressive with states can indeed be explained in this way, as the following: (36)

Peter is believing in ghosts these days.

(37)

John is being polite.

Example (36) may be understood as ‘dynamicized’ in that the situation is viewed as temporary and also as having emerged only recently. Example (37) shows clearer associations with typical dynamic events: it is controlled by an agent and it is temporary. Žegarac’s (1993: 217) explanation for such uses, that “the progressive, by virtue of its linguistic meaning, makes reference to an event instantiating the property denoted by the predicate”, seems fitting for (37). In (36), however, the feature of dynamism is limited to the fact that the situation is depicted as temporary – it is not really an ‘event instantiating a property’. Other uses of the progressive with stative predicates represent descriptions of states of affairs which do not allow any ‘dynamic’ interpretation, e.g.: (38)

Your drink is sitting on the table.

(39)

John was sitting in the chair.

Goosens (1994) actually sees the ‘dynamic analysis’ as appropriate for such examples, too, as his discussion of the following use shows: (40)

John is standing in the corner.

Discussing the example in (40), which is, in all important respects, like (39), Goosens explains his view as follows: [S]tanding in the corner describes a state of affairs which not only results from agentive initiation by John, but which also involves partial control and some minimal dynamism while going on (John may shift from one foot to another, may decide not to leave yet, etc.). (Goosens 1994: 169) One can easily question this analysis by presenting the following example, which is surely not an unacceptable use of the progressive: (41)

John is lying dead on the floor.

Here, one normally does not assume any ‘agentive initiation by John’; there is no control and no dynamism (John, unfortunately, no longer being able to decide to

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

51

leave). The only relevant parameter here seems to be the temporariness of the state of affairs. Temporariness is also stressed by Ziegeler (2006: 40f.), who explains that ‘postural states’ (also called ‘stance verbs’)53 are generally used in the progressive in PDE only with animate objects or inanimate objects, because “[t]he Progressive serves to express actions of temporary but indefinite duration” (2006: 41). It is, however, also clear that temporariness is not the only relevant criterion, as we have seen that progressives can also refer to dynamic situations extending over an unlimited period of time. For Michaelis (2004), progressiveform state predications do not represent temporary states but refer to homogeneous activities. They “are enabled to continue by the energy input of an animate entity” (Michaelis 2004: 37). However, situations in which drinks sit on tables and men lie dead on the floor (examples (38) and (41)) do not seem to fulfill this criterion. In order to refute such counterarguments, Michaelis (2004: 37) justifies her classification of similar examples as homogeneous activities by stating that “[t]he subject denotata of such predications are participants in a causal chain, whether they are agents, effectors, or objects which an agent has oriented or configured in a specific way (e.g. socks which are in a bundle are located on the floor but not lying on the floor)”. This qualification, however, seems to make the concept of dynamism and agentivity very broad and rather vague, since a great proportion of inanimate objects in stative situations can be said to have been “oriented or configured in a specific way” by an agent at some point. Thus, in regard to her counterexample, which is supposed to show that not all temporary states can occur in the progressive, it is also possible to say that an agent had been involved in configuring the subject of the predication (i.e. the hair has been dyed by an agent): (42)

*His hair is being green this semester.

So neither a broad view of agentivity nor temporariness alone can help to explain all uses of the progressive with stative predicates. Concerning the debate about the ‘general imperfective’ or ‘progressive’ status of the English aspectual construction, I will assume that if a majority of occurrences of the progressive with statives turn out to exhibit an association of the stative situation with dynamic properties, this constitutes an argument for understanding the English construction as a progressive (albeit an extended progressive) rather than a general imperfective aspect marker. 53

Ziegeler’s term ‘postural verbs’ (referring to verbs expressing a position in space) corresponds to what Quirk et al. (1985: 200-206) call ‘stance’. The term ‘stance’ is also used by Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 170) who see stance verbs as a class that “falls at the boundary between states and activities”, which may explain their presumably rather common, natural use in the progressive.

The Progressive in Modern English

52 3.2.2.2

The progressive turns dynamic situations into statives

The contrary view, which sees the progressive not as a ‘dynamicizing’ but as a ‘stativizing’ device, is not uncommon either, although it may seem less immediately plausible. This claim is supposed to hold not just for a particular use of the progressive but for its normal occurrence with dynamic situations and seems first to have been introduced into the discussion by Vlach (1981), who says that “[t]he function of the progressive operator is to make stative sentences” (Vlach 1981: 274). Mittwoch, after having formulated her proposal for the truth conditions of the progressive (1988: 231), sees the progressive as “a sub-group of statives that is sui generis” (1988: 234). The distributional relation between progressives and statives has been advanced as one major argument for this view. Since the progressive is neutrally available only to non-statives, they are complementary, a point that had been also brought forward by Vlach (1981: 274, cf. also Smith (1997: 85), who, however, disagrees with this analysis). A further structural similarity between progressives and statives lies in the subinterval property. Just as John has loved Mary from ti to tk entails John loved Mary at tj so John has been running from ti to tk entails John was running at tj (Smith 1997: 84).54 Both Mittwoch (1988: 233) and Smith (1997: 85) show that the ability to refer to a temporal frame for another situation, already noted for the progressive, can also be observed with statives. The following example may serve as illustration: (43)

Paul was running when he noticed me.

(44)

Paul was in the park when he noticed me.

However, this does not need to be so. Compare the following propositions: (45)

Paul ran when he noticed me.

(46)

Paul was happy when he noticed me.

54

Vlach (1981: 280) rejects the analysis of the progressive as having the subinterval property, but the examples he adduces as counterevidence can actually be explained by a certain fuzziness of language use. The fact that a speaker can ask “Is someone sitting here?” meaning e.g. “Is someone sitting here for the duration of the concert?” (not: “Is someone sitting here right now?”) can be accounted for by a general vagueness or underdefinedness characteristic of all natural languages rather than as proof of the lack of the subinterval property of the progressive.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

53

Here, the situations in (45) are clearly in sequence. This is also the default interpretation of (46). In both cases, we can infer a causative relation, namely that Paul ran/was happy because he noticed me. However, given the right context, example (46) can also refer to a scenario where the situation [Paul be happy] lasts up to the moment when the second situation sets in and is in fact interrupted by it (e.g. if Paul is happily playing truant and the speaker of (46) is his teacher). Some stative predicates thus also allow inceptive readings, which we do not normally get with progressives (cf. Smith 1997: 85). Smith (1997: 85) points out another important difference, namely the association of the progressive with dynamism, which we discussed in the preceding section. Mittwoch (1988: 233) assumes a further difference between statives and progressives: According to her, progressives do not occur with durationals, while statives do, as the following example is supposed to show: (47)

“*Tweetie was in flight/flying for 2 hours.”

Example (47) is explicitly marked as quoted, because I do not agree with the unacceptability judgment here, which does not reflect actual usage in English (cf. 6.5). The occurrence with durative adverbials should instead be seen as yet another parallel between progressives and statives. Both can occur with durative adverbials, e.g. for-clauses, but not normally with completive adverbials, such as clauses introduced by in: (48a) Paul was writing a letter to Sue for ten minutes (then he got distracted). (48b) *Paul was writing a letter to Sue in ten minutes. (48c) Paul was unhappy for a minute (then he got distracted). (48d) *Paul was unhappy in a minute. This, of course, has to do with the fact that completive adverbials denote the time span which is needed to complete an accomplishment, i.e. they indicate how long it takes until the change of state entailed by the accomplishment is reached. We have already seen in 3.1.3 that the change of state that normally forms part of the telic situation type accomplishment is not claimed to be reached when the accomplishment predicate is in the progressive. Durative adverbials, on the other hand, simply refer to a situation’s obtaining during a certain time span. So they can easily combine with states and with any situation type viewed in the progressive. This actually seems to be what Mittwoch (1988) has in mind when formulating the truth conditions for the progressive, stating that the situation referred to with the progressive “is interpreted as an activity or state (i.e.

The Progressive in Modern English

54

homogenous situation)” (1988: 231). I think it is much less controversial to say that the progressive has a ‘homogenizing’ rather than a ‘stativizing’ effect, since heterogeneous situations (i.e. accomplishments – the only basic situation type that is heterogeneous) are heterogeneous because they include both an activity leading to a change of state and the change of state itself. The latter is not within TT in the progressive aspect. However, this does not make the progressive akin to statives. The main argument against the view of the progressive as a stative construction is presented by Smith (1997: 85), who argues that conceptual reasons speak against such an equation, as the two concepts are of different types: ‘progressive’ refers to a type of imperfective aspect, while ‘stative’ refers to an idealized situation type (Smith 1997: 85f.). Also, the ‘dynamicizing’ effect that the progressive indubitably has on at least certain state predicates, as shown in the previous section, can also serve as a counterargument to a general interpretation of the progressive as stative or ‘stativizing’ (cf. also Žegarac 1993: 208, Chilton 2007: 110). So, the analysis of progressives as statives is rejected here on purely argumentative grounds and will thus not be taken up again in the investigation of the corpus data. 3.2.3

Agentivity

Agentivity is another factor which has been invoked to account for progressive use. While both stative (e.g. look forward) and dynamic verbs (e.g. scream) were among those most frequently used with the progressive aspect,55 in the large corpus (over 40,000,000 words) on which Biber et al.’s (1999) findings are based, agentivity emerged as a significant factor. As Biber et al. point out: [T]he common progressive aspect verbs typically take a human subject as agent […] actively controlling the action (or state) expressed by the verb. In contrast, some of the verbs that rarely occur in the progressive take a human subject as experiencer, undergoing but not controlling the action or state expressed by the verb. Other verbs in this group do not usually take a human subject at all. (Biber et al. 1999: 473) An interesting point is that agentivity apparently used to play an even more important role in earlier times, as shown by Hundt (2004b).56 Hundt’s study is 55

56

On the basis of our discussion so far, one might have expected dynamism of the verb to emerge as a more important criterion, but one must note that the verb alone cannot suffice to classify the whole predication as stative or dynamic. A contrary view is expressed by Ziegeler (1999, 2006), who assumes that the progressive becomes more and more strongly connected to agentivity in the course of time. Her study focuses, however, on the OE and ME period and does not contain any quantitative analysis for the ModE period.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

55

also based on ARCHER, but on an older version of the corpus, using data only from 1700-1899. It will therefore nevertheless be worth investigating the relation between agentive subjects and the progressive in the version of ARCHER used here, which will provide a more long-term perspective. Because Biber et al. (1999) base their findings on a very large corpus, the relation between agentivity and progressive use can be assumed to be established for PDE, but the detailed, qualitative analysis of our data will offer a clearer idea as to why such a relation can be observed and how it evolved. One must stress that verbs do not always carry their most common meaning, so that a qualitative analysis may yield deeper insights into this relation. Ljung’s observation that “whenever the progressive is used with a predicate normally denoting a state, the goings-on expressed by the progressive predicate are always interpreted agentively” (1980: 29) seems too sweeping, at least if one allows for the classification of [lie dead on the floor] (example 41) as a state. If one differentiates between states and stance, example (41) would contain the situation type stance, as it refers to a position in space. This distinction will be taken up in the discussion of actual occurrences of the progressive in the data. One may hypothesize that agentivity plays a larger role in typical states than with regard to stance. In his general discussion of the progressive, Ljung (1980: 69) observes that “the requirement that subjects must be agents is quite atypical of the progressive […] [W]hen it occurs with predicates normally referring to process [i.e. dynamic] situations, the progressive is completely indifferent to whether the subject is agentive or not”. This is thrown into doubt by the findings of Biber et al. (1999). The corpus analysis of this factor in 7.2.3 will allow us to get a clearer picture. 3.2.4

Overt and covert situations

As in the context of dynamism and stativity, the progressive has once more been associated with both concepts to be discussed in the present section although they are antonymous. The distinction between ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ in this context should be understood as follows: Overt situations are those that can be perceived by the five senses, i.e. they can be observed as physical occurrences in the outside world, while this is not true for covert situations. Generally, overt situations are quite ‘basic’ in that they do not necessitate a great deal of interpretation on the part of the speaker. Most of the examples cited so far belong to this type. To repeat just a few as illustration: (49)

Paul is playing tennis.

(50)

Mary was coughing (for five minutes).

(51)

John is lying dead on the floor.

The Progressive in Modern English

56

Covert situations are, negatively defined, those for which the above definition does not hold. They are not observable in the physical world. ‘Private predicates’ belong to this group, i.e. predicates which refer to a situation going on ‘inside’ an individual, thus situations not verifiable for anyone else. Examples of such situations have already been introduced as well: (52)

Peter is believing in ghosts these days.

(53)

I’m just wondering whether he’ll come.

In both examples mental processes are referred to. They are one of the types of predicates that belong to the group of ‘private predicates’. The other main types are: verbal emotion predicates (e.g. like) and sensation predicates (e.g. taste + adjective + to experiencer)57 (Ljung 1980: 50). Traditionally, these are assumed to be verbs that do not normally occur in the progressive, since the progressive is supposed to occur predominantly with dynamic situations, and the situations referred to by private predicates are generally understood as stative. Biber et al. (1999) analyze both wonder and believe as stative, but they find that the former commonly occurs with progressives, while the latter is very rare in the progressive. As we have seen, they assume that the factor agentivity, rather than stativity, plays the major role in determining progressive choice.58 What we may provisionally summarize at this point is that we are in no case looking at absolute factors, i.e. overt, covert, agentive and non-agentive situations, dynamic and stative situations and situations of all the major situation types can all be found in the progressive in PDE. However, we will discuss in the following to what extent the overt/covert nature of a situation might be assumed to favor or disfavor its occurrence in the progressive. 3.2.4.1

The progressive as marker of overt activity

The relation of the progressive to overt situations has been discussed in some detail by Hatcher (1951/1974). She limits her study to present tense occurrences, more specifically those occurrences which refer to the ‘Aktuelles Präsens’. In this context, we have already seen that the progressive represents the default choice. However, uses of the simple form also occur, as in the following examples: (54) 57 58

My feet hurt.

That means sentences such as The coffee tastes awful, which one understands as The coffee tastes awful to me (cf. Ljung 1980: 51). The agentivity may be not so clearly apparent in example (53), but it is possible to understand [wonder whether he’ll come] as the sort of situation that requires an agent who consciously engages in it and has control over it (cf. also 6.6).

The functions of the progressive in present-day English (55)

I smell something funny.

(56)

I beg you.

57

These examples (taken from Hatcher 1951/1974: 196f.) all refer to non-overt activity, either because they belong to the group of private verbs, as (54) and (55), or because, as in (56), the use is performative, which Hatcher also classifies as non-overt, because “the predicated activity is intangible, since it does not exist apart from the predication” (1951/1974: 198).59 Taking this as her starting point, she finds that uses of the progressive are associated with overt activity, as in the following examples (from Hatcher 1951/1974: 198), both of which incidentally show again that absence of agentivity, the factor discussed in the preceding section, does not advise against using a progressive: (57)

Your nose is running.

(58)

It’s falling to pieces.

Hatcher’s analysis does not aim at proposing a basic meaning for all progressive uses, but it might actually remind one of older proposals searching for a basic distinction between progressive and simple form, namely those of Bodelsen (1936-1937) and Calver (1946). Bodelsen (1936) suggests the difference between “actions themselves” (expressed in the progressive) and “statements of fact” and that which is “habitual or of general validity” (both expressed in the simple form) as the relevant basis for the distinction (1936-1937/1974: 146).60 Calver (1946/1974: 173) states that in the present, the simple form is used for “the constitution of things”, while the progressive “is used in reporting events merely as such”.61 Stanzel’s (1957) study of the progressive in Trollope’s novels 59

60

61

Hatcher also discusses examples which do not fit this explanation, e.g. The difficulties are increasing. Such examples are explained by a second principle, i.e. development by degrees. In Hatcher’s (1951/1974) view, progressives referring to situations going on at the present moment are either used when there is overt activity or when there is a development by degrees. The second factor can be subsumed under the idea that the progressive functions as a marker of progressive aspect. When it is used with the accomplishment situation type, this produces the meaning ‘development by degrees’ (in regard to a non-telic situation, one would not really speak of development). This distinction is already made by Poutsma (1926), who presents it, however, only as one characteristic among others that decides between use of progressive or simple form, when he notes that “[a]ctions thought of as events, not as processes going forward at a particular time are described in the Unexpanded Form” (1926: 323). Note that Palmer (1988) uses basically the same formulation which Calver

The Progressive in Modern English

58

provides some support for such an assumption, for he shows that the progressive is infrequent in passages where a situation (such as the previous history of a character) is merely reported upon, while it is frequent in ‘scenic presentation’ of action. However, it must be said that none of these proposals works as basic meaning.62 One cannot possibly say that in (54) and (55), “mere occurrences” are referred to, if one maintains at the same time that in (57) and (58) reference is made to the “actions themselves”. The same objections can be made against Durst-Andersen’s much more recent proposal, which basically works with very similar concepts: he suggests that the progressive is used to “describe a situation”, while the simple form is used to “characterize a person or thing” (2000: 45). Schousboe (2000: 18) rightly criticizes Durst-Andersen’s approach for neglecting the aspectual differences clearly apparent in our example pair (8) (i.e. Paul ran vs. Paul was running when he noticed me), where the concepts of ‘description’ and ‘characterization’ cannot help in the least in defining the difference between use of the simple form and use of the progressive. A more recent hypothesis that goes in a similar direction has been offered by Goldsmith and Woisetschlaeger (1982). While they see the aspectual meaning as one function of the progressive, they suggest that it has a second typical use which they call “metaphysical” (1982: 80). In this second use, the progressive marks situations that are “‘phenomenal’ description[s] of the world”, while the simple form refers to “knowledge of the ‘structure of the world’” (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982: 81). This meaning can be related to the concept that the progressive refers to overt activity, since in a “phenomenal description” one is interested in that which is observable by the five senses, while a description related to “knowledge of the structure of the world” should not show such a connection. The explanation seems to be appropriate for the following example: (59a) The engine doesn’t smoke anymore.

62

(1946) uses in reference to the meaning of the progressive in order to describe the meaning of the simple form in the present. According to Palmer, it is the simple form that merely reports, while the progressive refers explicitly to the duration of a situation, which we have already seen not to be a valid general criterion (3.2.2.1). Binnick (1991: 288) also discusses the concepts of ‘mere occurrence’ and ‘overt activity’ and judges both to be contextual and pragmatic in nature. He criticizes Hatcher’s (1951) approach, pointing out that the progressive does not require activity at all (as we have also seen from uses with stance and state predicates). One should note, however, that Hatcher is aware of this fact and that she is not advancing ‘overt activity’ as the basic meaning of the progressive from which all others are to be derived but merely as a factor that may explain some facts about the characteristic distribution of progressive and simple form in the present tense.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

59

(59b) The engine isn’t smoking anymore. Goldsmith and Woisetschlaeger (1982: 81) provide a possible context for this example saying that the speaker has just replaced the defective hose of his car. They analyze (59a) as being a confident assertion that the engine is now repaired (‘structure of the world’), while (59b) is merely an observation about a situation observable in the physical world. While this works for their particular example, it doesn’t explain very many of the uses of the progressive that are not explicable by the aspectual function. For instance, the difference between (60a) and (60b) is hardly one between reference to the structure of the world and phenomenal description: (60a) I wonder whether he’ll come. (60b) I’m just wondering whether he’ll come. Žegarac (1993) is also critical of accounts of the progressive which see ‘perceptible evidence’ as a criterion for use of the progressive. In his view, the meaning of the progressive can be paraphrased as “non-delimited event instantiating the property denoted by the predicate”, while “[t]he sometimes strong intuitions about perceptible evidence etc. as being an intrinsic part of the meaning of the progressive stem from people’s encyclopaedic knowledge about instantiations of properties […]: they take time to happen […] and are characteristically represented on the basis of perception” (1993: 210f.). This is clearly a valid point. Žegarac’s own suggestion, however, cannot account for all uses of the progressive either. For instance, the sentences in (60a) and (60b) are not really distinct from one another in terms of “non-delimitation” (both denote open situations) or in terms of “instantiation” (both denote actual happenings, not general truths, habits, or hypothetical occurrences). 3.2.4.2

The progressive and covert situations

Although Hatcher (1951/1974) sees the relation between the progressive and overt situations as the important one, she has also advanced examples of covert situations in the progressive, explained by her as an emphasis on the involvement of the subject, e.g.: (61)

63

He’s boring her to death.63

The original example used by Hatcher (1951/1974: 206) reads He is really boring her to death. The adverb really, which adds emphasis and thus a further subjective element, distracts, to my mind, from the role the progressive

The Progressive in Modern English

60

Ljung (1980) discusses this type of use in his detailed treatment of unusual contexts of the progressive. With regard to the use of the progressive with stative situations, he comes to the conclusion that progressives can occur with statives when these denote covert properties. Thus, a sentence like (62), semantically quite close to (61), is obviously acceptable, and so is (63). By contrast, it is very hard to imagine a context where (64) would be felicitously uttered: (62)

Paul is being a bore.

(63)

Paul is being rude.

(64)

*?Paul is being taller than John.

The acceptable “nonnormal” use of the progressive (as in examples (62) and (63)) is explained by Quirk et al. (1985: 202) as having the “special effect” of “reclassif[ying] […] the verb as dynamic, eg as having a meaning of process or agentivity”.64 So we are referred back to dynamism and agentivity as features determining the use of the progressive, which we have already discussed. Ljung (1980) sees this as well but relates it to the covert nature of the kind of situations expressible in the progressive: [S]tates predicated of humans, or possibly higher animates, are of two kinds, those denoting overt properties and those denoting covert properties. The latter typically have associated with them a certain more or less typical behaviour while the former do not. Since behaviour is obviously some kind of event, it is only natural that the progressive can be used with covert predicates and that, when we occasionally find normally overt predicates together with the progressive, we must reinterpret them, if we can, as covert. (Ljung 1980: 43) With regard to examples like (62) and (63), we can thus say that speakers base these assertions on observable behavior, but whether or not a speaker takes the behavior in question as indication of the subject possessing the property [be a bore] or [be rude] has a lot to do with his or her own subjective belief system. For instance, (62) could be uttered by a non-linguist if Paul kept talking about the latest trends in corpus linguistics during a dinner party, while a fellow linguist would evaluate such a behavior quite differently. Ljung notes this subjective

64

plays in marking this type of proposition as subjective. Since it is a made-up example anyway (and no doubt as acceptable in my version), I decided therefore to present it in this form. Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 167) similarly label such uses as expressing “dynamicity” and “agentive activity”.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

61

element, too, by pointing out that in regard to covert predicates “it is possible to be mistaken” (1980: 42) and that they express “the speaker’s interpretation or explanation for somebody’s behaviour” (1980: 43). One may note that example (65), adduced by Smith as an unusual use of the progressive with a stative, can also be explained in such a way: (65)

Peter is believing in ghosts these days.

Since these uses, then, clearly show a great subjective element, we shall deal with them in more detail in the following sub-chapter. What we may retain here is that the characteristic of covertness plays a role for the use of the progressive in certain non-typical contexts, such as in the use with stative situations. However, it has also been claimed that in general “the progressive is necessarily opaque, i.e. it can never state something which is readily accessible to every observer” (Bäcklund 1986: 119). This claim seems untenable. Numerous examples discussed in the preceding sections (e.g. (14b) The picture was hanging on the wall, (25) Mike was knitting a sweater, when Sue came home, (40) John is standing in the corner) make reference to overt situations and seem absolutely natural. Bäcklund (1986: 120) argues, however, that such uses are “not likely ever to occur in natural English, at least not when the event that is thus described is in plain view to everybody”. Obviously, there has to be some motivation for any utterance. Informing one’s interlocutor about something clearly visible to him always has to have some other sort of communicative benefit. But this is certainly not unique to utterances containing a progressive. I do not see any particular difficulty in imagining natural contexts for the examples of overt situations brought forward so far. In fact, it seems very easy to imagine a natural context for e.g. the overt situation referred to in (66): (66)

Your drink is sitting on the table.

The speaker may have just placed the addressee’s drink there, so she informs him about something new, or she notices that the addressee has forgotten for the moment where his drink was (possibly it is not his first). There is absolutely nothing opaque about the situation, nor, it would seem, anything unnatural about the use of the progressive in (66). We shall nevertheless come back to this hypothesis in the corpus analysis. 3.3

The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion

It has been widely noted that some uses of the progressive appear to be related to speaker attitude and the expression of emotions, both in ‘classic’ treatments of the progressive, such as Jespersen’s (1931), and more recent studies of it (e.g. Pürschel 1981, Rydén 1997). Overviews of such claims are provided by Storms (1964), who presents a summary from Onions (1904) to the time of his writing,

The Progressive in Modern English

62

and more recently by Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 35f.). Storms himself suggests that the opposition between progressive vs. non-progressive can quite generally be explained as one of subjectivity vs. objectivity, saying that “[t]he subjective element in the be + ing group explains and binds together all the meanings ascribed to it in the grammars” and the use of the progressive or the simple form “will vary according to the emotional make up of the speaker […], to momentary influences and momentary fluctuations” (1964: 62). As a general explanation, this does not work: There is absolutely no basis for claiming, for instance, that in the example pair in (8), presented again below, the progressive in (67b) makes the statement more subjective than (67a), or that the choice between them depends on the “emotional make up of the speaker”. Rather, the two propositions refer to objectively different scenarios, that is, to situations with different objectively verifiable properties: (67a) Paul ran when he noticed me. (67b) Paul was running when he noticed me. However, we have already seen in the preceding discussion that in a number of cases the difference between progressive and non-progressive seems to lie solely in the presence or absence of the expression of speaker attitude or of “a certain emotional colouring” (Jespersen 1931: 180). This seems to account in particular for such examples where other analyses, notably aspectual ones, fail. Consider again the following examples: (68a) Paul always sleeps at our apartment. (68b) Paul’s always sleeping at our apartment. (69a) I wonder whether he’ll come. (69b) I’m just wondering whether he’ll come. (70)

He’s boring her to death.

In all three cases, the progressive adds a certain subjective element to the proposition, but it does so in quite different ways. In (68b), where the progressive is combined with always, we can see evidence of a use that Charleston (1955: 274) describes as “the speaker is venting some emotion” such as “disgust, annoyance” (cf. also Jespersen 1931: 181). Such a negative “semantic prosody” (in the sense of Sinclair 1998: 20) is, however, not observable in (69b), which, following Quirk et al., one can understand as expressing the same proposition as (69a) in a more tentative way (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 210). Thus, (69b) can

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

63

actually be understood as more polite.65 Example (70) is different again, although in the particular example, negative speaker attitude is also present. But the decisive point is that it refers to a covert situation and basically expresses an interpretation of the speaker. Hence, we may arrive at a tripartite division of subjective uses of the progressive, which we shall deal with in the following subchapters:66 Type 1: subjective progressive with ALWAYS67 Type 2: subjective progressive without ALWAYS Type 3: interpretative progressive 3.3.1

Subjective progressive with ALWAYS

The use of the progressive with ALWAYS is rather special, in that the meaning imparted by the progressive in such combinations is certainly not the usual one. For example, there is nothing very dynamic about (68b), as Paul’s sleeping at the particular appartment is presented as habitual, not as actually ongoing. Poutsma notes the unusual function of the progressive in such contexts, which he calls a “characterizing function” (Poutsma 1926: 336). Discussing a pair similar to (68), he finds that the progressive characterizes the subject, while the simple form “denotes a customary, not a characterizing action” (1926: 337). The distinction between the two concepts does not seem very clear-cut to me. A much more obvious difference between the two, which is also widely noted in the literature, is the inference of negative speaker attitude (cf. e.g. Jespersen 1931: 180f., Quirk et al. 1985: 199, Leech 1987: 83f.)68 that seems to 65

66

67

68

The downtoner just further helps to create this effect, but one may also consider the same sentence without just (I’m wondering whether...) as more polite than (69a). Such a division is also carried out by Smitterberg (2005: 207-241), who speaks of three types of ‘not-solely-aspectual progressive’. I prefer the term ‘subjective’, because in a number of such uses, the aspectual meaning is not present at all. For instance, there is no difference in the aspectual representation of the situation in (69a) and (69b). One can even find perfective situations referred to with a progressive when it carries a subjective function (cf. 3.3.3.). The term ALWAYS is used here to refer to all adverbials which have the meaning ‘always’ or a very similar meaning (e.g. continually, forever, all the time etc.). Other scholars, such as Curme (1932: 254) and Jørgensen (1990: 440, 442; 1991: 175) also deal with subjective uses of the progressive. They do not state explicitly that progressive + ALWAYS appears to be connected to negative speaker attitude. However, the example offered by Curme (1932: 254) is also one where criticism is conveyed, and Jørgensen’s examples of the kind of emotions typically conveyed by the combination (“surprise, irritation,

64

The Progressive in Modern English

have the status of a generalized invited inference69 in the use with the progressive but is absent in the combination with the simple form (cf. Kranich 2007). We have already discussed the view advocated by Van Ek (1969), who subsumes this subjective use of the progressive under his basic meaning “heightened temporary relevance”. Even Palmer (1988), who in general tries to explain all occurrences of the progressive with the parameter duration, expresses the view that in such contexts, the progressive “often carries a hint of disapproval” (1988: 64, cf. also Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 166). Huddleston and Pullum (2002) explain further that “always is interpreted differently in the two aspects: in the progressive we understand ‘constantly’, whereas in the non-progressive it has its basic meaning, ‘on all occasions’” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 167). Other authors have tried to attribute the meaning ‘repeatedly’ rather than ‘constantly’ to ALWAYS in combination with the progressive and have also attempted to maintain the aspectual interpretation of the progressive in such uses. Thus Buyssens claims that: [N]ous voyons dans ALWAYS et ses synonymes des adverbes de répétition et non de continuité; et le second aspectif se justifie alors très aisément: à chaque répétition le fait est saisi à un moment entre son commencement et sa fin.70 (Buyssens 1968: 81) But if we reconsider the difference between (68a) and (68b), one must say that Huddleston and Pullum’s analysis has greater explanatory power: (68a) would typically be used when a particular type of occasion is referred to. One could for instance imagine the sentence to be continued Paul always sleeps at our apartment when he visits Berlin. This is quite different for (68b), which would seem most natural without any further qualification of always, but rather seems to refer to a situation that is – at least in the subjective representation by the speaker – viewed as continuous. It is this hyperbolic use of ALWAYS that would seem to be characteristic in combinations with the progressive (cf. also Žegarac 1993: 211f.). Hyperbolic uses of such an adverbial tend to occur more often when a speaker wishes to express his or her negative attitude towards a proposition rather

69

70

indignation”, Jørgensen 1991: 175) also do not contain any obviously positive emotion. The concept of generalized invited inferences goes back to Traugott and Dasher’s ‘Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change’; for a description, see Traugott and Dasher (2002: 34-42). ‘We see in ALWAYS and its synonyms adverbs of repetition, not of continuity; and the second aspect [i.e. the progressive] can thus be easily justified: at each repetition, the situation is viewed at a moment between its beginning and its end.’ A similar analysis is effected by Arnaud (1973), who labels examples of this type ‘itérative’ (or: ‘itérateur’) (1973: 323, 384-386, and passim).

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

65

than when s/he wants to convey praise. Such a trend is very clear when one looks at examples where the type of situation referred to would generally tend to receive a positive interpretation: (71)

Paul is always giving people lifts.

This example is adapted from Leech (1987: 34), who explains that someone uttering such a sentence “would tend to have a critical attitude towards the man, even though his habit of giving lifts might generally be considered laudable by other people”. This leads one to assume that the default interpretation of progressive + ALWAYS includes the idea of ‘negative speaker attitude’. This view has been further substantiated by the results of a study of PDE data retrieved from the internet (Kranich 2007: 130f.).71 One could assume that in fact the adverbial carries the greater part of the subjective force, but for PDE at least, it is clear that both the connection with subjective force and with negative prosody is strong only in the combination of ALWAYS with a progressive. Most uses of ALWAYS with the simple form refer to “all occasions”, to take up Huddleston and Pullum’s paraphrase again, or to permanent states (Kranich 2007: 130f.). However, we need to note that the progressive can also co-occur with ALWAYS when no expression of speaker attitude is discernible, as in such examples as (72): (72)

The universe is forever expanding.

As Ljung (1980: 28) has argued, “it is not inconceivable that there are events which go on for ever” (cf. 3.2.1.2). Propositions like (72) are thus fully acceptable – some dynamic situations are ongoing for a long time, conceivably forever. However, such situations are rare, as dynamic events require an input of energy and therefore normally last only for limited amounts of time – hence the general association of progressive markers with limited duration. It is this point which makes it likely that when a progressive is combined with an adverbial that expresses unlimited duration, i.e. ALWAYS, the adverbial is used hyperbolically and the progressive has subjective meaning. One should note that the combination can also be used when the speaker has a positive attitude toward the situation referred to, as in (73) below.

71

It is interesting to note that Edmondson and House (1981: 153) have included a progressive + always combination in the list of typical ‘Complains’ in their interactional grammar, based on a corpus of conversational spoken English, which represents further evidence of the perception of the construction by native speakers as associated with negative attitude. A ‘Complain’ is defined as “a verbal communication whereby a speaker expresses his negative view of a past action by the hearer” (Edmondson & House 1981: 144).

The Progressive in Modern English

66 (73)

I’m always enjoying your work because you’re constantly bringing something new to the plate. Keep at it.72

This is rather unexpected from the presentation in the grammars and handbooks, which always mention the use of the construction for disapproval, disgust, and other negative attitudes. In PDE such positive uses are, however, notably less common than the use for negative speaker attitude. The web-based study showed that while 52 out of 92 subjective progressive + ALWAYS combinations convey negative attiude, only 16 convey positive attitude (Kranich 2007: 131, table 1). The present corpus analysis will allow us to find out more about the development of this combination, the relation between expressions of negative and positive speaker evaluation, and the general quantitative relation between objective and subjective uses of the progressive with ALWAYS (cf. 6.5, 7.3.2). 3.3.2

Subjective progressive without ALWAYS

Progressives without ALWAYS are also used with subjective shades of meaning. We have already discussed the downtoning use exemplified in (69b). However, the subjective progressive can also have the opposite effect, namely that of intensifying, or so Leisi (1960/1974: 237) claims, stating that “[d]ie P.F. [progressive Form] ist dagegen mehr sinnlich als logisch: sie dient dem Ausdruck der Imagination und Emotion: deshalb ihre gelegentliche Verwendung als Intensivum” (‘the progressive form, on the other hand, is more sensual than logical: it is used for expressions of imagination and emotion: hence its occasional use as intensifier.’). However, examples of intensifying use are not really discernible in his study. He has examples where the progressive is used to refer to imagination or to the subjective experience of a fictional character, which, however, would seem to be explicable also merely with the aspectual nature of the progressive form: (74)

She looked at him, smiling. Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her…73

The character is basically overcome by the situation, finding herself all of a sudden in the middle of this kissing activity without being quite able to recall how it started. It is certainly a clever narrative use of the form, but it does not warrant its own explanation. Rather, it is fully deducible from the nature of progressive aspect as seen in 3.1: The progressive views a situation without its initial and final endpoint – hence the effect of representing a situation in medias res (cf. Charleston 1955: 277), a use which, for instance, is also commonly 72 73

Example from Kranich (2007: 130), taken from web data retrieved using Google® (accessed May 2006). Example from Leisi (1960/1974: 245).

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

67

attested for the French imparfait.74 However, one does find examples where the use of the progressive describes the situation in a more vivid, more graphic way. Pürschel (1981) arrives at such a result in his analysis of seven hours of radio broadcasts from BFBS75. He finds that speakers tend to use the progressive when they want to emphasize something or when they express an ‘indirect judgment’ (“indirekte Urteilsabgabe”). Particularly when the progressive occurs in unusual contexts, it is often motivated by a desire to get the attention of one’s interlocutor (Pürschel 1981: 89). The following example is from Pürschel’s corpus and is taken from a discussion of habits on Christmas morning (Pürschel 1981: 87f.): (75)

then they’re stuffing all morning and you slave away, you’re rushing to get this Christmas dinner…

As the progressive is used to describe a habitual event, it indeed occurs in an unusual context. Also, it once more carries a hint of negative speaker attitude, which, of course, is heightened by the lexical choices. In fact, the first use is rather close to the subjective type 1 discussed in the preceding section, as the adverbial, all morning, also appears to be used hyperbolically. Furthermore, both uses of the progressive in the example share with the progressive + ALWAYS uses that they refer to habitual events, i.e. events that are repeated every year on the morning of the 25th of December. Another interesting phenomenon that has been noted by Couper-Kuhlen (1995) may also be subsumed under the heading of ‘subjective progressive’, although Couper-Kuhlen calls it ‘the foregrounded progressive’.76 She claims that this function is observable more and more often in American conversational narrative and offers an example from this text type (1995: 235): 74

75

76

In his description of the French imparfait, Jones (1996: 150f.) speaks of the ‘dramatic’ imperfect. He also understands this use as related to the imperfective value of the form and explains that “[e]ssentially, the presentation of punctual [in our terminology: perfective, S.K.] events as being in progress has the effect of placing the addressee in the position of a witness to these events as they unfold” (1996: 151). BFBS was a German-based British Army radio station. Pürschel (1981: 84) uses material from the years 1979 and 1980, consisting of DJ comments between songs, short interviews, and dialogues with listeners calling in. One might assume that this terminological choice harkens back to the view of seeing the progressive, or in general imperfective markers, as backgrounding devices. This view is e.g. assumed by Weinrich (1977) and Hopper (1979). The backgrounding textual function of the progressive, however, would just seem to be an effect of its aspectual function. Progressive as well as general imperfective markers present situations without their final endpoints (TT contained in TSit), and in narrative, this aspectual function can be expected to be of use more often when referring to events in the background.

The Progressive in Modern English

68 (76)

…so she starts singing in Norwegian and I am just cracking up thinking this is some joke that someone’s played and you know people are just looking around like what is this […] so they stopped…

The progressive in the use exemplified in (76) clearly does not carry its normal aspectual meaning, since, as Couper-Kuhlen (1995: 236) points out “the progressive predications […] refer to events which require a sequential interpretation with respect to prior and subsequent bounded events”, i.e. in regard to (76) the momentary event (an achievement) [start singing] is finished, as the following situation expressed in the progressive, [crack up], begins, which may in fact be simultaneous to [people look around like…] (Couper-Kuhlen 1995: 237). Neither of the situations in the progressive is represented imperfectively. CouperKuhlen (1995: 241) sees this as a new use of the progressive and hypothesizes that it may have first arisen in the use with verbs of saying. Couper-Kuhlen (1995: 242f.) suggests three possible explanations for this use of the progressive: The first refers to lexical semantic modification of the verb, the second to a possible neutralization of the aspectual opposition in this context, the third invokes a change in pragmatic conventions concerning the use of the form in narrative. One may note that neutralization of the aspectual opposition is visible in all subjective uses of the progressive. This apparently new use of the progressive can thus be categorized as a subtype of subjective use: in examples like (76) (representative of the examples adduced by Couper-Kuhlen), the progressive seems to be used for its traditionally recognized “force of vivid representation” (Poutsma 1926: 331). Couper-Kuhlen has observed this use in American conversational narrative, a text type not included in our data, which contains (a) no spoken material and (b) no American material. It will be interesting to see whether similar uses can still be found. Overall, however, one may note that the majority of examples of progressives with subjective force cited in the literature belong to the first type, the use with an always-type adverbial. Even without such an adverbial they often refer to habitual, repeated situations, as e.g. example (75) (cf. also the examples in Jespersen 1931: 180f.). That probably has to do with the fact that they are most obvious, since the progressive in its aspectual function normally does not occur in such contexts, so that one can easily see that there must be different motivations at work. 3.3.3

Interpretative progressive

Although the subjective use of the progressive has in general been noted from early treatments on, this particular type of subjective use was rather neglected. The first discussion of it is flawed in its terminological choice: Goedsche (1932) speaks of the use of the progressive with “terminate aspect”, i.e. for perfective, rather than progressive situations. He clarifies, however, that when the progressive is employed in such contexts “[s]ubjectivity, vividness of expression, and feeling are important factors” (1932: 471). So far, this is no different from the

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

69

views reported in the preceding two subsections. However, the examples Goedsche (1932: 470f.) presents show quite a particular type of subjective use: (77)

You are helping me, darling, you’re being an angel. (Cower, The Vortex)

(78)

But you know, when you ask me to get my wife, to whom I’m very much attached, to divorce me, and ruin my career by marrying you, you’re asking a good deal. (Maugham, The Painted Veil)

The predications containing the progressive do indeed refer to perfective situations, and they contain a subjective element.77 But use of the progressive does not merely make the expression more vivid. Nor, as opposed to the two types previously discussed, does it convey a particular attitude of the speaker or serve as downtoner or intensifier. The function of the progressive observable in these examples is first described in an adequate manner, it seems, by Charleston (1955).78 In her list of meanings of the progressive, she includes the construction, quite common to-day, of equating one action in the unexpanded form with another in the expanded form, the expanded form being in some way an interpretation of the action expressed in the unexpanded form and giving the accompanying result or effects. (Charleston 1955: 276) This is in fact what the progressive seems to achieve in (78): The preceding predicate in the when-clause gives a factual description of a situation, while the clause in the progressive provides the speaker’s subjective interpretation of what such an occurrence would mean for him personally. Ljung provides a very detailed overview of the interpretative use of the progressive (Ljung 1980: 6896). He explains that in none of these examples is the progressive form called for by the aspectual properties of the sentence: all the sentences consist of two 77

78

Since the progressive in such uses often (but by no means always) refers to a situation already verbalized before, Edgren (1985: 75-81) has termed these uses ‘retrospective’, while she suggests the term ‘medial’ for ordinary aspectual progressives and ‘anticipatory’ for uses where the progressive refers to the near future (e.g. I am leaving). This new categorization does not seem very useful, as more established terms exist, which also, at least in the case of ‘progressive aspect’ vs. ‘medial’ and ‘interpretative’ vs. ‘retrospective’, bear the advantage of capturing the essence of the functions more clearly. Buyssens (1968: 136-156) seems to be the first to have treated this function systematically. His claim, though, that no scholar before him had noticed this function is not tenable, since evidently Charleston (1955: 276) had already recognized the interpretative progressive as a common use in PDE.

The Progressive in Modern English

70

parts, A and B, of which the A part is equated with the B part, i.e. A and B refer to exactly the same factual situation, but in one case the simple form is used, in the other the progressive. The A part expresses the observed behaviour, the B part sums up or interprets this behaviour and the predicate used for this summing up or interpreting is invariably put in the progressive. (Ljung 1980: 70f.) The preference for using the progressive in such contexts is supported by König’s findings, whose native speaker informants, when presented with texts where only the choice between progressive and simple form in such contexts differed, all preferred the use of the progressive, although in some cases they also accepted the simple form (König 1980: 281). In instances like (77), there is no description of any observed behaviour in the simple form, yet the progressive seems to fulfill the same function. In such uses the subjective interpretation refers to “a fact known to speaker and hearer but never mentioned in the text” (Ljung 1980: 73). In (77), this fact probably consists of certain past actions of the addressee evaluated positively by the speaker. This example in particular may remind one of the discussion in 3.2.4.2, regarding Ljung’s (1980) description of the use of the progressive with covert situations as an expression of an interpretation. He comes back to this in his chapter on the interpretative progressive, where he arrives at the conclusion that there is a strong indication “that the progressives with so-called covert predicates that we have been concerned with here are all interpretative progressives” (1980: 79). Conversely, interpretative progressives are assumed to often contain covert predicates, or else “‘secondary’ activity predicates”. These are characterized as being “not strong enough to assert the existence of an activity that is new to the conversation” because they are “connected with their referents in a ‘looser’ manner” (Ljung 1980: 78). A ‘close fit’ predicate is represented in (79), a ‘loosefit’ predicate in (80) (examples taken from Ljung (1980: 81)): (79)

John shook his head at me.

(80)

John warned me not to do it.

One can see how the loose fit predicates can easily occur in the interpretative progressive, while this is difficult to imagine for the close fit ones: (81a) John shook his head at me. He was warning me. (81b) *?John was shaking his head at me. He warned me. (81c) *?John warned me. He was shaking his head at me.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

71

In the above examples of interpretative progressives, we only find ‘loose-fit predicates’: [ask a lot], [help someone], and [be an angel] can all be classified as loose-fit predications whose “applicability […] varies with the judgment of the speaker” (Ljung 1980: 81). This assumption seems fully plausible. Girard (2002) expresses a similar view of the predications for which the interpretative progressive can be used, although she focuses more on the verbs of saying, which emerge from her analysis as the most typical candidates for occurring in the interpretative progressive (2002: 81). She clarifies, however, that mental, psychological, and affective processes can also occur in this construction,79 which is generally available to all processes that need to be “‘médiatisés’ en quelque sorte par des procès ‘physiques’ qui leur permettent d’être perçus” (they need to be ‘“mediated” in some way by “physical” processes which enable them to be perceived.’) (Girard 2002: 82). This is very close to Ljung’s idea of ‘loose-fit’ predicates. We shall see whether these very plausible suggestions about the semantics of the predicates useable with the interpretative progressive are borne out by the data. An interesting analysis of the typical formal contexts of interpretative progressives is provided by König (1980: 275f.). According to him, these are: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)

in + participle + main clause by + participle + main clause conditionals temporal clause + main clause coordination, parataxis main clause + relative clause parataxis + direct speech

We will see which linguistic contexts are favored by interpretative progressives in the ARCHER data (cf. 7.3.4). Another interesting point for the present discussion is that this use has been claimed to be “of a comparatively recent date” (Goedsche 1932: 470). A quantitative analysis of data from the last four centuries will shed light on this question. It is also worth noting that Smith has suggested that the increase in frequency in the progressive in the latter half of the 20th century may be explicable by an increase in subjective uses and particularly in interpretative 79

Note that certain verbs which would appear to be rarely used with the aspectual progressives because they designate states (e.g. hate, love, understand, know) are not uncommon in the progressive when its function is subjective. This can be seen from the examples adduced by Jørgensen (1991). Jørgensen (1991: 179) comments on the subjective use with ALWAYS, noting that it “is possible with practically all verbs except auxiliaries and modals”. A number of his examples do not, however, contain any always-type adverbial. In most of these instances, the progressive has an interpretative function, as in Bradley, wait, please do stop. I’m not understanding you. (Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince, p. 200, example from Jørgensen 1991: 179).

72

The Progressive in Modern English

uses of the form (Smith 2002: 327), and we shall also be able to test this hypothesis. 3.4

A ‘basic meaning’ or ‘core value’ for the progressive? Obviously the most satisfactory description will be one which assigns a basic meaning to the progressive and subsequently accounts for distinct separate uses as derived from the basic meaning. […] Alternatively, in the face of the progressive’s particularly heavy semantic load, the grammarian might be forced to confine himself to a bare enumeration of the various uses, with perhaps an indication of their relative frequencies. (Van Ek 1969: 580)

Concerning the meanings of any form, it would clearly be preferable to find one basic meaning from which all meanings in the specific contexts can be derived. This seems, however, very hard to achieve for the progressive, as the preceding discussion has shown. The core meaning suggested by Van Ek (1969) himself, that the progressive expresses (objective or subjective) “heightened temporary relevance” does not explain the subjective uses of the progressive, i.e. such uses as in (69b), (68b), and (70), since they can hardly be referred to as having any temporal implication. Van Ek would probably speak of a subjective heightened temporary relevance, but in fact, it rather seems simply a subjectively motivated relevance. Of course, if one takes ‘temporary’ to refer to anything that is not everlasting, then basically all human utterances apart from expressions of universal laws or generic statements are of temporary relevance. But then, this is true of so many uses of the simple form that it really cannot serve as a distinctive basic meaning of the progressive. Schousboe (2000: 118) comes to the conclusion that if one wishes to establish a basic meaning for the progressive, one cannot come up with anything more precise than “ongoing process”. But, as we have seen, certain uses of the progressive are not very well covered by this term, either – again, this concerns mainly uses we have classified as ‘subjective progressives’. The use of the progressive for expressions of emotion, speaker attitude or interpretation is completely neglected by the treatments conducted in the truthconditional, formal semantics school of thought. This is only natural since subjective expressions cannot be treated within the framework: an expression of an attitude or an emotion cannot have a truth value. Binnick (1991: 224) points out that truth-conditional semantics aims at allowing us to predict under which conditions a sentence would be true. This is impossible when it comes to a speaker’s expression of his or her own feelings or of a subjective attitude toward a situation. But even where the ‘objective’ use of the progressive is concerned, i.e. the more common use of the form for the expression of progressive aspect, other formalizations (such as the one from Klein 1994) seem much more useful for a practical application in corpus linguistics than those from truth-conditional

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

73

semantics. Klein’s model is simple enough to be used in a practical way, for checking in each case whether a particular example exhibits the use of the progressive form in its aspectual function. This kind of practical application is not envisaged for truth-conditional equations, which tend to be very complex, as they aim at predicting every possible true use of the progressive. They neither aim at conceptual simplicity nor at (clearly related to this) cognitive plausibility. For both reasons they are neglected in the rest of this study. Conceptual simplicity is necessary for testing a factor. It is not clear e.g. how one would be able to test whether or not a speaker/writer would consider it possible that an interrupted situation continues in a possible world. The factor of cognitive plausibility is deemed important on methodological grounds. A convincing semantic analysis of the use of the progressive today and of the diachronic development of its use will need to be plausible from a cognitive point of view. Truth-conditional approaches are thus not designed for the sort of procedure followed in the present study, where, after an overview of what one can consider as possible elements in the semantics of a form, the actual usage of the construction will be investigated. Studies on specific meanings associated with the situations expressed in the progressive, as discussed in 3.2, can furnish more valid insights and will also be taken up. The question whether any one of them can truly be suggested as a basic meaning will, however, have to be answered in the negative. It is, again, in particular the subjective uses which constitute the greatest problem for these meanings. Palmer (1988), as we have seen, wishes to deduce all uses of the progressive from the meaning ‘duration’, and we have seen that this fails specifically when such uses as progressive + ALWAYS are concerned. Also, if we wish to find a quality that distinguishes situations expressed with the help of the progressive from such expressed in the simple form, we have to notice that predications with the simple form are not less capable of referring to situations with duration. This certainly is the case for stative situations which, per definitionem, have duration and always occur in the simple form.80 But other situation types can also have duration when used with the simple form. As Leech (1987) has noted, in fact the progressive can have the effect of ‘lengthening’ the duration of a situation, as in its use with achievements (as in example (27), Mary was coughing), as well as that of shortening a duration, as in its use with states (as in example (13), Peter is believing in ghosts these days). Duration thus seems to be an important factor in the semantics of the progressive, but it appears to have different effects on different situation types. Quirk et al. (1985: 197-215) pay heed to this fact in their presentation of the functions of the progressive, which first lays out a detailed distinction of situation types as well as more specific verb classes and then discusses the meanings the progressive has with these verbs. At the beginning of their 80

One might think that this is the reason they do not occur with the progressive: since they must have duration anyway, one does not need to use the progressive to indicate this. Note, however, that activities are also inherently durative and still are quite commonly expressed in the progressive.

The Progressive in Modern English

74

treatment they state that the progressive can express duration, limited duration, and incompletion (cf. also Leech 1987), but they also discuss some specific meanings under the heading ‘other uses’, which cannot be related to these (Quirk et al. 1985: 210), such as the subjective use of the type shown in (69b) (I’m just wondering...). For a usage grammar, they certainly offer a very useful description. Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) description of the progressive is similar to Quirk et al.’s but does postulate a basic meaning: according to them, the progressive “has as its basic use the expression of progressive aspectuality” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 162). They manage to explain most uses of the progressive by reference to the aspectual nature of the form, which may have to do with the fact that they operate with implicatures, which include Quirk et al.’s elements (duration, limited duration, incompletion) but present a more detailed picture, as one can see: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

The situation is presented as in progress, ongoing, at or throughout Tr.81 The situation is viewed imperfectively. [implicature] Tr is a mid-interval within Tsit. The situation is presented as durative. The situation is presented as dynamic. The situation is presented as having limited duration. [implicature] (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 163)

This list has several important benefits: Firstly, all meanings (i) – (vi) are related to the basic meaning of ‘progressive aspectuality’, secondly, a distinction is made between elements that are truly part of the semantics and implicatures, and thirdly, the list of these meanings/generalized implicatures is extensive enough to be able to deal with most uses of the progressive. Nevertheless, Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 171f.) still need to include a sub-chapter on “non-aspectual uses of the progressive”. Thus, the reference to ‘basic use’ seems to indicate rather that the aspectual function will explain the most common occurrences of the progressive than that it will cover all potential uses. For Huddleston and Pullum, the exceptions lie in the use of the present progressive with future time reference and will + progressive (also included among ‘other uses’ by Quirk et al. 1985: 210), while the subjective uses of the progressive are subsumed under the association of progressive aspect with duration. In the discussion of progressive + ALWAYS, they do, however, mention “an emotive overtone” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 166). The interpretative function of the progressive, on the other hand, “concerned with explaining, interpreting, commenting”, is seen as related to duration in that “the feature of duration […] enable[s] us to focus on what is (or was) going on” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 170). In both cases, it is questionable whether the feature ‘duration’ really captures the main impact of the progressive in these uses. 81

Tr corresponds basically to what, following Klein (1994), we have called TT (topic time), while Tsit refers to time of situation.

The functions of the progressive in present-day English

75

And this seems in fact to be the main danger in the search for a basic meaning, that one then often has to stretch the applicability of one’s postulated basic meaning quite drastically in order to make it cover all uses the form occurs in. In Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) treatment, we may note that it is basically those functions which we have labeled as ‘subjective’ which are not fully covered – the same functions, then, that are most problematic for Palmer (1988) and that are also not covered by any of the definitions of the English progressive as an aspect marker. One might point out here that prior corpus-based studies of the presentday progressive seem to indicate that the use of the progressive as an expression of emotion is of comparatively low frequency (cf. Mindt 2000: 256). But even if they are rare, a complete account of the use of the English progressive must explain these uses, too. So far, no single meaning or function proposed for the progressive is able to do that. This is also the view expressed by Binnick (1991: 281f.) who, however, adds a rather optimistic view for the future, saying that “[n]o one has convincingly argued for any one basic meaning for it, but neither has anyone established that it lacks one”. But if all the accounts discussed in this chapter have failed to come up with one basic meaning able to explain all examples, this seems a rather strong indication that the search for one will be futile. Even if one understands the progressive to have one core meaning and tries to explain all uses which do not fit this core meaning by referring to the impact of pragmatics, one encounters difficulties in establishing this one core meaning. This is what Žegarac (1993) has tried to do. He establishes a primary meaning of the progressive and then tries to explain specific uses of the progressive with the help of relevance theory. While this produces some interesting analyses, the eventual aim is not reached. We have seen in the preceding discussion that Žegarac’s postulated basic meaning, that the progressive refers to a “non-delimited event instantiating the property denoted by the predicate” (1993: 210), cannot be felicitously applied to all possible uses of the progressive. In general, one should note that it is always difficult to draw a sharp boundary between pragmatics and semantics, particularly as, in the process of semantic change, pragmatic implications can become part of the semantics of an element (cf. e.g. Traugott & Dasher 2002). This may be why it is so difficult to find a basic meaning of the progressive: it is still in a state of flux (cf. Quirk et al. 1985). In the context of grammaticalization theory, one must expect layering of older and newer meanings, and this appears to be the case with regard to the English progressive. Another possible way to remedy the problem of the ‘core meaning’ could lie in allowing for a ‘double core meaning’, as Rydén (1997) does in an article with the self-explanatory title “On the panchronic core meaning of the English progressive”. His suggestion that the progressive has and always had a double meaning, one ‘aspectual’, the other ‘attitudinal’, would seem to cover all uses that have been addressed in this chapter, since they can be related either to the aspectual make-up of the situation or to the attitude of the speaker. One should

76

The Progressive in Modern English

note, however, that the idea of a ‘panchronic’ core meaning is quite dangerous for a form which has undergone a long-term grammaticalization process and hence several functional changes. The idea, however, that the progressive in PDE has both aspectual as well as subjective (emotive, expressive, or attitudinal) uses seems plausible on the basis of the examples discussed in the literature and will serve as the basis for the classification of the data (allowing for different subtypes of these two main categories). Before we turn to the results of the data analysis, information on the historical origin and prior development of the construction will be supplied in the following chapter.

4.

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period82

From the discussion in the preceding chapter, it is clear that, even though this function does not account for all of its uses, the English progressive today can generally be understood as an aspectual marker. This in itself constitutes a puzzling characteristic of the English language today, if one compares it with other present-day Germanic languages, which, with the exception of Icelandic,83 do not have a progressive marker exhibiting such a high degree of grammaticalization (cf. Ebert 2000, Van Pottelberge 2004, 2007).84 Looking back in history, we can see that in the earliest documents, English is not quite as dissimilar to its sister-languages. It uses a construction of the type verbum substantivum + present participle, but this construction is not very frequent overall and does not exhibit a high degree of grammaticalization. In this respect, English resembles other Germanic languages (cf. Poppe 2002b: 255f.) as well as other Indo-European languages (cf. Nickel 1966: 59-82), but it is unique in regard to the subsequent development of the construction into a grammaticalized marker of aspect. So, it has been hypothesized that the English development may have been due to contact with languages where the construction was (supposedly) more firmly established, such as Latin, Celtic, and French. The question of the origin of the progressive is relevant for the present work, because the lexical source of a construction can have an impact on its later grammatical meaning (cf. Hopper 1991: 22). Furthermore, if the development of 82

83

84

One should point out that the term ‘progressive’ is in fact a misnomer for the construction in OE and ME, since the use of the form for the expression of progressive aspect cannot be frequently observed in those periods. This is pointed out by Nehls (1988: 179), among others, who speaks of the ‘progressive’ in the discussion of the situation in PDE but uses the term ‘expanded form’ to discuss the OE and ME situation. For the sake of uniformity, I will, however, use the term ‘progressive’ throughout the present work. In present-day Icelandic, the progressive construction (vera + að + infinitive) appears to be highly grammaticalized (cf. Braunmüller 1999: 259, þráinsson 2005: 422-424). The construction is already attested in 13th century (thus, some of the oldest) Old Norse texts (cf. Faarlund 2004: 133). With regard to the German progressive construction of the type am Arbeiten sein, one must note that differences in the paradigmatic extension of the construction as well as in its frequency show that it is grammaticalized to a higher degree in certain dialects, particularly in the Rhineland and Lower Franconia (Van Pottelberge 2004: 210-212, 223f.), which can be considered similar to the differences in the status of the stare + gerundio progressive in the different Italian dialects (cf. Rohlfs 1969: 108).

The Progressive in Modern English

78

the progressive really was contact-induced, one might find certain features of the source language construction lingering in the use of the progressive in ModE. We will therefore briefly look into the different hypotheses of the origin of the English progressive (4.1). After that, a summary of frequency, spread, and function of the construction in OE and ME will be provided (4.2) as background to the ARCHER-2 corpus study. This will allow a fuller understanding of the grammaticalization of the progressive, from its source to its eventual grammaticalization as marker of aspect in ModE. 4.1

The source of the English progressive

4.1.1

Which construction is the ancestor of the PDE progressive? He wæs huntiende vs. he wæs on huntung

Two types of construction have been claimed to be ancestors of the modern English progressive: beon/wesan + v-(i)ende and beon/wesan + on ~ in ~ a + ving, both occurring in OE. The prepositional type, however, is documented later than the participial type − not before the 11th century − and remains rarer throughout the OE and ME period (cf. e.g. Scheffer 1975: 231, 244f., Wischer 2006: 181, De Groot 2007: 188).85 Furthermore, the prepositional type seems to occur mostly with a particular type of lexical verb, namely with huntung ~ hunting and semantically similar verbs (Scheffer 1975: 231, 244f.). This could indicate that it is less grammaticalized, since the expression of activities such as hunting is still easily connected to the original locative meaning of the construction: he is on hunting, a-fishing etc. can thus be paraphrased as ‘he is at a particular place where he has gone in order to engage in this particular activity.’ This ‘absentive’ meaning of the prepositional construction has recently been stressed by De Groot (2007), who also assumes that the locative origin is still strongly present in the OE uses of the form. The participial type of construction, on the other hand, shows clear signs of having undergone reanalysis, since some uses are not derivable from any of the proposed lexical origins of the construction (cf. 4.2.1). It occurs with a wide variety of verbs and even with considerable frequency in some OE texts (e.g. Orosius) and has a certain extension across the formal paradigm by the late 13th 85

Wischer (2006: 181) notes that not a single instance of the construction could be found in the first two ME subsections of the Helsinki Corpus (covering the period 1150-1350). De Groot (2007: 188) relates the scarcity of occurrences of the construction to the absentive meaning he ascribes to it. Absentive constructions are defined as constructions that convey the information (a) that the subject is not present at this place and (b) about the kind of activity the subject engages in at some other place (cf. De Groot 2007: 186). They are most commonly used in conversation, and dialogic passages are very rare in OE texts (De Groot 2007: 188).

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period

79

century. This has not been noted for the prepositional construction, which seems to occur only in the present or past tenses. The formal merger of present participle and verbal noun around the late 12th/13th century complicates matters somewhat, but one may assume that the change was a phonological merger supported by the many areas of functional overlap between the two forms (cf. Mustanoja 1960: 511, Vezzosi 1996: 165f., Fanego 1996: 102-104).86 Assuming that the prepositional type was not considerably more frequent in spoken usage, one can probably agree with Mossé’s (1938: II, 128) conclusion that “he was a-doing vient se perdre dans he was doing comme un affluent dans un fleuve qu’il va grossir” (‘he was a-doing is lost in he was doing like a little stream in a river which it enlarges.’).87 4.1.2

Language-internal explanations

Accounts of the development of the English progressive as an indigenous development generally rely – explicitly or not – on the idea of grammaticalization.88 86

87

88

For a different view cf. Dal (1952), who assumes that the change is morphosyntactic in nature. According to her, the verbal noun, as it acquired gerundial characteristics, took over all functions formerly fulfilled by the present participle. This is not at all convincing. Leaving aside element-byelement translations from Latin in the interlinear glosses, the acquisition of verbal properties (such as the ability to govern a direct object) by the verbal noun is a slow process, which gains some momentum only toward the end of the ME period. The earliest indubitable examples of gerundial constructions with direct objects date from the 14th century (cf. Kranich 2003, 2006). More detailed criticism of Dal (1952) is presented by Mossé (1957/1974). K. Aaron Smith (2007: 221) argues that positing the development of the ModE progressive from the participial construction would violate the uniformitarian principle. He appears to believe that the development of progressives via any other path than locative – progressive (– general imperfective) is not attested. Heine (1994: 269), however, shows that there are a number of other possible sources for progressives, among them the lexical sources of the English participial construction (cf. also Wischer 2006). The only exception to this, it seems, is Ziegeler’s (1999, 2006) work. Ziegeler (2006: 48) states that “agentivity may be considered a lexical property of certain verbs” so that this development “do[es] not appear typical of grammaticalisation processes, which usually refer to the bleaching of lexical meaning at later stages. Instead, the participle appears to be gaining in lexical strength to become more verb-like and imply greater senses of agentivity in the subject, and consequently, in the construction as a whole” (2006: 48). But in fact, the reason why the present participle “appears to be gaining in lexical strength” lies in the grammaticalization of the whole construction (be +

The Progressive in Modern English

80

One already finds instances of beon/wesan + v-(i)ende in OE that represent clear evidence for reanalysis. As Traugott (1992: 188) points out, in the following example the substitution of the first VP with the help of don rather than wesan in the second VP shows that beo sittende was understood as a verbal periphrasis, rather than as a combination of full verb beon with a present participle: (82)

þonne beo we sittende be þæm wege, swa se blinda dyde ‘then we will be sitting at the way-side, as the blind man did’ (HomS 8 (BlHom 2) 148f., example from Traugott 1992: 188, translation slightly modified)

So, reanalysis seems to have already occurred within the OE period. Three possibly ambiguous constructions could have served as source for such a process of reanalysis: (i)

the adjectival participle as in he wæs blissiende (‘he was happy’ or ‘he was rejoicing’)

(ii)

the appositive participle as in he wæs on temple lærende (‘he was in the temple, teaching’ or ‘he was teaching in the temple’)

(iii)

beon/wesan + agent noun as in he wæs ehtend(e) cristenra monna (‘he was a persecutor of Christian men’ or ‘he was persecuting Christian men’) (cf. Nickel 1966: 269-300 and also the resumé in Denison 1993: 399f.)

It may be impossible to arrive at a definite decision which of the three possible sources for reanalysis constitutes the most likely one or whether in fact all three different source constructions were reanalyzed in different contexts (and different parts of the speech community) and together supported the spread of the verbal periphrasis, producing a kind of “syntactic blend” (Nickel 1966: 274, Mitchell 1985: 279). What we may take away from this, however, is that the emergence of the progressive from a language-internal source, through reanalysis of an ambiguous construction, constitutes a plausible account.89

89

present participle): it is a consequence of the reanalysis of full verb be as auxiliary in a periphrastic verb phrase. Such a process can be assumed to have been facilitated through the existence of parallel constructions in the language, such as he sæt lærende, he com fleogende (cf. Raith 1951: 114, Nickel 1966: 282). Nickel (1966: 282f.) warns, however, against overestimating the importance of these parallel constructions, as they also existed in other Germanic languages, where the construction verbum substantivum + present participle did not show such an extension in use as it did in English.

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period 4.1.3

81

Language contact-based explanations

Without presenting any detailed evidence for this view, Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 118) states that “it is very likely that either Latin, Celtic or French influenced Middle English be + -ing in some way or another”. However, it is clear that the likelihood of influence on the progressive is very different for each of these three languages. Let us start by considering the least plausible contact-language, which is French. French cannot have played a role in the origin of the English progressive, for the construction existed in the English language long before the Norman Conquest. It might have played a role in the renewed spread of the progressive in late ME times. However, there is actually no evidence that estre + v-ant was ever more firmly established in OFr than the progressive was in OE or early ME. The estre + present participle construction is not commonly found in early AngloNorman prose (Van der Gaaf 1930/1974: 375). Later Old French texts seem to allow the assumption that the construction was not infrequent (Jensen 1990: 324), but one must underline that throughout the Old French period, the rivaling construction aler + gerund is strongly preferred to the construction estre + gerund (Gougenheim 1929: 37f., Vezzosi 1996: 174, Jensen 1990: 325; cf. also Brunner 1962: 369). If French influence had indeed promoted the use of a particular construction, it would rather have been a construction of the type go + v-ing – a construction which, as a minor use pattern (Heine & Kuteva 2005: 50), in fact existed in English. Impact of Latin on the English progressive appears somewhat more plausible. However, neither the origin of the construction nor its emergent principles of use seem to go back to the Latin periphrasis – merely a certain impact on its rise in frequency may be considered likely. Its rareness in poetry has often been advanced as argument of a non-native origin. Overall, poetry as a genre would seem to disfavor progressive use, and one may say that the fact that the construction occurs in poetry at all, albeit infrequently, strongly speaks against Latin origin. As far as Latin impact on its spread is concerned, one can note that translations from Latin do often show a more frequent use of the progressive, but equivalences between the use in the source text and the target text are “far from exact”, even in the glossed texts (Mitchell 1976: 487, cf. also Nickel 1966: 170 and passim, Visser 1973: 1989f., Vezzosi 1996: 178-180). Considering the role of the Celtic substratum, one can be fairly certain that the progressive is probably not of Celtic origin. If it were, one would expect a formally closer equivalent of the Celtic structure verbum substantivum + preposition + verbal noun. However, as far as its spread is concerned, arguments for Celtic impact are quite strong. Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) idea of a major use pattern (the grammaticalized Celtic progressive) influencing a minor use pattern (the more marginal construction the Anglo-Saxons had in their repertoire) appears appropriate. Based on the studies by Ronan (2003) and Poppe (2002a) on Old and Middle Irish as well as based on findings on Middle Welsh by Mittendorf and

The Progressive in Modern English

82

Poppe (2000), we see that the progressive was more grammaticalized in the Celtic languages, as it was used in all tenses, moods, and aspects. Furthermore, Old and Middle Irish constructions generally refer to imperfective situations and are used to indicate a temporal frame (Poppe 2002a: 245, Ronan 2003: 136), and they can also denote more subjective shades of meaning, such as emphasis (Ronan 2003: 141f.). Mittendorf and Poppe (2000: 132) arrive at similar results for Middle Welsh. The functional spectrum of the Celtic constructions is, as we will see in the following sections, quite closely mirrored by the OE and ME progressive. This does not represent conclusive evidence (pace Tristram 1995, Filppula 2003), but it does suggest that contact with Celtic gave a kick-start to the development of the marginal Germanic pattern in the English language, making the grammaticalization process gain momentum (which would allow us to understand why English shows such a stark difference to its sister languages in this respect). An English-internal grammaticalization process supported and sped up by contact with Celtic is thus a plausible scenario. 4.2

The progressive in Old English and Middle English

4.2.1

Frequency and distribution

The frequency of the progressive in OE was remarkably high in some texts (even in comparison with present-day use), such as in the Orosius, while it was very rarely used in others (particularly in poetry) (cf. Nickel 1966, Scheffer 1975: 131213). In early ME it underwent a noticeable drop in frequency, as yet unexplained, and then regained ground in later ME times. Despite the drop in frequency, there was no interruption in its development in the early ME period, as has sometimes been suggested by proponents of the hypothesis that the prepositional type is in fact the ancestor of the ModE progressive. The study by Killie (2008) provides clear evidence of the semantic continuity between OE and ME usage. In the latter part of the ME period, one can witness a spread of the construction into new linguistic contexts. From the restricted use in OE in the present and past tense and after modals, the progressive starts occurring with the perfect and pluperfect (Fischer 1992: 255f.). Passivals, i.e. the use of active progressive forms with passive meaning (the type the house is building), which are not infrequent in the EModE period (cf. 6.2) seem, however, still to be extremely rare (cf. Fischer 1992: 256). 4.2.2

The functions of the progressive in OE and ME

The main controversy concerning the meaning of the progressive in OE and ME on the one hand and PDE on the other is about whether older usage patterns already clearly foreshadow the modern functions (the view taken e.g. by Nickel (1966: 266)) or whether the use of the progressive in OE and ME was governed by fundamentally different principles (e.g. Hübler 1998: 63-92, 188). Following the same organization as the chapter on the functions of the PDE progressive, the

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period

83

present section will try to establish to what extent the characteristics established for the PDE progressive are already visible in OE and ME. 4.2.2.1

The progressive as marker of aspect

Let us first consider the applicability of an aspectual reading to the progressive in OE and ME, suggested, among others, by Brunner (1962: 377) and Nickel (1966: 244-259). Even by merely studying the instances presented in the literature one cannot help but note that the use of the progressive in OE and ME is governed by different principles than in PDE. It is for instance very doubtful that a present-day native speaker would choose a progressive in a context such as the one in the following OE example, offered as an example of a temporal frame by Nickel (1966: 256): (83)

þurh Albinus swiðost ic geðristlæhte þæt ic dorste þis weorc ongynnan, 7 eac mid Danieles þæs arwurðan Westseaxna biscopes, se nu gyt lifigende is. (Historia Ecclesiastica 4/10ff.) ‘And it was chiefly through Albinius that I was encouraged to begin this work, and also by Daniel the honorable Westsaxon bishop, who is still living/alive now.’90

While undeniably the first mentioned situation A [ic gedristlæhte þæt ic dorste þis weorc ongynnan] falls into a time span at which the second mentioned situation B [lifigende is] holds true, the basic idea of the time-frame concept (cf. 3.1.2.5) is not present in (83): Situation B and situation A are not part of the same larger schema, i.e. the fact that the bishop is still alive presently adds general background information, but it is not conceptualized as ongoing while the situation [be encouraged to begin this work] occurred. Examples such as (83) should therefore simply be classified as an instance where the periphrasis refers to an imperfective situation and not as the specific subtype of use termed ‘timeframe’. Thus, Nickel’s (1966) claim that the overwhelming majority of OE progressives which occur independently of a Latin model are already used to refer to a temporal frame needs to be taken with a grain of salt due to a sometimes over-general use of the term.91

90

91

The translation is a modified version of the one by Miller (1890). It indicates that one should be aware of the fact that this example is ambiguous between a periphrastic verbal reading and an interpretation of lifigende as adjectival participle. In general, as has been pointed out (Campbell 1967: 443, Mitchell 1985: 277), there is a certain tendency in Nickel’s (1966) work to overly stress the similarities between OE and ModE use of the progressive.

The Progressive in Modern English

84

Another claim by Nickel (1966: 257) also seems to see more similarity between the OE and the PDE progressive than is warranted. He notes that the progressive was already commonly used to refer to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ in OE and that this use is decisive for the grammaticalization of the construction: In dem Bestreben, das aktuelle (hic et nunc-) Präsens mit seinem Zeitrahmencharakter von dem konsuetiven (sic! probably: konsekutiven), vor allem aber dem allgemein-gültigen, sog. zeitlosen Präsens zu differenzieren, liegt wohl die eigentliche Wurzel für die Entwicklung der altenglischen EF. (‘The true roots of the development of the OE progressive probably lie in the aim of differentiating the hic et nunc present with its time frame character from the consecutive [amended from “konsuetiv”, S.K.], and even more from the generally valid, so-called atemporal present.’). (Nickel 1966: 257) It is somewhat unclear how well this hypothesis is supported by his data, since Nickel (1966: 243) states that present tense forms are not used very often in OE texts. Furthermore, the examples adduced by Nickel to support it are not convincing, since they are generally of the type exemplified in (83). In cases of this type, we do not have a typical ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ use, because a stative situation, paraphraseable by “he is still alive”, is referred to. It would thus not be a felicitous answer to the question “what is he doing right now?”, which is part of the definition of the term ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ offered by Nehls (1974: 60).92 If one refers to a bishop who lives (e.g. in London),93 rather than lived or has lived, it is normally clear that he is presently still alive. Since the progressive is therefore not needed in such a context to disambiguate between timeless present, habitual present tense uses, and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’, one cannot believe such contexts to have provided the motivation for the grammaticalization of the construction. Similar present tense uses are found in ME, as in the following example, taken from Scheffer (1975: 219): (84)

92 93

To alle ðo halgen ðe hier on liue waren iboren, and nu mid ure lauerde gode wunigende bieð (Vices and Virtues, 21, 12f.) ‘To all the saints who were born here in this life, and are now dwelling with our lord God’

“Wir sehen das Aktuelle Präsens auf die Frage „Was machst du da?“ in Anlehnung an E. Koschmieder als eigenständige grammatische Kategorie an.” One may note that without a complement such as in London, the verb would not be used in PDE, but an adjective would be preferred (i.e. the venerable bishop who is still alive, rather than the venerable bishop who is still living or the venerable bishop who still lives).

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period

85

One should underline that verbs of living and dwelling represent very frequent contexts for the progressive both in OE and in ME (Mustanoja 1960: 586, cf. also Nickel 1966: 103, 120, 135 and passim), regardless of the unlimited or limited duration of the state referred to. This points to clear differences in the constraints governing the use of the construction in OE/ME on the one hand and PDE on the other. Quantitative studies of the semantics of the OE and ME progressive are rare. Exceptions are constituted by Smith (2007) and Killie (2008), both using the Helsinki Corpus (OE, ME, and EModE), which they both supplement by data collections of their own. Smith (2007) distinguishes only between progressive and other imperfective uses and shows that the former become more common in the time span 1150 and 1710 (Smith 2007: 216, table 2). Other functions of the progressive are not included in the presentation of his data but are, according to Smith (2007: 218), infrequent. Kille (2008) distinguishes between ‘durative’ and ‘focalized’ uses, following Bertinetto et al. (2000). ‘Durative’ refers to a situation that is ongoing during a longer time interval, while ‘focalized’ designates the kind of use here referred to as time-frame use. A PDE example of durative use would be Paul was dancing all night, an example of focalized use Paul was dancing when I arrived at the bar, and the study shows the latter becoming more prominent than the former. In terms of the present study, both these uses would be understood as markers of progressive aspect, and it is therefore interesting to see how they develop. In OE, these two categories make up 43% of the data, in the ME section of the Helsinki Corpus only 28% (Killie 2008: 78, table 1). The decline in ME is explained by the fact that the ME part of the corpus is not very balanced. Using her own more balanced corpus of a selection of ME texts, Killie shows that the distribution of the functions of the progressive is not very dissimilar to OE, with 50% of (durative or focalized) aspectual progressives (Killie 2008: 83, table 3). The other uses in her data are more or less clearly motivated by a wish to draw attention to the situation expressed by the predicate (Killie 2008: 80f.) – we will discuss these in 4.2.2.3. We can conclude the present section by highlighting a clear difference of the function of the progressive between OE/ME and PDE: whereas one of the central functions of the construction in PDE is the expression of progressive aspect (based on the results in chapter 3), the construction has not yet acquired a dominantly aspectual function in OE and ME. 4.2.2.2

The progressive and the nature of the situation

A relation to duration is commonly suggested for the OE and ME progressive (for OE cf. e.g. Nickel 1966: 244; for ME cf. e.g. Mossé 1938: II, 177-184, 187-204, Brunner 1962: 368). We have seen that in PDE such a connection holds because of the logical relation between imperfectivity and duration: a situation must have a certain duration, it seems, for a speaker to choose to make a claim only about some middle part of the situation. Aristar and Dry (1982), however, stress the

86

The Progressive in Modern English

difference between the OE and ModE use of the progressive in this respect. While the ModE progressive is a marker of progressive aspect, in OE the construction marks the situation as having duration rather than as being in progress (Aristar & Dry 1982: 6f.). There may well be some truth to this observation; yet, just as in PDE, the connection of the progressive to duration is by no means absolute. An example from Beowulf, cited by Goedsche (1932: 473) with the comment that “our present-day Sprachgefühl demands the simple form of the verb” in the context, may serve to illustrate this: (85)

gyf þonne Frysna hwylc … ðæs morþor-hetes myndgiend wære (Beowulf, 1104f.) ‘if on the other hand one of the Frisians would mention this feud’

The situation [mention a feud] is not an event which would normally be conceptualized as unfolding during a certain time span. Note also that this hypothetical event is not viewed imperfectively either. What the speaker is interested in is the result of the situation, not the process of its occurrence. The motivation for choosing a progressive here must therefore be different, presumably emphasizing a particularly dramatic event. A further important difference between OE/ME and PDE use concerns the use for situations of unlimited duration. While in PDE the typical reference to situations in progress generally blocks the use of the construction from nondynamic contexts such as everlasting states (cf. 3.2.1.2), this is not the case in OE and ME, when it was possible to use the construction to refer to habits, permanent states, and characteristic qualities (cf. Mossé 1938: II, 181-187). This property is, for instance, visible in the construction’s quite common occurrence in geographic descriptions in OE and ME: (86)

of Danai þære ie, seo is irnende of norþdæle (Orosius 8.23f.) ‘from Danai that river which runs from the northern part’ (example from Traugott 1972: 90, translation adapted from her)

(87)

the flood is Into the grete See rennende (Gower, Confessio Amantis, 7.567) ‘the flood flows into the great Sea/the Ocean’ (example from Mossé 1938: II, 184)

Nickel’s findings indicate that verbs commonly occurring in the progressive are verbs referring to movement (gongende), saying (sprecende), rest (wuniende), or states (þrowiende) (Nickel 1966: 171). This does not support the hypothesis of an association of the progressive with limited duration or dynamism in OE. With regard to the other factors discussed under 3.2 for PDE, we can state that in OE and ME neither a connection of the periphrasis to agentivity nor to overt or covert situations is apparent. The progressive occurs both with agents, e.g. in (85), and with non-agentive subjects as in the quite frequently documented use for geographical descriptions, evidenced in (86) and (87). Similarly, the use for overt

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period

87

situations as in (82) (þonne beo we sittende be þæm wege) is documented as well as the use for covert situations like in example (88) below, since [surmount earthly obstacles] is not a situation connected to any particular kind of behavior observable by the five senses: (88)

Wæs he Mellitus mid lichoman untrymnesse mid fotadle swiðe gehefigad…he glaedlice all eorðlic þing wæs oferhleapende… (Historia Ecclesiastica, 116, 28-30) ‘Mellitus suffered severely from bodily infirmity…, but still,…, he surmounted with alacrity all earthly obstacles…’ (example and translation from Hübler 1998: 69)

All in all, the one characteristic of the situation referred to that had some impact on the choice of the progressive in OE and ME would appear to be duration. Even this criterion was by no means absolute (cf. example (85)), as it apparently played no role in instances where the progressive was used to convey more subjective functions, which we will now turn to. 4.2.2.3

The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion

In contexts like in example (85), where the situation presented is neither durative nor imperfective, it is clear that the progressive must have been chosen for reasons unconnected to any aspectual or Aktionsart meanings. It is commonly suggested in the literature that in such uses, the progressive is chosen in order to “indicate the speaker’s opinion or emotional feeling” (Goedsche 1932: 475) or to “make […] the narrative more graphic” (Mustanoja 1960: 585).94 According to Hübler (1998), forms which are chosen as indexes of emotional attitudes toward propositions generally have the following three characteristics: They consist of more language material than the paradigmatic alternative, they are generally the marked member of the paradigm, and their use must be optional. Concerning the last point, he clarifies that the speaker must have a “free choice, free in the sense that the choice does not have an influence on the propositional content” (1998: 15, italics in original) (cf. also Kranich forthc.). These prerequisites are all fulfilled with regard to the progressive in OE and ME. In his study of the use of the progressive in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Hübler presents several examples where the use of the construction as an ‘emotional index’ is evidenced. One such use has already been presented in (88) above, another illustration can be seen in (89): 94

The use of the progressive for the expression of emotional involvement or to highlight particularly dramatic passages in a narrative is also noted by Mossé (1938: II, 174), by Brunner (1962: 368), and by Scheffer (1975: 210), among others. See also Nehls (1988: 180), who simply states that “[i]n general, the stylistic function of the EF in OE seems to have been to put emphasis on the verbal action”.

88 (89)

The Progressive in Modern English Forðon nalæs æfter myclum fæce grimmre wræc þa þære fyrenfullan þeode þæs grimman mannes wæs æfterfyligende. (Historia Ecclesiastica, 50, 7-9) ‘Therefore after no long time direr vengeance for their dire sin overtook this depraved people.’ (example and translation from Hübler 1998: 70)

In these instances, the progressive indicates that the speaker perceives the situation expressed in the predicate as somehow “remarkable” vis-à-vis the speaker’s and/or the audience’s “general background of expectations or norms […] or to some particular background, e.g. a special wish or fear, a sympathy or antipathy, and the like” (Hübler 1998: 70). Comparing this to the subjective uses in PDE, however, one should underline that there are differences. In PDE, subjective uses are classifiable into three different types with distinct meanings, as we have seen. The uses in OE and ME are much less specific: the choice often rather has to do with narrative conventions, in the sense that the progressive is chosen to highlight the most dramatic events in a narrative (cf. Brunner 1962: 367f., Fitzmaurice 1998, Vezzosi 1996: 192-197, Killie 2008). Killie’s study shows that this type of use is in fact responsible for a considerable number of occurrences. In the OE data, 21% of the occurrences were classified as ‘narrative’, i.e. used for emphasis in a narrative, while a further 22% were classified as ‘stative’, meaning that the progressive was used with reference to a stative situation of unlimited duration and that the motivation for its use was also “most probably [that it] provides emphasis” (Killie 2008: 80). In the ME data in the Helsinki Corpus, altogether 72% of instances fall into these two categories (i.e. they are either clearly or most probably emphatic), while this is true for 51% of the ME data in Killie’s own additional selection of texts (Killie 2008: 78, table 1, 80, table 2, 83, table 3). Hence, one can conclude that OE and ME uses of the progressive are very often motivated by the speaker’s evaluation of the situation as somehow ‘remarkable’, dramatic, or worthy of a vivid description. This is in sharp contrast to the PDE use of the construction, where we were able to see that the aspectual function is generally presented as the most common or ‘basic function’. 4.2.2.4

A ‘basic meaning’ or ‘core value’ for the progressive in Old and Middle English?

It is very doubtful that the quest for a basic meaning of the progressive form in OE and ME will be more successful than the search for a basic meaning of the form in PDE. As we have seen, in PDE the variety of uses of the construction only allowed us to make out general tendencies. Establishing a core value is even more problematic for its OE and ME ancestor with its much less grammaticalized function and thus greater variability of meaning. A certain association of the progressive with imperfective situations is evident only as a loose tendency that can be expected from a form consisting of verbum substantivum and (inherently durative) present participle. Killie’s (2008)

A brief overview of the development of the progressive before the Modern English period

89

results indicate that the use for emphasis and more vivid description is the most prominent factor motivating the use of the progressive. Hübler (1998: 79), however, goes too far in assuming that the basic function of the progressive in OE lies in “contribut[ing] the emotional dimension to the utterance” (if he were right, this should equally apply to the ME progressive). As a basic meaning, this does not work, as there are simply too many examples where a particular emotional involvement of the speaker cannot be reasonably assumed. A case in point is the common occurrence of the progressive in geographical descriptions. Thus, neither ‘subjective involvement/remarkableness’ nor ‘imperfectivity’ qualify as proper ‘primary functions’ of the progressive in OE or ME. Discussing the meaning of the PDE progressive, we have concluded that on the one hand, it generally serves the expression of aspect and on the other hand, it shows a number of speaker-attitude-based uses. This is reminiscent of Rydén’s hypothesis of a double-faceted core meaning for the progressive − a core meaning which it has supposedly had since OE times, continuing with little fundamental change until PDE. The supposed panchronic basic meaning of the progressive is summarized by him as follows: [I]ts potential performance spectrum is very wide, within a core meaning or core function of DYNAMICNESS or DYNAMIC PROCESS as working essentially in two “facets”, one action-focussed (with the progressive used as a marker of temporality), the other attitude-focussed (with the progressive used as an attiude marker, for subjective expression on the part of the speaker). (Rydén 1997: 426) This analysis is flawed, however, since the progressive is not yet associated with dynamic processes in OE and ME. Furthermore, one should note that the subjective uses in OE and ME are quite different from those observed in PDE: while the OE/ME progressive appears to be chosen generally for ‘remarkable’ situations in a narrative, thus functioning as a stylistic device, its subjective uses in PDE seem to be connected to more specific meanings, such as disapproval (particularly in combination with ALWAYS), tentativeness/politeness (subjective progressive without ALWAYS) and interpretation. Finally, it should be underlined that the relation between the aspectual and the attitudinal facet is different in OE/ME and PDE: although it seems that the progressive in PDE can be generally understood as a grammaticalized marker of progressive aspect which also fulfills certain subjective functions, the subjective element is stronger in OE and ME, where the progressive is never obligatory and has not yet acquired a clear grammatical function. The relative importance of the two factors changes in the course of the grammaticalization, as will become clear from the discussion in chapters 7 and 8.

5.

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

In the present chapter, the increase in frequency of the progressive within the modern period will be discussed, focusing on the impact of external factors on the construction. After an overview of the development of the frequency of the construction (5.1), we will see what kind of impact the factor ‘genre’ has on its rise (5.2) and what influence sociolinguistic variables have (5.3). The diverse explanations for the rise in frequency will be discussed more conclusively in the context of the study of the linguistic expansion and the semantic development of the construction (chapters 6 and 7), which will allow us to gain a better idea of their plausibility. 5.1

General overview of the changes in frequency from c1500 to c2000

It is clear from previous research that the progressive undergoes an enormous increase in frequency within the period under consideration. However, the exact progress of the increase is not yet fully understood, since the studies often use data sets too limited for reaching general conclusions on the overall development. Either the corpora only contain part of the period in which the grammaticalization of the function of the progressive needs to be situated or they are too small to produce significant results or both. The only studies which take a similarly long-term diachronic approach to the one chosen in the present work have been conducted by Dennis (1948) and Hancil (2003). In the case of the former study, conducted long before computer corpora became available, it is not surprising that the corpus used is not very large. It consists of 1,000 lines of formal prose and 500 lines of each of the following genres: prose fiction, prose drama, poetry, and verse drama. If we assume that one line has an average of 10 words (a rather high estimate), this would amount to a 30,000 words corpus. Though far from statistical significance, Dennis’ (1948: 859, table 1) study does point to a steady increase of progressive use, particularly since the late 18th century. In her time span 1766-1799, she finds 20 instances in British English and 27 in American English total. In the last time span considered by her, 1900-1932, the use has grown to 60 (British) and 95 (American) progressives. In the case of Hancil’s (2003) study, the small corpus size may have to do with the genre Hancil has chosen to concentrate on, i.e. private letters, which are not always easy to come by. Hancil’s letter corpus contains 40,000 words per century, which yields some interesting results for the latter half of the time span considered (the 19th and 20th centuries, for some analyses also the 18th century). But for the 16th and 17th centuries, when the progressive is not yet very frequent, the absolute number of instances found in a corpus of this size is too small for further meaningful analyses. Other studies concentrate only on parts of the time

92

The Progressive in Modern English

span under consideration here. Their results are presented in the following, advancing chronologically through the centuries. The quantitative studies by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a) demonstrate the clear increase of the progressive in the EModE period – which, as Hancil’s (2003) study shows, is, however, not as remarkable as the rise in the LModE period. The results to be gained from these investigations by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a) also suffer from the insufficient size of the corpus. They both use the Helsinki Corpus, covering the time span from 15001710, divided into three 70-year-long sub-periods. Elsness shows that the progressive rises from an average of M = 17.35 in period I (1500-1570) via M = 27.4 in period II (1570-1640) to M = 58.5 in period III (1640-1710) (Elsness 1994: 11, table 2).95 The absolute number of instances is rather low: Period I has 33 progressives, period II 52 instances, and period III contains 100 progressives. This points to the fact that the size of the Helsinki Corpus, with around 190,000 words per 70-year-period, is too small for a detailed quantitative investigation of the progressive in the time span 1500-1710, when it was not yet all that frequent. Fitzmaurice (2004a) studies the use of the progressive in late 17th and early 18th century writing using NEET, a corpus constructed for historical social network analysis. It contains texts written by 17 individuals in four different genres: letters, essays, fiction, and drama. The corpus has a total size of 1,353,837 words and yields 980 occurrences of the progressive (cf. Fitzmaurice 2004a: 136, 145). Its focus on a group of only 17 writers does not make it a great basis for generalizations concerning overall language use, as this was not the purpose for which it was created. Fitzmaurice’s (2004a: 136) main focus does not lie in the frequency changes or on cross-genre comparison but in the development of subjective uses of the progressive. Her work (including also Wright 1994, Fitzmaurice 2004b with the same focus) will consequently mostly inform section 7.3. The 18th century use of the progressive is also studied by Smith (2004), whose corpus consists exclusively of private letters by 22 writers and thus does not furnish a representative picture of general linguistic habits either. Her corpus is, furthermore, not very large, containing 320,000 words and yielding 266 progressives. This equals an average M-coefficient of 83, which indicates a rise compared to the latest sub-period of the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus. The results are, however, not fully comparable, as the Helsinki Corpus contains various genres, while Smith’s corpus consists of private letters only. As we shall see, the use of the progressive differs quite significantly between genres. The corpus used by Sairio (2006, 2009) is even smaller, consisting of about 150,000 words of letters from and to Elizabeth Montagu, which yields altogether 143 progressives (cf. Sairio 2006: 181, table 2). The main aim of her work, for which she has constructed the corpus, is not the study of overall linguistic change but the study of language use in this particular social network 95

The results on changes in frequency arrived at by Núñez Pertejo (2004a) differ only to an insignificant extent (cf. 2.4).

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

93

(cf. Sairio 2009). Her findings on the frequency of the progressive are based only on the letters of few writers, and her results on the distribution of the progressive across linguistic contexts are in fact only based on Montagu’s own letters, since the progressive is uncommon in the correspondents’ letters to Mrs Montagu (cf. Sairio 2006: 176). Her study cannot, therefore, answer questions on general patterns of language use. Strang (1982) uses a ca. 1,000,000 word corpus covering the time span 1726-1961. The average frequencies rise from M = 107 in the 18th century to M = 243 in the 19th century. There is a further dramatic increase in the 20th century (including data up to 1961), where Strang’s results yield an average M = 657. For the 19th century, studies exist which are conducted on a quantitatively more satisfying data basis. Arnaud (1998, 2002) treats exclusively the genre of letters on a very large data base of nearly 10 million words (cf. Arnaud 2002: 25).96 His results show the enormous rise in frequency of the progressive within the 19th century: whereas the average normalized frequency of progressives in the first decade of the 19th century is M = 140, the average normalized frequency in the 1880s is M = 343 (Arnaud 2002: 141, figure 1). Smitterberg (2005), just like the present study, aims at a cross-genre comparison. Smitterberg’s study is all in all a remarkable work, presenting a most detailed study of the progressive in the 19th century using the corpus CONCE, which contains almost 1,000,000 words from seven different genres. Many of his findings will be taken up in the present work in order to compare them with the findings from ARCHER and place them within the greater diachronic development. Smitterberg’s results also demonstrate the considerable overall rise of the construction within the 19th century: The M-coefficient for period 1(18001830) is 172, period 2 (1850-1870) has M = 263, and period 3 (1870-1900) has M = 316 (Smitterberg 2005: 60, table 8).97 So, it seems that the major rise of the progressive is situated in the 19th century. From Strang’s results and from the study by Dennis (1948: 859, table 1), one can gather that the rise seems to 96

97

Arnaud’s (1983) study constituted the pilot to the later studies on the large corpus basis, and in the later studies referred to in detail here, the estimate of the increase in frequency given in Arnaud (1983) was even seen to have been too moderate. For a part of his corpus, Smitterberg (2005) has calculated the S-coeffecient, a coefficient devised by him, which promises better results than the use of the M-coefficient but necessitates a previous analysis of all verb phrases contained in the corpus. The S-coefficient is based on the relation of progressives to all “finite non-imperative verb phrases, excluding BE going to + infinitive constructions with future reference” (Smitterberg 2005: 53). The relative frequencies thus obtained also show a statistically significant increase of the use of the construction from period 1 to period 3. The increase is visible in all genres with the exception of fiction (cf. Smitterberg 2005: 53, table 7; 62, table 9).

94

The Progressive in Modern English

continue into the 20th century. More recent studies have shown that the frequency continues to increase in the second half of the 20th century (Mair & Hundt 1995a, Smith 2002). While Smith (2002) concentrates on the change in recent British English, using the corpora LOB and FLOB (all genres), Mair and Hundt (1995a) take into account the whole ‘BROWN-family’ but focus only on the genre ‘press’.98 Mair and Hundt (1995a: 113f., 121f.) can show that there is a statistically significant increase in the use of the progressive between the early 1960s and the early 1990s in British and American English press texts.99 We can now compare the findings produced by the studies discussed above and the results to be gained from ARCHER:100

98

99

100

The group of four corpora often referred to as the ‘BROWN-family’ are the parallel corpora Brown (American English, 1961), LOB (British English, 1961), Frown (American English, 1992), and FLOB (British English, 1991). The size of each of the corpora is 1,000,000 words. For a description cf. Mair & Hundt (1995a: 111f.). Leech et al. (2009) furthermore present results using ICE-GB as well as the spoken corpora DSEU (1958-1969) and DICE (1990-1992). Their results are otherwise integrated in the present work, but for a detailed consideration in this section, they unfortunately became available to me too late. The M-coeffecients in table (3a) are based on the following sources: Elsness 1994 (lines 1-3), Fitzmaurice 2004a (line 4), Smith 2004 (line 5), Strang 1982 (lines 6, 7, 13), Arnaud 1998 (lines 8, 12), Smitterberg 2005 (lines 9-11), Smith 2002 (lines 14, 15).

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English Table 3 a: Increase in frequency of the progressive (1500-2000) on the basis of the relevant literature

95

Table 3 b: Increase in frequency of the progressive (1600-2000) on the basis of ARCHER-2 Time span

M-coefficient

Mixed

1600-1649

32

27

Mixed

1650-1699

61

1640-1710

59

Mixed

1700-1749

84

4

1653-1762

72

Mixed

1750-1799

103

5

1700-1800

83

Letters

1800-1849

139

6

1726-1800

107

Fiction

1850-1899

243

7

1800-1900

243

Fiction

1900-1949

350

8

1800-1810

140

Letters

1950-1999

393

9

1800-1830

172

Mixed

10

1850-1870

263

Mixed

11

1870-1900

316

Mixed

12

1880-1890

343

Letters

13

1900-1961

657

Fiction

14

1961

294

Mixed

15

1991

323

Mixed

Time span

M-coefficient

Genre

1

1500-1570

17

2

1570-1640

3

Some interesting results are evident from a comparison of the two tables. What is perhaps most noticeable is that the factor genre, to be discussed in more detail in the following section, apparently plays an important role. Studies based only on fiction seem to have a tendency to show higher frequencies of progressives than corpora of mixed genres (note in particular lines 6 and 12 of table 3a), while basing a study exclusively on the genre ‘private letters’ shows no such effect. One might, at first glance, have the impression that the use of the progressive in letters lags somewhat behind the general development, since the results by Smith (2004) (line 5) for the whole 18th century closely match the results obtained from ARCHER for the first half of the 18th century. But if we look at Arnaud’s (1998) results for the 19th century, the reverse trend is notable: in the last decade of the 19th century, his letter corpus shows a frequency similar to that evident in ARCHER for the first half of the 20th century. Overall, letters show a distribution of progressives much closer to the average in a cross-genre sample of texts than fiction does. What may also be noted − and this fact cannot as easily be explained by reference to the factor genre − is that, while overall results from ARCHER closely match the results achieved in studies using other mixed genre corpora, the

The Progressive in Modern English

96

frequencies of the progressive in LOB and FLOB (lines 14 and 15) are lower than those observable in ARCHER, even when comparing LOB (1961) with the period 1900-1949 and FLOB (1991) with the period 1950-1999. The genre mix contained in the LOB and FLOB corpora (cf. Smith 2002: 320) and contained in ARCHER (cf. 2.3) is very similar, so it is not possible to explain this difference. The result, however, remains the same: whether LOB and FLOB or ARCHER are used, one can see that the progressive continues to increase in frequency in the course of the 20th century. This fact will need to be explained. 5.2

Distribution across genres

The preceding section has shown that fiction, the genre considered by Strang (1982), is very favorable to the use of progressives, as the M-coefficients from Strang’s study are decidedly higher than the frequencies in studies using mixedgenre corpora. Dennis’ (1948) study of different genres shows that poetry is the genre least favorable to the progressive, which seems to be true also for verse drama. Prose fiction and prose drama exhibit the highest frequencies. Formal prose seems to be somewhere in the middle (cf. Dennis 1948: 859, table 1). This leads her to the hypothesis that the progressive is rather a feature of colloquial, informal language use, and indeed her additional study of a small corpus of colloquial prose also points in this direction, as frequencies here are higher overall (Dennis 1948: 862, table 2). Clearly, due to the small size of her corpus, these results need to be substantiated. In EModE, as in other periods, poetry seems to be a genre which is not very inviting to the use of the progressive, as can be seen e.g. in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which has an M-coefficient of 10. In EModE drama, it is apparently not very frequent either: Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1592) contains only four progressives, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet contains ten. These works are not atypical for the two genres in the period, as Scheffer’s table (1975: 250-252) indicates. The progressive seems to be somewhat more common in prose: Ascham’s The Scholemaster with M = 24, Pepys’ Diary 1659-1661 with M = 70, Dryden’s letters with M = 108 represent the broad spectrum. All in all, we can say that the frequency of the progressive is still rather low. Núñez Pertejo (2004a) presents results on genre differences based on the Helsinki Corpus. The results are far from statistically significant and cannot even be called suggestive. Núñez Pertejo, however, nevertheless applies a number of detailed classifications to her small data set; the following table is an excerpt from one of her tables:

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

97

Table 4: Excerpt from Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a) findings on genre distribution of progressives in EModE Genre

E2

E3

Total

Law, Statutes

E1

3 (25.46)

6 (45.52)

9 (24.48)

Handbooks

2 (16.27)

8 (70. 63)

10 (29.70)

7 (62.05)

7 (18.81)

2 (17.66)

8 (24.25)

1 (11.33)

3 (11.72)

Science Educational Treatises

2 (19.15)

Philosophy

2 (20.22)

4 (35.65)

(Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 172f.) The table continues to present figures for ten more genres. Those figures similarly range between one instance of the progressive up to a maximum of eleven progressives per genre and per period (in the parentheses, Núñez Pertejo provides normalized frequencies calculated per 100,000 words). The altogether 178 progressives that Núñez Pertejo has found yield table after table of this kind, where one is left with extremely low numbers after classification. Núñez Pertejo, however, takes this quantitatively insufficient basis as a starting point for confident conclusions such as (based on the table reproduced partly above): “Most of the genres included in the corpus, then, undergo an increase in the use of progressive periphrases” (2004a: 174). But the fact that e.g. Educational Treatises contained two progressives in the first, four in the second, but then again only two in the third period may be entirely due to coincidence. Due to such quantitative limitations, her study does not allow reliable generalizations about the development of the progressive in the EModE. For the 18th century, one can gather from Scheffer’s overview (1975: 250252) that, just as in the preceding centuries, the progressive appears to remain rare in poetry. For instance, Alexander Pope’s poems exhibit an M-coefficient of 13 (Scheffer 1975: 251). Furthermore, it seems from Scheffer’s investigation that the progressive, although still most prominent in prose (both fiction and nonfiction), is on the rise in drama. But one has to be careful, as the data taken into account by Scheffer is necessarily limited.101 Moreover, one needs to point out that frequencies vary drastically between authors, in the 18th century just like in the preceding centuries, and even results of different works of the same author 101

As Scheffer (1975) conducted his study before the age of computer corpora, it was difficult for him to take into account a truly representative data basis. The list of M-coefficients he presents is based partly on Mossé’s (1938) findings, partly based on his own counting. In the case of the plays, he has evidently taken into account the complete play, indicated by the fact that he gives the number of progressives rather than the M-coefficients. As far as the novels and other longer works are concerned, it is, however, not clear how much of the work the calculation of the M-coefficient is based on.

98

The Progressive in Modern English

may vary quite dramatically. For instance, Swift’s Journal to Stella (written 1710–13; published 1766–68) has M = 227 (a high frequency for the period), while Gulliver’s Travels (1726) has M = 54 (which is low even for 18th-century English). For Jane Austen’s work, Raybould’s (1957: 177) study shows a considerable increase between Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and again from the latter to Persuasion. He also observes a rise in frequency between Jane Austen’s earlier and later private letters. Variation in the use of the progressive in the language of one individual is by no means unusual, as results from Strang (1982: 435-440) show. She presumes that this might possibly reflect “that something happened to the status of the construction around 1800 that made it not only more frequent but also more difficult for novelists to handle” (1982: 439). Later on, she describes it more precisely: “In the period of transition it was not different authors so much as authors at different levels of experience who accounted for wildly varying rates of frequency” (1982: 453). We will come back to Strang’s view of the diachronic development of the progressive in 7.2.4. Her view of the use of the progressive in the novel is based on the idea that the progressive had acquired new functions, and that authors were at first unsure how to handle it in the emerging genre of the novel − this is why presumably more experienced authors, who acquired the knack of the genre as well as of the new functions of the grammatical construction, exhibit a higher frequency of progressives in their works. But one should note that it is not only writers of fiction who show such fluctuations. Studies of private letters (Arnaud 1998, 2002, Smith 2004, Sairio 2006, 2009) also show that frequencies of progressive use vary both between individuals and within the language use of the same person at different points in his or her life.102 Generally, we can see that individuals tend to use the form more often as time goes by (Arnaud 1998: 132-139, Sairio 2006: 174, figure 1). This may be explained by a growing familiarity with the overall increasingly used construction but hardly, as suggested by Strang with regard to the increasing use of the progressive by the individual author of fiction, with a growing mastery of the 102

Smith (2004) does not compare earlier and later use of the same letter writers but only varying frequencies in the letters of different individuals. The variation apparent from this analysis is taken by her as an indication that the progressive “was sometimes more and sometimes less grammaticalized within the speaker’s idiolect” (2004: 181). Such a conclusion does not seem warranted. There are more plausible explanations: for instance, differences in subject-matter may account for the differing frequencies. Discussions of philosophical, political, economic facts would for example be less conductive to frequent progressive use than the relating of every-day anecdotes (cf. also 7.6). Another argument that undermines the conclusion brought forward by Smith is that in the 20th century, when the grammaticalization of the progressive is generally assumed to have been completed, frequencies between different authors as well as between different works from the same author still show a certain degree of variation (cf. Strang 1982: 464).

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

99

construction in one particular genre whose stylistic maxims fluctuate at the time. The letter writers in the studies referred to cannot be expected to have mastered the art of epistolary correspondence only at the later stages of their life. Smitterberg’s results on the fiction part of CONCE also lead him to the conclusion that “[t]here appear to be no strong conncetions between the author’s maturity as a novelist and the frequency of the progressive” (2008: 281, note 8). Fitzmaurice’s (2004a: 161, table 7) results show that individual writers generally have much higher progressive frequencies in their letters than in their essays. The distribution between letters on the one hand and literary writing (fiction and drama) on the other hand is, however, more diverse, with some authors showing higher progressive frequencies in their letters than in their literary writing (e.g. Daniel Defoe), while e.g. William Congreve uses the construction more frequently in fiction than in drama and in his letters. Arnaud’s (1973) synchronic study of the progressive in 19th century English also showed that the occurrence of the progressive strongly depends on the text type. He found that the dialogue parts of novels and private letters particularly favor the use of the progressive, which led him to a closer investigation of the construction in private letters (Arnaud 1983, 1998, 2002). These studies showed a clear increase in the genre, as we have seen in table 3a. Arnaud concludes on this basis that “probably a parallel development took place in speech, at least for literate middle-class people” (1983: 84). Núñez Pertejo’s (2007a: 378f.) results for the 18th century and Smitterberg’s results for the 19th century show the same trend, i.e. that the progressive is found more frequently in non-expository genres than in expository genres (cf. also Fitzmaurice 2004a).103 The progressive is used more frequently in the genres letters, fiction, or drama than in science or debates (Smitterberg 2005: 66, table 12; 66-78). The genres diverge during the 19th century ever more strongly in their use of the progressive − although the progressive is consistently on the rise in all genres except fiction, it rises much more slowly in the expository genres. Smitterberg (2005: 67) relates this result to Biber and Finegan’s (1997) results that specialist expository registers “have followed a consistent course towards ever more literate styles” (Biber and Finegan 1997: 273), while popular written genres have taken the reverse route to ever more oral styles. Smitterberg (2005: 67) concludes from this “that the progressive is an oral rather than a literate feature, as the construction is decidedly more common in popular than in 103

The non-expository genres drama, fiction, and letters all show higher frequencies in Fitzmaurice’s (2004a: 145f.) study than the expository genre essays. However, drama shows the highest frequencies, fiction the second highest, and letters comes only in third position, which differs from Smitterberg’s results in which letters have the highest frequency. As Fitzmaurice (2004a: 145f.) points out, this may well have to do with changing genre-specific communicative preferences rather than with a change in the perception of the progressive.

100

The Progressive in Modern English

specialized genres”. So, corpus studies appear to support the rather long-standing assumption that the progressive is a feature typical of oral, non-formal language use – a view which one also finds in standard overviews on the topic (e.g. Görlach 1999: 82). This is related to the point Mair and Hundt (1995a) as well as Smith (2002) make in their discussion of the rise of the progressive in the late 20th century. Mair and Hundt (1995a) already suppose that the increasing use of the progressive has to do with a change in stylistic norms: As it is widely suspected that the gap between the written and spoken norms of educated English has narrowed considerably over the past few decades, the increase in the use of the progressive could be regarded as a symptom of the ‘colloquialisation’ of written English − on a par with others such as the growing acceptance of contracted forms or the increase in the going to-future. (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 118)104 Smith’s (2002) findings support the view of the present tense use of the progressive as typical of colloquial rather than formal genres. In his study of present tense progressives based on LOB and FLOB, the highest concentrations of progressives were found in press reportage, the lowest in learned and scientific articles (Smith 2002: 319f.). The greatest increase relative to all occurrences of present tense forms was, however, found in the genre government documents and industrial reports (+ 2.3%), while most genres show an increase close to the average increase of 0.7% (cf. Smith 2002: 302, table 2). The results presented by Leech et al. (2009) on all progressives, regardless of tense, confirm this trend as regards the genres included in the ICE-GB (1990-1992). The results from ARCHER presented in table 5 below can confirm overall the general line of the findings discussed in this sub-chapter, but add a more longterm perspective to the distribution of the progressive across genres.105

104

105

In a later study, in which they compare their findings on journalistic writing with the development of academic writing in the same time span, they qualify this statement. They note that colloquialization seems to occur only in certain written genres, namely in those which are “subject to […] competitive market forces”, such as journalistic writing. Other genres, for which this does not hold true or only to a much less significant extent, e.g. academic writing not aimed at bigger audiences, “can afford to be more ‘old-fashioned’” (Hundt & Mair 1999: 236). They thus confirm Biber’s and Finegan’s (1997: 273) results based on (an earlier version of) ARCHER. The time spans are, for reasons of space, referred to in a short form in the tables e.g. for the time span 1600-1649: 17th/1 (i.e. 17th century, first half).

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

101

Table 5: Genre distribution of progressives in ARCHER-2 Drama

Fiction

Letters

Journal

News

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

10

23

26

33

26

114

163

152

547

(31)

(62)

(115)

(135)

(88)

(343)

(576)

(529)

(240)

11

20

35

50

126

177

276

323

1019

(33)

(54)

(80)

(100)

(239)

(532)

(523)

(522)

(268)

--

9

19

16

29

35

50

54

213

(71)

(142)

(132)

(209)

(324)

(401)

(474)

(245)

11

14

36

27

47

80

80

294

(51)

(65)

(164)

(123)

(206)

(359)

(356)

(191)

24

28

25

17

51

56

104

305

(98)

(129)

(96)

(74)

(219)

(252)

(428)

(185)

6

6

11

13

24

14

44

118

(54)

(56)

(99)

(117)

(219)

(132)

(430)

(156)

--

--

Religious --

Science

Medical Total

--

4

11

6

5

11

14

20

71

(22)

(53)

(29)

(26)

(50)

(64)

(92)

(53)

3

4

1

31

37

14

6

96

(40)

(24)

(15)

(118)

(115)

(69)

(32)

(75)

21

100

143

178

274

496

667

783

2662

(32)

(61)

(84)

(103)

(139)

(243)

(350)

(393)

(195)

--

Since the genres in the different sub-periods of ARCHER do not all contain the same number of words (cf. 2.3), the normalized frequencies given in brackets (i.e. the M-coefficients of progressives in the particular genre and time span) are what we should base our conclusions on. Comparing the M-coefficients of the individual genres in the different time spans with the M-coefficients of the period as a whole will tell us which genres favored and which disfavored the use of the progressive. As is to be expected from the preceding discussion, both drama and letters favor the use of the progressive in all periods, i.e. the use of the progressive in these genres is always higher than the M-coefficient of the total of

102

The Progressive in Modern English

the material included in each time span.106 The frequencies in fiction roughly equal the average or are even a little lower than average in the periods up to the end of the 18th century; after that they rise considerably and from then on always show a much higher proportion of the progressive than average. This is reminiscent of Strang’s (1982) view, according to which, as we have seen, novelists were becoming more and more acquainted both with the progressive construction and with its use in the emergent genre. We have, however, seen that a rise of progressive use also occurs in the writings of individuals when other types of texts, such as private letters, are taken into consideration. What this may point to is that the progressive was at first more associated with spoken, colloquial language use, to which the language used in drama and private letters comes closest, and that it only took ground in a less speech-based genre such as the novel somewhat later. Another point may be that the relative proportion of dialogue passages in the novel might have changed over time. The use of the progressive in journals and news never departs too far from the average, so one might say that these genres neither favor nor disfavor the use of the progressive. There is some diachronic variation, but one should not make too much of this, as it does not appear significant given the rather small amount of data left over after the corpus is broken down into individual genres per period (roughly 20,000 words per genre and period for most genres; for some, e.g. letters and religious sermons, the numbers are even smaller at 10,000-12,500 words per period and genre, cf. 2.3, table 1). Looking at the use of the progressive in religious sermons, one notes, however, quite a sharp relative drop in frequency in the first half of the 20th century (three times fewer than average) and then another rise in the second half of the 20th century (to a little above average). Again, the semantic analysis of these uses (cf. 7.5) will help to solve this puzzle. Another noteable result of the distribution in ARCHER is that the use of the progressive in science and medical texts in the 20th century remains low. Although some diachronic variation is visible here as well (e.g. in the first half of the 19th century, the use of progressives in medical texts comes close to the average), we can see that the progressive is decidedly less common overall in these text types than on average. It is particularly interesting that this tendency does not show any signs of growing weaker over time. The ARCHER data thus support the idea that the progressive is an oral rather than a literate feature; and just as would be expected from a construction associated more typically with oral (typically more spontaneous, unmonitored, colloquial) language use, it appears to be preferred in more speech-based, more colloquial and popular written genres (letters, drama, fiction) and avoided in the more specialist expository registers in the corpus (scientific and medical prose).107 Furthermore, the apparent increase of progressives in news and 106

107

A sole exception is the first period, 1600-1649, which, however, only includes texts from drama and fiction and overall includes a smaller number of words than the other periods. The same is probably true of legal prose. Legal prose was excluded from the

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

103

religious sermons in the latter half of the 20th century can be related to the idea that written language aimed at the general public shows a tendency towards colloquialization (cf. Biber & Finegan 1997, Mair 2006). The view of the progressive as a feature more characteristic of colloquial language also seems to be supported by historical sociolinguistic studies, which we shall now turn to. 5.3

Impact of sociolinguistic variables

The data from ARCHER are not suited to an analysis of sociolinguistic variables, but the findings from genre which have emerged from the preceding section may help to evaluate conclusions arrived at in historical sociolinguistic studies of the progressive. Sairio (2006, 2009) shows in her study that Montagu’s use of progressives in her letters varies with the kind of addressee: Montagu uses the progressive in all time periods more commonly when writing to friends than to family members. Sairio notes that greater intimacy, which Arnaud (1998) has suggested as favoring the use of the progressive, cannot be a factor here. The variation may be best explained as accommodation to each other’s communicative styles, for Montagu’s bluestocking friends overall show a much higher progressive use than her family members. This hypothesis, suggested in Kranich (2008c) in response to Sairio (2006), is taken up by Sairio (2009) who states that accommodation led to “two respective in-group norms” (2009: 183). This result clearly does not allow for any conclusions about the status of the progressive construction as such. Arnaud (1998: 141) has pointed out that the rise of the progressive should be understood as a change from below in two senses of the term: “It was usually unconscious […]. It was also a change from below in the sense that it came from the vernacular informal style and from ordinary people.” Although it has been suggested that some novelists use high progressive frequencies in direct speech to mark characters as belonging to the lower social classes (cf. Raybould 1957: 178, 189), one cannot assume that frequent use of the progressive was generally stigmatized – frequent occurrences in the letters of well-educated social climbers such as Thackeray (M = 345 in his letters, cf. Arnaud 2002: 38) would certainly discourage such a view. Arnaud (2002: 44) notes that the progressive frequencies of individual writers tend to increase in the later letters, following the overall diachronic trend. He states that “[w]e have every reason to think that this was normally unconscious. No one among them has ever openly expressed diffidence or hostility against a form which was not really new but simply increasing” quantitative corpus analysis, since the version of ARCHER that was used contained this genre only in a few sub-periods. However, in those few subperiods, legal texts contained hardly any instances, so that one may cautiously conclude that the distribution of progressives in legal texts may be similar to that visible in scientific texts.

104

The Progressive in Modern English

(2002: 44). A notable exception to this is the formally marked passive progressive (the type the house is being built) which was the target of severe purist attacks (cf. 6.2). However, one may still assume that the rise in frequency originated in the speech of people of the lower social classes, even if the use of the construction was not consciously associated with lower class usage. Nurmi (1996) has found that the progressive occurs most frequently in the language of the lower gentry, but one should point out that written documents from authors positioned lower than the lower gentry is not available in great quantity.108 Arnaud’s (2002: 37-40) findings indicate that letter-writers from simpler social backgrounds may have had a tendency to use the progressive more frequently than those who were born into the upper classes.109 It is hard to substantiate this idea, however, due to the scarcity of documents from lower class writers for the earlier periods of the history of English. The factor class can unfortunately not be analyzed in the present work. All one can say on the basis of the genre distribution is that the progressive was certainly not a stigmatized construction, but it does appear to be preferred in oral and more colloquial language use. Arnaud (1998) has shown that the progressive construction is used more often by women than by men and that its frequency increased with increasing intimacy between letter-writer and addressee (Arnaud 1998: 139-142; cf. also Arnaud 2002). These findings are related by him to the “subjective force” of the progressive (Arnaud 1998: 144), discussed above for PDE (3.3) and OE and ME (4.2.2.3). This function of the progressive is understood as being particularly favored in the Romantic period, as it allows more emotional and vivid expressions, which leads Arnaud to the following view: The rate of the development of the progressive in Preromantic, Romantic and Industrial times was so high that it certainly required a 108

109

For a description of CEEC in its final version cf. Nevalainen & RaumolinBrunberg (2003: 44-49). Nurmi (1996) has studied the decline of affirmative do and the spread of be + v-ing using a part of CEEC, the aim of her study being to find whether the two developments are interconnected, which she answers as follows: “In the period chosen, 1590-1620, BE + ING is still too rare to present significant frequencies for any conclusions, and so the whole question of interconnected developments proved to be inapplicable at this time” (1996: 164). The study is based on a corpus of private letters from writers of the Romantic age, so that it is overall only a very small segment of society that is represented, which Arnaud (2002) is fully aware of. Still, there are certain differences in the social backgrounds of the individual writers which do seem to have an impact on progressive frequencies: for instance, Keats “brought up in the East End of London in humble or at least mixed surroundings” has an M-coeffecient of 322 in his letters (Arnaud 2002: 38), when the average density for his generation is M = 157 (Arnaud 2002: 34).

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

105

strong drive. The psychosociological forces of the Romantic mind may have provided at least some of it. (Arnaud 1998: 144) This hypothesis has already been discussed by Raybould (1957), who is, however, skeptical: In the second half of the eighteenth century the first marked increase in the use of EF occurs in writers who are not particularly romantic: Gray, Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Jane Austen. What distinguishes these writers is a gift for sharp observation and a certain truthfulness that enables them to break through conventions and write as they spoke and heard others speak. (Raybould 1957: 189) We will see in the semantic analysis how great the share of subjective uses of the progressive actually is. Smitterberg’s results support the findings of Arnaud (1998, 2002) that women lead the change: in the genre ‘letters’ in CONCE, Smitterberg (2005: 83, table 26) shows that women have M-coefficients of 487 (letters to men) to 493 (letters to women), while the men’s M-coefficients range from 297 (letters to men) to 381 (letters to women). These frequencies show that women prefer the progressive. The higher frequencies of men when their addressees are female are taken by Smitterberg as indication that “men seem to adapt more than women to the sex of the addressee in this respect” (2005: 84). He cautiously suggests that this may account to some extent for the cross-genre differences discussed above, as expository genres were mostly written by men for men (2005: 84f.). However, one may also suggest a different explanation, which would fit the figures presented by Arnaud (1998, 2002) and by Smitterberg (2005) equally well: subject matter may have a decisive influence on the frequency of the progressive. This explanation would allow us to account both for the apparent predilection for the progressive by female letter-writers as well as for the overall genre distribution discussed in 5.2. The idea receives some support from several detailed observations made by Arnaud (1998, 2002), who relates, for instance, the relatively low frequency of progressives in Coleridge’s correspondence to the fact that the latter was “a penetrating London critic and lecturer, devoted to abstract prose, philosophical or religious, and that his correspondence is a mixture of discussions of all kinds, rather than everyday news” (2002: 45). As has been pointed out before, the progressive is used, besides its aspectual function, to convey subjective shades of meanings. These would certainly be more common in non-expository, popular writing. Furthermore, subjective shades of meanings would be more typically associated with topics common in letters written by women at the time, regardless of whether these women were writing to other women or to men: how family and friends are

106

The Progressive in Modern English

doing, day-to-day occurrences in the private life etc. Men, when writing to other men, may be assumed to talk about more factual issues even in their private letters: the way of the world, politics, society, international affairs. When writing to women (their mothers, sisters, wives), however, the same men would presumably focus more on personal topics. So in general, the progressive may be used more commonly when the speaker has some emotional involvement. The influence of the subject matter, however, need not be limited to the use of the progressive with subjective meanings but may also have an impact on its occurrence as a marker of aspect. Genres like scientific or medical texts deal more often with general ideas, universal laws, or logical relations, which counterindicate the use of a progressive, while genres such as fiction, letters or drama are much more concerned with what is or was going on at a specific moment in time. So, the distribution across genres, across genders, and in relation to the factor ‘intimacy between writer and addressee’ could point to the colloquial character of the construction, but these distributional differences could also be connected to the fact that the functions of the progressive were more needed when talking/writing about some topics than about others. Such an explanation has already been proposed by Brunner (1962: 378), who assumes that the functions of the progressive motivate its common use in novels and everyday conversation on the one hand and its rare occurrence in scientific writings and biographies on the other. In his earlier study, Arnaud (1983: 84) makes a similar suggestion, pointing out that varying frequencies between the genders “may be connected with the topics of letter-writing […], on the whole, women are more familiar, more newsy than men [,] [p]ossibly also [...] more sentimental”. In his later, more detailed study, however, he is more skeptical, saying that “at first sight it does not seem to be the case” that women consistently favor different topics from men (Arnaud 1998: 143). Yet he does find that there are differences in the use of common verbs of feelings: they appear more frequently in the women’s letters than in the men’s. According to Arnaud, this difference would be not sufficient to explain the divergent frequencies of progressive use between the sexes (1998: 147, note 25). The approach taken in the present work is different. The factor gender cannot actually be considered on the basis of ARCHER, but it is hoped that the detailed semantic analysis of the progressives in the different genres in ARCHER will allow us to determine what role subject matter plays in the distribution of the progressive, which in turn may allow some hypotheses as to why the form, at least in 19th century letters, was favored more by women and in particular genres (cf. 7.6). 5.4

Possible reasons for the increase in frequency

The present study operates on the assumption that the increase in frequency of the progressive reflects some fundamental changes in the place the construction occupies within the grammatical system. The representation in figure 3 below shows the absolute numbers of occurrences in ARCHER-2 (as opposed to the M-

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

107

coefficients shown in table 3b), but, with the exception of the first half-century, the number of words per half-century are not greatly different. The resulting curve shows the typical s-shape:110 Figure 3: The rise of the progressive 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

17th /1

17th/2

18th/1

18th/2

19th/1

19th/2

20th/1

Strang (1982: 452) assumes that the extension across all linguistic contexts (clause types, subject types, verb types) is responsible for the rise in frequency of the progressive. Such an extension is generally considered to be a typical effect of grammaticalization (cf. e.g. Lehmann 2002: 108-112, 118-123). Nehls (1974: 177) supposes that the increasing differentiation of the progressive and the simple form is the main reason for its rapid increase in frequency: as the meaning of the form gets grammaticalized as a marker of aspect, it will have to be used more commonly.

110

The s-shaped curve is well-known in studies of language change, as well as from other studies of diffusion of innovations (e.g. in sociology, biology). The typical form is due to the fact that early on, innovations are adapted slowly only by certain parts of a population, then gain more and more acceptance (reflected in the rapid rise in the middle stage), and as the possible further contexts to which the innovation could extend decrease, the final stages are characterized by a less pronounced rise (as in figure 3) and normally come to reach a plateau at the end (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 5355). This last stage has apparently not been reached yet in the development of the progressive.

108

The Progressive in Modern English

However, this view is not unchallenged. Smitterberg (2005) doubts that the enormous rise in frequency in the 19th century ought to be seen as a sign of grammaticalization on the basis of his results concerning genre distribution: The results do not appear to support Nehls’s hypothesis concerning an overall obligatorification of aspectual progressives in the middle of the century, if we take decreased genre diversity in the frequency of the progressive to be a likely result of this process. (Smitterberg 2005: 67) The question is, however, whether one should take decreased genre diversity as a likely result of obligatorification. In fact, from what we can gather from the discussion about the use of the progressive in PDE, it is likely that it is still nonobligatory in a great number of its typical contexts. Furthermore, an increase in genre divergence could also simply mean that the styles of the individual genres have diverged increasingly from one another during the 19th century, so that certain constructions were more and more strongly favored or disfavored by the particular genres. And in fact this is suggested by the results from Biber and Finegan (1997: 273) already referred to regarding the increasing divergence of popular and specialized written styles. Thus, increasing genre divergence does not necessarily contradict the assumption that the progressive was acquiring obligatory contexts at the same time. The long diachronic perspective which ARCHER allows us to take helps us to see more clearly in this matter. Crossgenre differences certainly do not need to indicate a lack of obligatorification, since in the late 20th century there are still considerable differences between genres – they even show a tendency of becoming more pronounced, as Hundt and Mair’s (1999: 233, table 7) results indicate. Insights about the grammatical status of the construction will therefore need to be based on other kinds of evidence, such as the spread of the construction across linguistic contexts (cf. chapter 6) and, more importantly, from the semantic analysis of the occurrences (cf. chapter 7). Since the secondary grammaticalization of the progressive in the modern period is understood as the grammaticalization of the aspectual function of the progressive, we should study in particular its semantic development in order to determine the time line of the grammaticalization process. 5.5

Frequency of the type to be a-hunting

The construction of the type to be a-hunting was, as we have seen, apparently very infrequent in OE and ME writing. So, Rissanen’s (1999: 217) statement that “[i]n the course of the Modern English period, the verbal type superseded the nominal one [highlights S.K.]” is not supported by the evidence that has come down to us. As Wischer’s (2006) study shows, the prepositional type was infrequent in OE and ME texts, and this seems to remain so in EModE. Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 152-155) finds only seventeen examples of prepositional patterns in the EModE section of the Helsinki Corpus: Of these, five occur with full

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

109

prepositions (3 with in, one each with at and upon), twelve are of the form to be a-hunting. So, the frequency is considerably lower than the frequency of the progressive proper, of which she finds 178 in the same data. The numbers presented by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a) differ again in this respect, although they are working on the same data: Elsness finds 15 examples altogether of the prepositional type, of which four are uses with full prepositions. This long-standing and continuing scarcity of prepositional instances represents strong evidence against Smith’s (2007) claim that the main factor in the rise of the progressive proper compared to the to be a-hunting type was the prescription of the EModE grammarians against the latter. While the general distributional pattern remains similar throughout the periods, with progressive proper always representing the overwhelming majority of instances, it is nevertheless obvious that the prepositional type of construction becomes even rarer in the ARCHER data. Altogether, it occurs only ten times in the data (as opposed to 2662 occurrences of progressives proper): Table 6: Frequency of the type to be a-hunting in ARCHER-2 Prepositional Type

17/1 4

17/2 2

18/1 1

18/2 --

19/1 1

19/2 1

20/1 --

20/2 1

TOTAL 10

The frequency of the prepositional type has decreased, both relative to the number of words and compared to the progressive proper. For Núñez Pertejo’s data (1500-1710) one can calculate a normalized frequency of M = 3, for the ARCHER data overall the result is M = 0.7. If one only takes the 17th century ARCHER data, however, we get M = 2. On the basis of these results, one may assume that in the time between 1500 and the beginning of the 18th century, a steady decrease of this type of construction, at least in writing, took place. As far as the relation between the prepositional type and the progressive proper is concerned, it is about 1:10 in Núñez Pertejo’s data (one prepositional use : ten progressives proper), this relation is 1:24 in the 17th century ARCHER data, and the relative importance of the prepositional type decreases rapidly from there on. As early as the 18th century, we find just one instance of to be a-hunting as opposed to 321 progressives proper. The ‘preposition’ − at least in the modern period, the form is probably analyzed rather as a prefix by speakers111 − used in the ten instances in ARCHER is always a- (as in example 90 below): 111

Elsness (1994: 13) refers to a- in this construction as “prepositional remnant”. One may, in fact, assume that synchronically, it would have been analyzed rather as a prefix, at least in the later part of the period. There seem to be some changes between EModE and LModE in this respect, reflected in the absence of transitive structures of this construction in the EModE data in the Helsinki Corpus, which are possible in LModE (cf. 6.9).

The Progressive in Modern English

110 (90)

When your father condescends to talk wisely to you of State-affairs, must your brains be a rambling after wenches? (archerii\165099.bre\1688crow.d1)

We can certainly see that the use of the be a-hunting construction is of an extremely low frequency in the data, which might mean that the construction is not very well integrated into language use. It is, however, not dying out but occurs, albeit rarely, throughout the modern period, as table 6 shows. Its low frequency could also have to do with an extreme reluctance to use it in writing. Presumably, the construction becomes increasingly associated with rural, dialectal, and generally non-standard use of the language (cf. e.g. Rissanen 1999: 217). A relevant comment is found in Lowth’s (1775) grammar, where he states that “[t]he phrases with a […] are out of use in the solemn style; but still prevail in familiar discourse”. It is interesting to note that the purist grammarian adds “there seems to be no reason, why they should be utterly rejected” (Lowth 1775/1979: 65, cited after Rissanen 1999: 217). Even in the EModE, as Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a: 156) findings indicate, the construction was avoided ‘in the solemn style’ and associated rather with everyday, colloquial language use, since it occurs in private letters, drama, and also fiction (presumably in the dialogue passages), while being avoided in statutes, sermons, and science (cf. also Rissanen 1999: 217). This distribution is also apparent in the ARCHER data: Table 7: Genre distribution of the type to be a-hunting in ARCHER-2 17/1 2

17/2 2

18/1 --

18/2 --

19/1 1

19/2 1

20/1 --

20/2 --

TOTAL 6

Narrative passage in Fiction

2

--

--

--

--

--

--

1

3

Journal

--

--

1

--

--

--

--

--

1

TOTAL

4

2

1

--

1

1

--

1

10

Drama or Dialogue in Fiction

Overall, the genre distribution shows an association with spoken language use. Six of the ten uses occur either in drama or in the dialogue passages in fiction. Of the remaining four, only the two 17th-century uses can be seen as true literary uses (as in example (91) below), while in the 18th-century instance in a journal (example 92), just as in the 20th century instance in fiction (example 93) the construction rather appears to be chosen for humorous effect: (91)

Nothing was awanting her that might conferre the least light or lustre to so faire and well-composed a temper. (archerii\1600-49.bre\1640brat.p0b)

Changes in frequency and the impact of external factors on the progressive in Modern English

111

(92)

I call’d at Capt. Nat: Farewell’s; But he was a Wooing at Mr. Coker’s House. (archer\1700-49.bre\1722clav.j2)112

(93)

It’s all right of course in the beginning when the “being in love” part of marriage is still a-growing and a-blowing, (archerii\195099.bre\1960mons.f9)

Zimmermann’s (1981: 287) claim that “[z]um Zeitpunkt des Aufkommens der passivischen ef [i.e. expanded form] war […] die Gerundialfügung im Standard und vielen Dialekten weggefallen”113 seems to be confirmed by the present results. In the data from the second half of the 18th century on (which is the period in which the first passive progressives begin to occur), one finds indeed no uses of the type to be a-hunting which are not either clearly colloquial or used for humorous effect. It is impossible to ascertain on the basis of written data whether the to be a-hunting construction was a frequent feature of spoken language use. In the written sources it is very infrequent, both in earlier periods and in the Modern period, so that the assumption that the increase in ModE in the use of the progressive can only be explained “as a result of the merger of the two constructions” (Elsness 1994: 22) is not really supported by textual evidence. Unless the construction was extremely more frequent in spoken language use, it is very doubtful that its merger with the progressive proper would have resulted in such a considerable increase as the one evident from tables 3a and 3b. Furthermore, a complete merger of the two constructions has apparently never taken place, as the to be a-hunting type still exists as a minor variant in presentday use. From all these observations, one may conclude that the reasons for the rise of the progressive will have to be sought elsewhere.

112

113

If one follows De Groot (2007) in his analysis of the OE type the king is on huntunge as absentive rather than progressive marker, one might see in example (92) evidence of this older function. However, the function of the type to be a-hunting in ModE, as will become apparent from 7.4, can generally be understood as expressing progressive (in two cases, one of them presented in example (91), imperfective) aspect. ‘At the time of the emergence of the passive expanded form, the gerundial construction had already fallen out of use in the standard as well as in many dialects.’

6.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

Apart from a rise in frequency, insights from grammaticalization studies also lead us to expect a paradigmatic expansion when a construction undergoes further grammaticalization. With regard to the progressive, it is well known that the modern period experiences an expansion in the combinatory possibilities (cf. e.g. Brunner 1962: 371-376, Rissanen 1999: 216, Denison 1998: 156f., Fischer & Van der Wurff 2006: 158-160). However, one exception to this general trend can be noted, namely the fact that the combination progressive + present participle (the type being teaching) dies out. This loss will be dealt with at the beginning of this chapter (6.1), and will be immediately followed by a discussion of what constitutes probably the most remarkable innovation of the period: the emergence of a formally marked passive progressive, which gradually replaces the earlier use of the active form with passive meaning (6.2). I will then go on to present a general overview of the variation across the verbal paradigm, taking into consideration the occurrence of the progressive form across tenses and its combination with perfect and modal auxiliaries (6.3). In the following subchapters, further factors that have been presented in the literature as showing interesting diachronic variation will be presented: These concern the use of the progressive in main versus subordinate clauses (6.4), collocation patterns with different kinds of adverbials (6.5), with different types of subject (6.6) and with the different situation types (6.7), and the spread of the progressive to full verbs be and have, which formerly rejected the progressive (6.8). In the last subchapter, the extension of the type to be a-hunting across linguistic contexts will be discussed (6.9). There are three prior studies which use partly the same material as the present work: Núñez Pertejo (2007a) uses a combined corpus consisting of the COPC114 and of the 18th century material of an earlier version of ARCHER; Hundt (2004a, 2004b) uses an earlier version of ARCHER focusing on the 17001899 material. However, Núñez Pertejo (2007a) does not offer a very satisfying analysis, limiting herself mostly to the presentation of quantitative results without much discussion, while Hundt (2004a, 2004b) concentrates only on the particular details concerning the use of the progressive with animate and inanimate (and agentive and non-agentive) subjects and on the use of the passival and the passive. Thus, neither of them provides a complete account of the development of the progressive in ModE times.

114

For a description of the COPC (The Century of Prose Corpus) see Núñez Pertejo (2007a: 360f.).

The Progressive in Modern English

114 6.1

The loss of double -ing

The use of the progressive present participle, as exemplified in (94) below, apparently got lost, in spite of a general trend of expansion of the construction to more linguistic contexts in the course of grammaticalization. (94)

...and exclaimed quite as much as was necessary (or, being acting a part, perhaps rather more)... (example from Jane Austen, Emma, taken from Denison 1985: 157)

This combination was in use between the 16th and the 19th centuries (Rissanen 1999: 218). It is still found in Jane Austen’s novels, who, however, is presumably one of the last writers to make use of this form (Denison 1985: 157). Smitterberg’s data from CONCE yields two instances of being + v-ing, one of which comes from a novel by Jane Austen, the other one comes from the section ‘Debates’. It is also from the early 19th century, so there is no indication from CONCE that the combination survived during the later years of the 19th century. Smitterberg has checked this result using the larger database of progressives in private letters collected by Arnaud, which only yielded four more instances, the latest of which is from 1840 (Smitterberg 2005: 143). So, it really seems as if the combination has ceased to be available by the late 19th century. Denison (1985: 159) states that its demise “remains a puzzling question in the history of English”, although his own comment, that in PDE being appears to be “obligatorily deleted”, may contain the answer to it: since appositive participles of this kind have been firmly established in written English registers, it may have seemed both inelegant and unnecessary to add a further element in -ing (what Denison 1985: 158 has called the “constraint on double -ing”). After all, the present participle on its own, with its durative character, suffices to express that the situation referred to in the participle is co-extensive to the situation referred to in the main clause to which it stands in apposition. Warner (1995, 1997) suggests that the decisive factor in the demise of double -ing is its bad learnability. In his account, to be discussed in greater detail in the following (6.2), he suggests that due to a number of morphological changes, the forms of be came to be categorized in a different way: the nonfinite forms (am, is, was etc.) were categorized as auxiliary, the participle being as nonauxiliary. One of the consequences was that the string is being and hence a formally marked passive became possible, another that the combination being (no longer analyzed as auxiliary) + v-ing ceased to be possible (Warner 1995: 544f.). Denison’s (1993: 440-443) explanation is also based on a reanalysis of categories. He claims that the true grammaticalization of the progressive only occurs in the LModE period and that the loss of being + v-ing is due to this development: being + present participle was possible as long as being could be analyzed as a copula followed by a predicative. Once reanalysis of the construction as auxiliary + present participle occurred, the combination ceased to be possible. This view is less convincing than Warner’s, because it is not clear

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

115

why, once be + v-ing is analyzed as a grammatical construction, this should lead to a loss of this specific combinatory possibility. Also, there is evidence from late OE times that the element beon/wesan in the construction beon/wesan + v-(i)ende was already analyzed as auxiliary (cf. example (82), þonne beo we sittende be þæm wege, swa se blinda dyde). The data from ARCHER only allows the conclusion that double -ing was apparently never very common, since only three instances are found in the corpus − it occurs once in each of the following sub-periods: 1600-1649, 1700-1749, and 1750-1799. The latest example is rendered below: (95)

In the beginning of November, being fishing on the banks of the river Dart […]; I was at once surprized with the sight of a great number of martins. (archer\1750-99.bre\1775blac.s3)

Since the combination is so rare, its absence from ARCHER after 1775 does not allow any generalizations. It is known that the combination is not yet absent from 19th century writing, as e.g. example (94) shows, but nevertheless it no longer occurs in the ARCHER data. If we wish to test the adequacy of Warner’s account, we need to find out, however, whether the combination really never occurs in PDE − obviously, if it is truly ungrammatical, it should not, at least not in monitored written language use. Halliday (1980) offers a handful of examples of double -ing, which he claims to have overheard occurring naturally in nativespeaker conversations (in the 1960s and 1970s).115 This may be seen as counterevidence to truly ungrammatical status. If there is a purely formal double -ing constraint which stipulates that being cannot be followed by another form in -ing, the gerund should be affected by it, just like the present participle. Since ARCHER does not allow far-reaching conclusions in this respect, combinations of being with another form in -ing (present participle or gerund) were searched for using the search engine Google®.116 As examples (96) and (97) show, the use of double -ing does in fact occur, both in gerundial constructions (96) as well as in participial use (97): 115

116

Halliday (1980) presumes that these uses can be interpreted as signs that the remarkable gap in the English system “begin[s] to be filled” (1980: 61). But in fact, one might also assume that these uses were never gone from the spoken language and were only undocumented in written language use between Jane Austen and recently. This has been suggested by Denison (1985: 159), who, however, views the examples adduced by Halliday (1980) as nonce uses in the spoken language (Denison 1985: 159). Yet, as the Google® search, presented in the following, shows, examples also occur in written PDE, at least in a certain text type, i.e. patents. A more detailed search for this pattern in a large present-day corpus would be necessary to gain more profound insights into the exact extension of usage of the pattern. This may be an interesting research question for further study. Since a search for formal properties/word classes is not possible in this way,

The Progressive in Modern English

116 (96)

She’s always slagging off Jee for being coming over on a boat (www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=87974)

(97)

a bottom wall by which at least one recess is defined, the bottom wall being coming into contact with the innermost end surface (US Patent Issued on August 15th, 2006. www.freshpatents.com/Electric-power-tooldt20050825ptan20050183870.php)

The fact that double -ing can be found in what is presumably native speaker English,117 though rarely and apparently either in rather unmonitored speech-like writing or in a specific register (the Google® search yields a high number of instances in patents), supports the assumption that its general avoidance does not reflect true ungrammaticality. Rather, it has to do with stylistic considerations as well as with a restricted usefulness (since the present participle on its own expresses duration and thus normally refers to situations that hold at TT). So Brunner (1962: 374) seems to be right in stating that these uses are “aber doch ungewöhnlich” (‘after all, however, unusual’), rather than classifying them as ungrammatical in PDE. This, then, advises against both Warner’s (1995, 1997) and Denison’s (1993) representation of the development. 6.2

The emergence of the passive progressive

In the earlier part of the period considered in this chapter, there was no formally marked passive progressive. Instead, the active progressive was used to express passive meaning, as in the following example: (98)

Our Garden is putting in order, by a Man who... (1807 Austen, Letters, example from Pratt & Denison 2000: 411)

This type of use of an active progressive with passive meaning is commonly referred to as ‘passival’ (cf. e.g. Denison 1998: 148). The use of the passival occurs sporadically since ME times (cf. Warner 1997: 163), but in the ME period, it seems to be more established with the prepositional, gerundial construction (Scheffer 1975: 254f.). With the participial progressive construction, the passival rises in frequency from the 16th century onwards. It becomes quite common in the late 17th and 18th century and declines in use in the 19th century, as the formally

117

the search terms entered were being + high frequency verbs in the -ing form, e.g. “being making”. The Google® search was conducted on January 29th, 2008. Unfortunately, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to get information on the author of a particular passage on a website. At least for the US patents website, it can be safely assumed, however, that the authors have nativespeaker(-like) competence.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

117

marked passive progressive begins to gain ground (cf. Scheffer 1975: 254f., Hundt 2004a: 104, figure 8). In PDE, the passival survives in “its ecological niche”: it is still used with a small group of verbs (e.g. ship, show) and only with non-human subjects (Hundt 2004a: 113). The picture that emerges from Hundt’s study is one of stable layering, i.e. while the incoming new form of the passive progressive has gained more and more ground, the old form still survives as marked pattern (cf. Hundt 2004a: 112f.). In the earlier part of the modern period, presumably the risk of ambiguity when using a passival was small: it has been suggested that a progressive with inanimate (or non-agentive) subject generally had a passive meaning (as in example 98), while progressives with active meanings occurred in general with animate (or agentive) subjects (Visser 1973: § 1878f., Rissanen 1999: 218, Denison 1998: 149, note in particular table 3.4.).118 In the second half of the 18th century, the first attestations of formally marked passive progressives are found. The following example seems to represent the earliest attested use (cf. Pratt & Denison 2000: 413): (99)

I have received the speech and address of the House of Lords; probably, that of the House of Commons was being debated when the post went out (1772, A Series of Letters of the First Earl of Malmesburry, Letter from Mr. Harris to his mother, first cited by Warner 1995: 539)

It has been suggested that the emergence of the passive progressive was due to the fact that more and more often, the progressive was also used with inanimate or non-agentive subjects when its meaning was active (as in it is raining), so that a need arose for a formally marked passive, because the use of the passival could then lead to misunderstandings. Of course, progressives occur already with nonagentive subjects in OE (cf. e.g. example (86), of Danai þære ie, seo is irnende...), so that Hopper and Traugott’s (2003: 104) view of the progressive as “an originally highly constrained progressive structure [...] that was restricted to agentive constructions” may be viewed with some doubt and would need to be verified in a quantitative corpus study.119 It has been shown that in the 18th 118 119

For a discussion of the concept of agentivity and its distinction from animacy, cf. also the discussion in 6.6. The need for such a quantitative corpus study of OE and ME has already been highlighted by Hundt (2004b: 51, note 8). Since then, Ziegeler (2006) has presented an analysis of the OE and ME part of the Helsinki Corpus, but, though focusing on the relation between the progressive and agentivity, she does not actually provide an analysis of the different subject types. This seems to come from her idea that the agentive status fully emerges from the situation type of the verb, as she defines agentivity in terms of cause and effect, so that only accomplishment and achievement predicates would appear with agentive subjects (Ziegeler 2006: 35-43). Since it is generally activities and states which occur with the progressive in OE and ME, Ziegeler concludes that the

118

The Progressive in Modern English

century, the progressive occurs predominantly with agentive (mostly [+ human]) subjects. Only in the transition from the 18th to the 19th century do inanimate and dummy subjects come to be used with the progressive (Strang 1982: 443-445). This is partly supported by Hundt’s (2004b) results based on an earlier version of ARCHER covering the period 1700-1899. She finds that “the proportion of inanimate subjects increases [statistically] significantly around the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century” (2004b: 59). However, even the 18th-century data yields about 15% inanimate subjects, while hardly any inanimate subjects occurred with the progressive in Strang’s corpus. This may seem surprising in and of itself, since, as we have seen, the progressive can already be used with inanimate subjects in OE. Hundt (2004b: 61) relates the difference between Strang’s and her own findings to the different make-up of the corpora: Strang’s corpus consists only of fiction, while ARCHER contains nine different genres. So indeed, it seems much more likely that Strang’s results point to stylistic conventions rather than grammatical restrictions. For the hypothesis that the spread to inanimate subjects should have triggered the emergence of the passive progressive, this fact may already pose some problems. After all, 15% of instances is not that insignificant. This shows that a clear, truly unambiguous distribution of the kind suggested by Denison (1998: 149, table 3.4.), who supposes that animate subject + progressive yielded an active reading and inanimate subject + progressive yielded a passival reading, does not hold true even for the 18th century. A further problem for this hypothesis comes from Hundt’s (2004a) findings that in the early examples of passive progressives the formal marking is in fact not necessary for disambiguation. This can e.g. be seen in the earliest attested instance reproduced in (99) above. Using an earlier version of ARCHER, Hundt (2004a: 88) finds that 91 progressive passives out of 130 have non-human subjects, so that the use of a passival would not have represented a possible source of misunderstanding. On the basis of these results, it seems that, rather than being motivated by the need to avoid ambiguity, the development of a passive progressive is caused by systemic pressure: they “fill a system gap in the patterning of English verbs” (Denison 1993: 440). Denison actually restates the question, pointing out that it is not surprising that these forms appeared but rather that it took them so long to emerge. The explanation he offers has already been addressed above: the grammaticalization of the progressive only occurred in the LModE period, leading to both the ‘loss’ of double -ing (cf. 6.1) and the emergence of the progressive passive. Different factors can be presumed to have triggered the grammaticalization of the progressive at that particular period. According to Denison (1993: 442f.), the main factor was the completion of the regulation of do-support, particularly in negatives. This produced

connection with agentivity only emerges within the modern period (cf. also chapter 6.6).

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

119

a glaring difference between verbs taking DO-Support and the ‘NICE’-verbs.120 All other NICE-verbs complemented by another verb were already fully-fledged auxiliaries. Perhaps this was the systemic pressure which brought progressive BE into line. (Denison 1993: 442f.) Besides the fixation of do-support, Warner (1995, 1997) sees the loss of thou in informal spoken English as a significant factor, since “[t]his removes the last agreement inflection shown by modals, as in thou shalt, thou shouldest” (1995: 541). As adults no longer use the thou-forms with children, the children learn that modals have no verbal morphology, and “consequently abduced a grammar in which verbal morphology and morphosyntax no longer ran for auxiliaries”. In the case of be, the finite forms are no longer learned by children as part of an inflectional paradigm (Warner 1995: 541f.), since “it does not correspond to any inflectional rule for the morphosyntax of verbs: its categorical make up is stated in the lexicon without falling under the scope of any rule of formation” (Warner 1997: 166). Warner goes on to suggest that, while all these separately, lexicallystored finite forms of be are categorized by the learners as belonging to the group of auxiliaries, one non-finite form is analyzed as non-auxiliary: being. This is explained by Warner as follows: After the reanalysis, verbal inflection holds only for V [-AUX] and auxiliary BE is outside its scope. But being is overly transparent in its relationship to the infinitive be and to verbs in -ing, which may imply that it has a complex structure be + ing. [...] [T]here is some evidence that being should be analysed as a nonauxiliary in today’s English. (Warner 1997: 166) One should, however, not neglect the functional side of things. If the progressive evolves more and more into a marker of progressive aspect and becomes thus increasingly a part of the grammatical system, then this can be expected to lead to an extension of this construction across all paradigmatic slots, because a grammatical form must be available across the paradigm. If a language has a clear-cut aspectual marker, it would be unusual for it to only be available in the active voice. Having looked at the emergence of the passive progressive in some detail, we shall briefly discuss the interesting question of its spread. The passive progressive “was among the most criticized innovations, being considered both unnecessary and ugly” (Görlach 1999: 82). Visser (1973: 2426-2428) cites such contemporary verdicts as “an outrage upon English idiom, to be detested, 120

Verbs which have the ‘NICE’ properties are those which do not need dosupport for Negation, Inversion, post-verbal elipsis (termed ‘Code’), and Emphasis. In PDE, the ‘NICE-verbs’ are largely identical with the class of auxiliaries (cf. Denison 1993: 255, 478).

120

The Progressive in Modern English

abhorred, execrated”, “a monstrosity”, “an absurdity”, and many other similarly passionate rejections. But regardless of the earlier violent criticism, in the course of the 19th century the passive progressive spreads at the expense of the passival (Smitterberg 2005: 128). Bit by bit, grammarians grew more lenient, as Wischer’s (2003) survey shows: although in 1853, Brown still called it “one of the most absurd and monstrous innovations ever thought of” (1853: 379), in 1877 Whitney already states that passive progressives “are still regarded by some as bad English [...] but they are also freely used even by writers of the first class, especially in England (less generally in America)” (1877: 127, both Brown and Whitney cited after Wischer 2003: 168). The spread of this originally maligned construction has been regarded as originating from a close social network of political and literary intellectuals, the “Southey-Coleridge circle” (Pratt & Denison 2000: 415-418, cf. also Bailey 1996: 222). Early attestations come mainly from putative members of this network. This has been supported by Smitterberg’s findings on the basis of Arnaud’s private letter corpus (Smitterberg 2005: 130). The recurrent choice of a form which met with such strong purist retribution has been explained as a “deliberate ‘siding with the politically and linguistically dispossessed’” (Pratt & Denison 2000: 417). As far as other details of the spread of the passive progressive are concerned, these have been presented thoroughly by Hundt (2004a, 2004b), with largely identical data (an earlier version of ARCHER) as used in the present study, so the findings presented in figure 4 below, based on ARCHER-2, closely match the results presented by Hundt. Thus, not much new on the specific details of the spread of the passive progressive can be added here. However, the connection between this development and other particularities of the overall grammaticalization process should become more clearly apparent, once all details have been considered (cf. 8.1).

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

121

Figure 4: The spread of the passive progressive121 Active

Passival

Passive

Other

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

6.3

17th /1

17th/2

18th/1

18th/2

19th/1

19th/2

20th/1

Variation across the verbal paradigm

In the present section, the form of the verb phrase in which the progressive occurs will be discussed, i.e. its occurrence in the different tenses, in combination with the (present or past) perfect, in the future, the subjunctive, and with modal markers. A particular point of interest lies in diachronic changes in the distribution. An increase of the occurrence with the less usual combinations could 121

The category ‘Other’ contains uses of the ‘medial’ type evidenced in the opening season in March […] is now booking (archerii\195099.bre\1976hall.j9) as well as one truly ambiguous case Don’t hurry the poor child. You know that she is dressing. (archer\1850-99.bre\1871lewi.d6), where it is not clear whether the subject is being dressed by a maid or whether she is dressing herself.

122

The Progressive in Modern English

be understood as an indication of a grammaticalization process, showing that the progressive gradually extends its combinatory possibilities. Findings by Elsness (1994: 11) indicate that the progressive in EModE occurs most commonly in the present and past tense (cf. also Rissanen 1999: 217).122 The results of Hancil’s (2003: 16) study suggest that this predominant use of the progressive in present and past tense forms remains more or less the same in the Late Modern period. Hancil’s (2003) data, as well as the Helsinki corpus data considered by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a), do not, however, contain enough instances to allow firm generalizations about the diachronic development. Fitzmaurice’s (2004a) study of 17 writers in the late 17th, early 18th century shows that the majority of progressives in drama, letters, and essays are in the present tense, while fiction shows a more common use of past tense progressives. This can be assumed to go back to genre requirements, and the results would probably have been more or less the same if simple forms had been studied instead of progressives. Núñez Pertejo’s study of 18th century use shows that, although combinations with perfect and modals are documented, present and past tense uses furnish the large majority (over 80%) of all progressive uses (Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 367, table 2.1). A similar result is reached by C. Smith (2004: 172-176) in her study of 18th century private letters, which shows that the progressive is most often used in present tense and, to a lesser extent, in the past tense. The stronger preference of the progressive in present tense contexts in Smith’s corpus can be easily explained by the factor genre. In her small corpus of letters from Elizabeth Montague, Sairio also notes that the progressives occur most commonly in present tense use (2006: 178f., figure 5). Smith’s claim that her results show a “picture of fluctuation”, indicating “that the progressive was expanding into various verb forms at this time, and [that] this expansion was idiosyncratic” (2004: 176) must be regarded with caution.123 Since the absolute number of all progressive examples in her corpus is 122

123

Núñez Pertejo (2004a), who, as has been pointed out, uses the same data as Elsness (1994), the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus, states that “the number of perfect and past perfect forms recorded in the corpus is not high (9 out of 178)”, while at the same time asserting that “the combination modal + be + -ing [...] is relatively frequent in the period (2004a: 162). Yet the number of modal + progressive combinations is 11 out of 178 (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 162), i.e. just 2 more instances than perfect + progressive. According to both authors, present and past tense uses furnish the majority of progressive instances in the Helsinki Corpus, even though there are again certain mismatches between the numbers they present. These differences remain unaccounted for, as Núñez Pertejo (2004a) does generally not refer to the preceding results by Elsness (1994) using the same data. Smith’s (2004) more general remarks on the long-term development of the progressive are flawed by an apparent lack of familiarity with the OE and ME

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

123

only 266, one can deduce that the numbers for her individual nine authors are not very high.124 Hence the idiosyncratic variation noted by her does not need to be indicative of any “fluctuation” due to an ongoing grammaticalization process but may just have to do with the different subject matters discussed by the various writers in their individual letters. One must also note that the fact alone that the progressive occurs mostly in present and past contexts does not really allow any conclusion as to its integration into the verbal paradigm, for one may assume that generally verb forms (simple or progressive) occur more often in the present and past tense than in the perfect, future, or with modal modification. What needs to be examined is whether there is a pattern of diachronic change. The studies discussed so far do not indicate this. According to Strang’s (1982) results on 18th to early 20th century use, combinations with perfect occur “freely” (both in present and past perfect use), while combinations with a modal are comparatively rare (Strang 1982: 440). Combinations of a modal and a perfect marker or, later, of a modal or a perfect with a passive “remain extremely rare, and there are no fourfold ones” in her corpus (Strang 1982: 441). This is also the distributional pattern found by Smitterberg (2005: 115-122, 133-143), who notes that there is “no consistent diachronic trend in the material as a whole in the distribution of present vs. past progressives” nor in the use of the combination perfect + progressive (2005: 144). Arnaud’s (1973) hypothesis (repeated in Arnaud 1983: 87) that the use of the perfect somehow “opened the door to the rest of the paradigm” can therefore not be confirmed. The number of occurrences of the combination modal + progressive even went down in Smitterberg’s data, which he suggests may have to do with a general decrease in the use of modals, with the fact that the progressive itself developed modal meanings or with stronger restrictions on which modal meanings were combinable with the functions of the progressive (Smitterberg 2005: 145). All three hypotheses sound possible and will be taken up again in the discussion of the functions of the progressive (7.1.4).

124

use of the form, or generally speaking with the use of the form before the 18th century, which her study deals with. Thus, she notes that in her data, “formal expansion involved, for example, subject types (e.g. first-person, thirdperson), verb phrase forms (e.g., active voice, passive voice, perfect aspect, lexical verbs, modal verbs), syntactic locations (e.g. main clauses, relative clauses), and lexical support in the form of adverbials (e.g., temporal, manner)” (Smith 2004: 153). With the sole exception of expansion into the passive voice, none of these contexts are examples of 18th century formal expansion, being already evidenced at least since ME times, or even in OE. A problem with Smith’s (2004) study is that she generally only provides normalized frequencies of the progressive instances of the individual letterwriters, making it harder to get an idea about the overall distribution of the progressives (e.g. across tense) in her corpus, as well as making it impossible to know the absolute number of instances without making the calculation.

124

The Progressive in Modern English

The use of longer combinations of the type modal + perfect and/or passive + progressive could have been supposed to become somewhat more common in the course of grammaticalization. However, Smitterberg’s results support the findings by Strang (1982) that these combinations remain very rare: Even the combinations perfect + progressive and modal + progressive are not very frequent; the combination of modal + perfect + progressive only occurs seven times altogether in his almost one million word corpus. No diachronic trend is visible either, and no combination of modal + perfect + passive + progressive occurs (Smitterberg 2005: 139, table 48). This latter finding apparently supports the claim made by Denison (1998: 157) that this type is not found before the 20th century outside of “the artificial contexts of grammars and linguistic satire” (where they appear in the 19th century). An early example of the combination in ordinary usage can be found in the following: (100) By 1.30 I must have been being introduced (1923 Ford Madow Ford, Marsden Case, example from Denison 1998: 158) One might hypothesize that such combinations will remain infrequent because of the limitedness of possible contexts. In the example above it is in fact not really clear why the speaker chooses a progressive – one might say that I must have been introduced by 1.30 would have represented basically the same assertion. Previous studies indicate that recent ModE does not exhibit any increase in the use of infrequent combinations: in their study covering the period 1961 to 1991, Mair and Hundt (1995a: 116) have found only one combination of modal + passive + progressive and no instance of modal + perfect + passive + progressive. Mair (2006: 91) has also checked the occurrence of threefold combinations involving a progressive in the British National Corpus (BNC, containing 100 million words) and has found that while all the threefold combinations are rare, the combination modal + passive + progressive, with 60 occurrences in the BNC, is clearly more common than the combination perfect + passive + progressive, which occurs only once in the whole BNC. A similar trend is apparent from a further survey conducted by Mair (2006: 92, table 4.2) using the web as a corpus. In fact, it is the traditionally frequent present tense use which appears to be on the rise in the 20th century, as results by Mair and Hundt (1995a: 113f.) show (cf. also Smith 2002: 319, Leech et al. 2009: 124). They assume that this variation may to a certain extent be due to changes in stylistic norms, which have led to an increasing ‘colloquialisation’ (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 118, cf. also Hundt & Mair 1999, Smith 2002: 326, Mair 2006: 183-193). Mair and Hundt (1995a: 118) suggest additionally that the increasing use of the progressive, particularly in the present tense, may be due to subjective uses of the progressive with ALWAYS and for the expression of tentativeness. Referring to a suggestion by Schopf (1974: 26), they state that increasing use of the progressive with ALWAYS “might prove to be the germ of destruction in the present system; once there is inflationary use of this device, the simple present will cease to be the tense customarily used to express habitual action” (1995a:

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

125

118). Smith (2002: 323f.) adds that an increase of the use of the progressive with interpretative function may be partly responsible for the overall increase, and this function is presumably closely associated with present tense use (cf. Wright 1994). So, all three subjective meanings that were identified for the PDE progressive (cf. 3.3) have been suggested as favoring the increase particularly of present tense progressives. I will take up these suggestions in the discussion of the functions of the progressive on the basis of the ARCHER data (7.3). Mair and Hundt (1995a: 116) furthermore bring up the hypothesis that the increase of the progressive in the 20th century is probably due to the fact that the progressive becomes more common in some of its established uses (cf. also Mair 2006: 89). They assume that the use of the present progressive with future time reference may, for instance, be on the rise (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 116). The idea that the present progressive with future time reference plays a particular role in the rise is not supported by Smith’s study of the LOB and FLOB data, which shows that FLOB (1991 British English) actually contains slightly fewer present progressives with future time reference than LOB (1961 British English) (Smith 2002: 324). Nesselhauf’s (2007) results based on the British section of ARCHER (using the data from 1750 to 1999) on the other hand, show a continuous increase of this specific function. This will be discussed further in 7.1.4. The ARCHER data support the general consensus from the preceding studies, showing that the rise in frequency is caused by an increasing use of the progressive in the tenses in which it has been established since OE, namely the present and the past, while combinations with perfect125 as well as with modals remain comparatively infrequent. The combination with modals referring to ‘pure future’ is particularly rare until the late 20th century. The following table 8 shows the absolute numbers, while figure 5 visualizes the relative frequencies. The chi²test produces the result that the distribution is non-random.

125

Present and past perfect uses are not distinguished here, as there do not seem to be great differences between the two. Brunner’s (1962: 371) remark that overall perfect progressives gain a certain frequency in the 15th century, while the past perfect only becomes frequent in the 18th century, can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed on the basis of the ARCHER data, perfect occurrences being overall too infrequent. Altogether, past perfect progressives are a little less frequent than present perfect progressives, but this difference is not more pronounced in the earlier periods than in the later periods, which one would expect if Brunner’s view were correct. In fact, in the 17th and 18th century data, 18 (41%) of the 44 perfect progressives are past perfects, and in the 19th and 20th century data, 66 (35%) out of 187 are past perfects.

The Progressive in Modern English

126

Table 8: Extension of the progressive across the verbal paradigm based on ARCHER-2 Present

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19 2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

6

47

62

66

89

215

328

373

1186

(29%) (47%) (43%) (37%) (32%) (43%) (49%) (48%) Past

13

34

60

84

131

215

219

296

(62%) (34%) (42%) (47%) (48%) (43%) (33%) (38%) Perfect

Modal (among which future will/shall) Modal Perfect

+

1

8

13

(5%)

(8%)

(9%)

1

9

5

(1)

(1)

(5%)

(9%)

(3%)

--

non-finite forms

--

TOTAL

21

22

32

(45%) 1052 (40%)

43

62

50

231

(9%)

(9%)

(6%)

(9%)

14

11

31

48

120

(4)

(2)

(6)

(18)

(1%)

(5%)

(2%)

(5%)

(6%)

(5%)

1

2

--

1

--

2

6

(1%)

(1%)

(<1%)

(<1%)

(12%) (12%) 1

(<1%)

1

3

3

8

11

27

14

67

(1%)

(2%)

(2%)

(3%)

(2%)

(4%)

(2%)

(3%)

100

143

178

274

496

667

783

2662

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

127

Figure 5: Relative frequencies of progressives across the verbal paradigm 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17th/1

Present

17th/2

Past

18th/1

Perfect

18th/2

Modal

19th/1

19th/2

Modal + Perfect

20th/1

20th/2

Non-finite

So apparently, the kind of change that might have been expected in a grammaticalization process, i.e. that the use of more unusual combinations, e.g. with modal and/or perfect, would become more common, is not evidenced in the data nor has it been shown in any of the previous studies. The use of the progressive in the present and past tense remains predominant, with present tense occurrences even becoming slightly more common in the 20th century data. Present tense use has been presented as the typical context of progressive occurrences e.g. by Nehls (1974: 60-63) and Smith (1997: 185f.), who underline that it is in present tense contexts that the use of the progressive is obligatory to mark that a situation holds ‘now’. The use of the simple tense in the present, on the other hand, is reserved for non-dynamic situations, habits, and general truths, while in the other tenses and combinations, the progressive is often merely a possible alternative to the use of the simple form. Dahl (2000: 16) also notes that “[s]tates and on-going processes are most naturally thought of as holding at or going on at a specific point in time, at which they can be observed”. On this basis, I would like to suggest that grammaticalization does not necessarily lead to frequency changes in the paradigmatic distribution, only to an extension in the possibilities of paradigmatic use (as in the new progressive passive, discussed above); otherwise, a construction will simply grow in frequency especially in those contexts in which its function is particularly often

The Progressive in Modern English

128

required. The meaning of the progressive could be supposed to be combinable with modal auxiliaries (whether truly modal or future time reference use of shall or will) and with perfect phase only in a restricted number of contexts. We will come back to these questions in 7.1 and in 8.1. 6.4

Clause types

In EModE, the progressive was apparently predominantly used in subordinate clauses. Considering all EMod sub-periods together, the Helsinki Corpus contains 53 progressives in main clauses and 125 in subordinate clauses (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 167, table 11). Among the subordinate clauses, it is particularly common in nominal clauses (‘that-clauses’), temporal and relative clauses: such uses furnish 104 of the 178 progressive instances Núñez Pertejo finds in her corpus (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 168f.). Núñez Pertejo’s results thus point to a similar situation in the time span 1500-1710 as Strang’s (1982: 441) results have suggested for early 18th century narrative, viz. that the progressive at this time seems to have been “truly at home only in certain types of subordinate clause, especially temporal, relative or local”. This hypothesis is further supported by Núñez Pertejo’s (2007a: 374f.) findings concerning the 18th century distribution of main and subordinate clause use, which show that 65% of the 610 progressives included in her analysis of this factor occur in subordinate clauses. In Wright’s (1994) study of prose comedy from 1670 to 1710 on the other hand, main clause occurrences of the progressive are considerably more numerous than subordinate clause uses: 283 out of 348 progressives in her corpus occur in main clauses, i.e. 81% (Wright 1994: 474). Genre can be presumed to play a decisive role in this regard. This assumption is confirmed by her subsequent study of late 17th and early 18th century use, which shows that main clause use furnishes the majority of progressive instances in drama and letters, while in fiction subordinate clause past tense uses make up the majority of instances (Fitzmaurice 2004a: 148f.). Strang’s study indicates that the use of the progressive in fiction changes significantly in the following centuries: in the 19th century, the previously rare use of the progressive in main clauses nearly quadruples, while the overall frequency does little more than double. This trend continues in her 20th century data (containing texts up to 1961): the overall frequency increases by 2.6, the frequency of main clause use quadruples (Strang 1982: 442, 464). The general distribution of the two clause types in ARCHER is as follows:126 126

In the present investigation, I only make the broad distinction between main clause use on the one hand and subordinate clause use on the other. This reflects the practice followed by most scholars investigating the use of the progressive, and most claims about diachronic trends are made concerning this broad categorization. However, this conflation of all subordinate uses into one category should not lead one to assume that the progressive exhibits the same patterns of occurrence in all types of subordinate clauses. Even within

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

129

Table 9: Main vs. subordinate clause use in ARCHER-2 Main clause

17/ 1

17/ 2

18/ 1

18/ 2

19/ 1

19/ 2

20/ 1

20/ 2

TOTAL

10

45

55

85

132

295

418

481

1521

(45%) (45%) (38%) (48%) (48%) (59%) (63%) (61%) Subordinate Clause Non-finite

11

87

90

140

200

247

301

(55%) (54%) (61%) (51%) (51%) (40%) (37%) (38%) --

clause TOTAL

54

21

1

1

3

2

1

(1%)

(1%)

(2%)

(1%)

100

143

178

274

2

1

(<1%) (<1%) (<1%) 496

667

783

(57%) 1130 (42%) 11 (<1%) 2662

Figure 6: Relative frequency of progressives across main and subordinate clauses and non-finite clauses 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17th/1 17th/2 18th/1 18th/2 19th/1 19th/2 20th/1 20th/2 NF

SC

MC

The chi²-test produces the result that the differences are significant. For the time from 1700 to 1950 the results from ARCHER show a steady increase of main clause occurrences, but overall main clauses are never rare, constituting 38% of all occurrences in the period where they represent the lowest proportion, 1700the same type of subordinate clause, temporal subordinate clauses expressing simultaneity, it has been shown that highly interesting differences exist between simultaneity clauses introduced by different subordinating conjunctions (Broccias 2008).

130

The Progressive in Modern English

1749. The differences between the present results and those arrived at by Strang (1982) can be related to important differences between genres. Strang’s results can be assumed to signify only a trend of changing preferences in novels. In the discussion of her results, she admits the possibility that her results may merely indicate a change in stylistic preferences: I am not saying that in the eighteenth century the construction could not be used in main clauses, with inanimate subjects, or non-activity verbs − plenty of examples in other texts show that it could. I am saying only that among those dedicated to the literary use of English constraints were observed [...] (Strang 1982: 451) Smitterberg’s (2005) results also indicate very clearly that genre is a decisive factor when it comes to main clause–subordinate clause distribution of progressives. His results show that main clause use steadily increases in fiction, history, and letters from 1800 to 1900. Drama and trials on the other hand, show a consistently high use of the progressive in main clauses, with main clause use representing over 50% of progressive use in all three sub-periods. Debates and science by contrast exhibit comparatively low percentages of main clause progressives (between 10 and 45%) (Smitterberg 2005: 194-202). To sum up, the non-expository genres show a frequent use of the progressive in main clauses, while the expository genres, with the exception of history, show a more restricted use of main clause progressives. Smitterberg (2005: 197, 201) suggests that this may show a lesser ‘integration’127 of the progressive in these genres, which would be supported by the fact that the overall frequencies in these genres are lower. However, Smith’s (2002: 325f.) results for the 20th century show that the relative 127

‘Integration’ is defined by Smitterberg (2005: 57f.) as “cover[ing] aspects of both grammaticalization and obligatorification; it focuses, however, on other, related areas, such as the formal expansion of the progressive across the English verb phrase, the extension of the progressive to new types of situations and subjects, and the general frequency of the construction. […] Integration is thus seen as a process, and as a relative rather than an absolute notion: while a feature can be more or less fully integrated into one language variety than into another, there is no cut-off point prior to which the feature is not integrated and beyond which it is integrated”. The difference between the concept of integration and the concept of grammaticalization is not clear from this definition, as grammaticalization is also normally considered a process along a continuum. The general consensus among scholars working within the grammaticalization framework is to view such processes as obligatorification and the spread to new linguistic contexts as being part of a grammaticalization processes, so that the term ‘grammaticalization’ is deemed sufficient to cover the main points that Smitterberg (2005: 58f.) subsumes under the heading ‘integration’.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

131

frequency of progressive use in main clauses is still on the rise: excluding examples from quotations, main clause use makes up 48.1% of all progressive occurrences in LOB (data from 1961) and 57.4% in FLOB (data from 1991). The factor genre is not correlated with these findings in Smith’s study; still, its results invite some doubt concerning Smitterberg’s hypothesis, since the main clause progressive is apparently still increasing in frequency and one may question whether the progressive is actually undergoing further ‘integration’ (in Smitterberg’s sense) in the latter part of the 20th century. An alternative explanation for the variation between genres established by Smitterberg could be that there is something about the semantics of main clause progressives that restricts their occurrence in expository writing. In other words, main clause progressives appear to have functions that are not often needed in expository texts, while they are needed in non-expository texts and particularly in texts that are both non-expository and speech-based, i.e. trials and drama. Likely candidates for such functions are subjective, speaker-based meanings of the progressive, which have been stipulated to be connected with main clause use (cf. Wright 1994, 1995, Smith 2002: 325f.) (cf. 7.3.1, 7.6). As Smith has found that the main clause use in the quoted speech passages remains roughly the same between LOB and FLOB at around 53%, he suggests that “main clause increase [in the 20th century] could be a further example of written language imitating speech habits” (2002: 326). However, not all previous studies support the idea that spoken language use generally favors main clause use of the progressive. Scheffer (1975: 121) has found that in sports commentaries, the progressive is still relatively infrequent in main clauses: while roughly 75% of clauses in the commentary corpus were main clauses, the progressives occur only 52.7% of times in main clauses. The results from his analysis of fiction produce a different result: 76.4% of all clauses in the corpus are main clauses, and progressives occur in main clauses 70.7% of the time (Scheffer 1975: 53f.). Here, then, the spoken genre shows an association of progressive occurrence with subordinate clause use, while this is not (so much) the case in the written genre fiction. We shall now see how the factor genre influences main clause occurrence in the ARCHER data. Only the later part of the data will be considered, as the two first half-centuries contain too few instances of the progressive to make such a fine-grained analysis meaningful:

The Progressive in Modern English

132

Table 10: Main clause progressives per genre in ARCHER-2 (1700-1999) (main clause use of the progressive/all progressive instances) 18/ 1 Drama

18/ 2

19/ 1

19/ 2

20/ 1

20/ 2

TOTAL per genre 105/152 354/515

15/26

21/33

19/26

77/114

119/163

(58%)

(64%)

(73%)

(68%)

(73%)

(69%)

(69%)

14/35

20/50

61/126

102/177

176/276

202/323

575/989

(40%)

(40%)

(48%)

(58%)

(64%)

(63%)

(58%)

4/19

9/16

19/30

24/35

35/50

33/ 54

124/204

(21%)

(56%)

(63%)

(69%)

(70%)

(61%)

(61%)

6/14

18/36

5/26

26/47

52/80

50/ 80

158/285

(43%)

(50%)

(19%)

(55%)

(65%)

(63%)

(55%)

12/28

11/25

9/17

26/51

28/56

59/104

145/281

(43%)

(44%)

(53%)

(51%)

(50%)

(57%)

(52%)

0/6

6/11

2/ 13

10/24

2/14

22/44

42/112

(0%)

(55%)

(15%)

(42%)

(14%)

(50%)

(38%)

3/11

0/6

1/5

6/11

3/14

7/20

19/67

(27%)

(0%)

(20%)

(55%)

(21%)

(35%)

(28%)

1/4

0/1

16/ 31

24/37

3/14

3/6

47/93

(20%)

(0%)

(52%)

(65%)

(21%)

(50%)

(51%)

TOTAL per

55/143

85/178

132/274

295/496

418/667

sub-period

(38%)

(48%)

(48%)

(60%)

(63%)

Fiction

Letters

Journal

News

Religious

Science

Medical

481/783 1466/2541 (61%)

(58%)

Table 10 is based on the absolute numbers presented in table 5: the first number indicates the main clause uses among the instances. Unfortunately, the numbers of progressives in the subcorpora religious sermons and scientific and medical texts are too low for far-reaching generalizations. The odd fluctuations in the percentages of main clause instances across time in these genres are thus due to the low number of examples. But although the numbers of instances unfortunately become quite low once the data is broken down into sub-periods and genres, some cautious conclusions may be drawn. One can note that main

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

133

clause occurrences in drama have always been more numerous than subordinate clause instances, which, together with Fitzmaurice’s (2004a) and Smitterberg’s (2005) findings and with the findings by Strang (1982) concerning the dialogue passages in fiction, encourages the view that main clause progressives have long been a firmly integrated feature of spoken-language use. Strang’s (1982: 451) view, however, that the use of the progressive in main clauses was more or less blocked from 18th century narrative because it “carried a marked stylistic effect”, is not confirmed by a closer look at the occurrence in the 18th century fiction contained in ARCHER: out of the 34 instances found there, 14 appear in narrative passages. The rather high main clause progressive proportion in letters (discounting the result for the 1700-1749 sub-period, where the total number of instances is extremely low) supports the view of the main clause use of the progressive as a more colloquial feature. The rise in religious sermons, which are speech-based but not colloquial, appears to be later and less pronounced, but again the absolute numbers are too low to allow firm generalizations. Typical written (non-speechbased) genres all have lower percentages of main clause progressives in the earlier periods. While this changes in the general written genres such as news, fiction, and journals, the use in the specialized written genres (science and medical texts) apparently remains quite low. This result supports the findings of Biber and Finegan (1997). Smitterberg’s results have shown, as we have seen, that there is a difference between the non-expository genres (with frequent use of the progressive in main clauses) and the expository genres (with generally lower frequencies of main clause progressives). The results from ARCHER also point in this direction. Smitterberg’s idea, however, that a lower frequency of main clause progressives in a genre indicates a lesser degree of integration of the progressive seems no longer plausible on the basis of the present results. The long diachronic perspective indicates that strongly speech-based and more colloquial genres (such as drama) already had high percentages of main clause progressives in the early 18th century, when the integration of the progressive overall must have been of quite a low degree, since its frequency was not very high yet. On the other hand, genres such as science and medical texts, which apparently disfavor the use of main clause progressives, do so more or less throughout the time span under consideration. Presumably, this cannot have to do with a lack of integration of the construction, since it can hardly be doubted that the progressive form is a well-integrated feature in all registers of PDE. Still, its frequency in certain genres remains quite low, as we have seen in 5.2; and we can see now that in the same genres that have few progressives overall, the main clause occurrences are particularly infrequent. We shall return to this question after the detailed semantic analysis, since on that basis, it will be possible to explain the cross-genre variation concerning both overall frequency and relative frequency of main clause occurrences (cf. 7.6).

The Progressive in Modern English

134 6.5

Adverbial modification

The collocation pattern of the progressive with types of adverbials is still quite different in EModE than in PDE. Elsness (1994: 19) finds that adverbials indicating habitual repetition, such as every day, can easily be used with the EModE progressive. Also, the combination of the progressive with always-type adverbials, which, as we have seen in 3.3.1, appear to be connected with the expression of subjective meanings (particularly negative speaker attitude) in PDE, can occur in neutral contexts in EModE. Elsness assumes that this may be explained with a somewhat different meaning of the progressive in EModE: rather than expressing progressive aspect, the progressive in these examples “express[es] a more general durative meaning” (Elsness 1994: 19). Concerning the use of progressives with all types of temporal adverbials, Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 187) states that there seems to be a decrease within the EModE period. In her data, 14 out of 32 progressives occur with temporal adverbials in the first sub-period, 11 out of 51 in the second, and 30 out of 95 in the third sub-period (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 187, table 16). The relative proportion thus decreases from the first to the second but increases from the second to the third period. The absolute numbers are not very high, but the chi²-test I conducted on them shows the distribution to be non-random. If one takes the total of the results from Núñez Pertejo’s findings on EModE (out of a total of 178 progressives 55 are modified by a temporal adverbial, i.e. 31%) and compares these to her findings for the 18th century, which show that 24.5% (155 out of 632) are modified by a temporal adverbial (Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 371-373), a clear trend is apparent, indicating a general decrease in the use of a temporal adverbial with a progressive. A general decrease in the use of temporal adverbial modifiers with the progressive has also been observed in other studies. Scheffer’s study shows that apparently a much higher proportion of progressives is used with modification by a temporal adverbial in OE than in PDE. Furthermore, his results show that the use of an adverbial with a progressive in PDE is genre-dependent: progressives in spoken PDE (radio commentaries) are much more frequently modified by an adverbial than the progressive occurrences in modern fiction (Scheffer 1975: 5459, 121ff., 184-187, cf. also the overview presented by Smitterberg, Reich & Hahn 2000: 104). Taking Scheffer’s results as a starting point, Smitterberg et al. (2000) have compared the use of progressives with and without adverbial modification in 19th and 20th century political and academic language. Their findings also suggest that the use of temporal adverbials with the progressive decreases over time. This finding is supported by Smitterberg’s (2005: 190, table 60) results, where he shows a statistically significant decrease of progressives used with temporal adverbials in the course of the 19th century. This trend is explained in relation to the increasing grammaticalization of the progressive, which can be expected to “lead[...] to a decrease in the need for modification by temporal adverbials” (Smitterberg 2005: 193, cf. also Smitterberg et al. 2000: 113f.). One might e.g.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

135

expect that it will be less necessary in an ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ use (as a subtype of progressive aspect) to add (right) now, at this (very) moment etc. once the progressive function of the construction is fully established. The results presented by Hancil (2003), as has been pointed out, suffer from the small size of her corpus. From what can be gathered from her presentation, one might assume that the combination of temporal specification128 with the progressive becomes relatively less frequent from the 17th to the 20th century (Hancil 2003: 10, table 3).129 Hancil (2003: 11) explains this as due to “the fact that the expanded form becomes less and less dependent on the explicit marking of temporal linking structure since it carries the temporal parameter in itself”. This phrasing is somewhat misleading, as the progressive clearly has an aspectual function (besides other, more subjective functions) and not a temporal function (with the exception of the specific function to refer to the near future). Consequently, the idea that the progressive tends to provide its own temporal anchoring after having undergone grammaticalization should be regarded with some skepticism. Frajzyngier, Bond, Heintzelman, Keller, Ogihara and Shay (2008) strongly stress the point that the progressive cannot provide its own temporal anchoring.130 In his study of the PDE progressive, König (1980) has pointed out: In contrast to the simple form of the verb the EF does not introduce a temporal context but depends for its interpretation on a temporal context independently specified. Such a specification may be given inter alia by a simple form in the co-text of the sentence with the EF. (König 1980: 283) So, the exclusive study of temporal adverbs may not show the whole picture, since specification of the temporal context may also be supplied by other means, such as with the help of a simple verb form in the cotext. Looking at the progressives in ARCHER, we must actually say that no clear diachronic trend in the proportion of progressives with temporal adverbial specification can be witnessed over time, as the following table 11 and figure 7 show:

128 129 130

Hancil (2003: 10) speaks of ‘temprojuncts’: this includes not only temporal adverbials but also subordinate clauses with temporal meaning. The results for the 15th and 16th century are not conclusive due to the small overall number of examples. Frajzyngier et al. (2008) use this characteristic of the English progressive as an argument against the status of the construction as a marker of aspect. Yet it is not clear why a marker of aspect should provide its own temporal information. After all, temporal anchoring is not the function of aspect.

The Progressive in Modern English

136

Table 11: Progressives modified by temporal adverbials in ARCHER-2 Progressives

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

19

78

109

131

218

391

537

649

2143

(78%)

(76%)

(74%)

(80%)

(79%)

(81%)

(84%)

(81%)

without adverbial (90%) support Progressives with adverbial support TOTAL

2

22

34

47

56

105

130

124

520

(10%)

(22%)

(24%)

(26%)

(20%)

(21%)

(19%)

(16%)

(19%)

21

100

143

178

274

496

667

783

2662

Figure 7: Relative frequency of progressives modified by temporal adverbials

100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 17th/1 17th/2 18th/1 18th/2 19th/1 19th/2 20th/1 20th/2 Progressives without temporal adverbials Progressives with temporal adverbials

The application of the chi² test shows that the results are non-random. In the present study, only adverbials with temporal function which clearly modified the progressive were counted. It does not seem, on the basis of the data considered here, as if the grammaticalization of the grammatical function of the progressive had any impact on its occurrence with temporal adverbials. However, the mere indication of frequencies of temporal adverbials hardly allows any firm conclusions. Temporal adverbials co-occurring with the progressive should be categorized according to their function, since some merely reinforce the meaning of the progressive, while others are necessary to bring out a particular meaning of the progressive (e.g. particular temporal adverbials are supposed to be often obligatory to produce a ‘near future’ reading, as in I’m seeing her tomorrow) (cf. Freckmann 1995: 256). In his classification, Freckmann (1995: 255-257) distinguishes first, instances where the adverbial is necessary to produce a particular meaning of the progressive (as in the reference to future time), second,

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

137

adverbials that are optional and serve to emphasize the meaning of the progressive in the particular context (e.g. the use of now when the progressive refers to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’), third, adverbials that are mutually exclusive with the progressive, which generally produces subjective meanings (i.e. always-type adverbials), and finally, polysemous adverbs, where the progressive serves to disambiguate the polysemous time reference (e.g. She was playing Tennis on Monday). The problem with his principle of classification is that it is extremely hard to apply to actual data. Furthermore, there does not seem to be any function of the progressive which can only be brought out by adverbial support in the period under consideration here. Even in the earliest sub-period, 1600-1649, one finds, for instance, examples of the progressive with future meaning without any adverbial being present: (101) Do I break off your parley that you are parting? (archerii\160049.bre\1628ford.d0b) The instance occurs in drama, so that the context of the speech situation provides the reference point for the present tense use. The future meaning is also supplied by the actual situation, from which it is clear that the addressee of the question is not presently parting but has only planned to do so in the future. So even in the earliest part of the data no adverbial is necessary to provide the reference point for this kind of use of the progressive, because such information can be supplied by the context. This means that the distinction between adverbials that are necessary and adverbials that are optional has no firm basis in actual use. A further problem with Freckmann’s suggestion for classification concerns his third category: adverbials which semantically clash with the progressive, e.g. always. We have seen that it is not true that the progressive is necessarily linked to situations of limited duration. The use of always-type adverbials can, on the one hand, produce subjective, speaker-based meanings. On the other hand, progressives with such adverbials can also be used in their ordinary aspectual meaning without any semantic clash occurring, as the following example demonstrates: (102) The pith index and the whole of the surrounding bodies are incessantly exchanging heat-rays (archer\1850-99.bre\1875croo.s6) As has been explained before, such combinations are possible because dynamic events do exist which progress without envisageable end. As for the fourth category, it is also not clear whether one can say with certainty in which particular case the progressive is necessary to disambiguate between habitual and progressive situations. Since the progressive is also used to refer to temporary habits, one could actually say that in the example given by Freckmann for this category, the sentence is ambiguous if no further context is provided, i.e. She was playing tennis on Monday could refer to a temporary habit (e.g. She was playing tennis on Monday, but her tennis trainer has shifted the date to Tuesday recently)

The Progressive in Modern English

138

or to a progressive situation (e.g. She was playing tennis on Monday, while I was at the dentist.). Freckmann’s categorization thus will not be used here. Instead, the temporal adverbials modifying the progressive in ARCHER have been categorized into the following types: adverbials that provide information on the duration of the situation, adverbials that provide a reference time (i.e. temporal anchoring of the occurrence of the situation), adverbials that refer to the frequency of recurrence of a repeated situation or habit, adverbials of the ‘waxing and waning’ type (e.g. gradually, more and more, less and less), and adverbials of the always-type. The latter are treated separately, although they could have also been grouped under one of the categories durational adverbials or frequency of recurring situations, or, in combination with the right type of predicate, under the category ‘waxing and waning’ (e.g. always increase). They are treated as one special group because many claims are made explicitly only about them (e.g. that they semantically clash with the progressive, that they generally produce subjective readings, etc.), so that it makes sense to study them separately. The following results are obtained: Table 12: Types of temporal adverbials occurring with the progressive in ARCHER-2 17/ 1

17/ 2

18/ 1

18/ 2

19/ 1

19/ 2

20/ 1

20/ 2

Duration (e.g. for a while)

--

3

4

15

12

12

30

32

Point in Time (e.g. now)

--

ALWAYS (e.g. forever)

2

Habit (e.g. daily)

--

TOTAL 108 (21%)

11

23

29

34

66

81

80

324 (62%)

6

7

2

10

16

12

12

67 (13%)

2

--

--

--

4

5

--

11 (2%)

Increase/decrease (e.g. more and more) TOTAL

--

--

--

1

--

7

2

--

10 (2%)

2

22

34

47

56

105

130

124

520

Table 12 shows that the most common type of adverbial which modifies a progressive has the function to anchor it in time, i.e. it provides information as to when the situation occurred. Among these uses, now is particularly frequent, occurring 102 times across all the periods (which means that modification by now makes up for 20% of all progressives modified by a temporal adverbial). What is interesting is that there is no clear diachronic change in this respect: Adverbials furnishing the temporal reference point constitute the most common type throughout the modern period, and the particular study of the use with now shows

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

139

that the combination of progressive + now is very common throughout the modern period. So we can say with certainty that the increasing grammaticalization of the progressive function does not appear to make speakers/writers feel that the use of adverbial specification is no longer necessary. The relative proportion of progressives with adverbial modification does go down slightly in the 20th century, but the change does not seem considerable enough to allow generalizations, particularly since, as has been pointed out, other mechanisms than adverbial modification can be used to anchor a proposition in time. Furthermore, it can be assumed that temporal adverbials are not only used when they are strictly speaking necessary to make sense of the proposition but also when they merely serve to make the temporal anchoring of the situation more obvious. For instance in the following example, the present progressive alone would presumably have sufficed to bring out the intended meaning of a situation currently in progress at TU; however, the use of now helps the reader to access the meaning more quickly. (103) If the meeting is to be a specifically military one, the presence in Albania of Marshal Peng Teh-huai, the Chinese Defence Minister, who is now touring Eastern Europe at the head of a Chinese military mission, could be more than a convenient coincidence. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1959gua1.n9) The apparently continuous use of this kind of temporal adverbials with the progressive can be explained by a tendency for multiple marking in natural language − one may also think here of the use of past tense markers or future tense markers modified by adverbials referring to past or future time, which is also not uncommon. The progressive in 20th-century English can easily express that a situation is presently ongoing (i.e. mark ‘Aktuelles Präsens’) without the help of an adverbial, as example (104) below shows, yet this does not mean that examples such as (103), where now does not add any new information, have become infrequent. (104) Outside it is snowing again. The inner weather is troubled too in this room, though finally the bed has got made. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1976horn.j9) The same goes for the use of adverbials with similar semantics (e.g. at this moment, at present, currently) combined with present tense progressives. As far as the use of adverbials of the ‘reference point’ category in past tense contexts is concerned, König’s (1980) explanation is clearly valid: as an aspectual marker, the progressive does not carry its own temporal specification but depends on temporal specification given in the context, which may be given with the help of an adverbial. The following example demonstrates this:

140

The Progressive in Modern English

(105) One morning a letter from home was waiting for her on the breakfast table. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1957lark.f9) Adverbials indicating duration represent the second most common category throughout the period (once more, there is no clear indication of diachronic change),131 but they represent far fewer cases than the ‘reference point’ category. Furthermore, they show a different distribution across tenses. While the modification by reference point adverbials shows no noticeable patterning, the distribution of adverbials indicating duration shows a clear pattern in that they typically occur with perfect progressives: out of the 108 instances recorded in ARCHER of progressive + durational adverbial, 66 (61%) occur with perfect progressives. A typical example is presented below: (106) He would much rather the Bill should be crushed altogether, than thus set to sleep over for another Session; he said it was not a novel subject, but one which had been agitating the House for years. (archer\175099.bre\1793sta2.n3) This co-occurrence pattern seems to remain rather stable over diachrony, but the overall number of occurrences of progressives with this type of temporal adverbial is too low to allow far-reaching conclusions on this. Viewed in its totality, however, 66 out of 108 examples does seem like a significant proportion. This pattern can easily be linked to previous findings on the perfect progressive, the semantics of which will be discussed in greater detail in 7.1.4. As König (1995: 162f.) has pointed out, the combination progressive + perfect is difficult to treat semantically. One should rather understand its meaning as arising from the possible effects of a combination of the semantics of the progressive and the perfect. One of the typical effects of the combination is that the absence of a result is stressed, another that a focus is put on the duration of the situation. Both can be seen in (106). This typical meaning of perfect progressives, putting the focus on duration, seems then to invite the use of temporal adverbials which underline the long duration of the situation, as in the example (106). Typically, one seems to get this combination (perfect progressive + durational adverbial) when the speaker wants to emphasize that the situation had been going on for a considerable amount of time, often for rather longer than may have been expected, as is also the case in the following example:

131

This result shows that Mittwoch’s (1988) claim that the use of the progressive with adverbials indicating duration has a low acceptability in PDE (cf. 3.2.2.2) is not valid. Furthermore, the view advocated by her that such combinations, when they do occur, represent older patterns of use, is also discouraged by the present results. If she were right, we would expect to see a progressive decrease in frequency of the combination, which is not the case.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

141

(107) I woke up this morning about five o’ clock with the feeling that the train had been standing still for a long time. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1934chri.f8a) The next most common temporal adverbial used with the progressive is represented by the always-type, which may seem surprising if one assumes that the progressive is generally used in reference to situations of limited duration in ModE, or at least in the latter part of the period. In OE and ME, the progressive combined commonly with always-type adverbials, and the combination was still rather common in EModE (Elsness 1994: 19). One needs to distinguish the ‘objective’ ALWAYS + progressive uses (where the adverb refers to a situation of objectively speaking unlimited duration and the progressive marks aspect) from the subjective uses (where the adverb is used hyperbolically and the progressive serves to express speaker attitude) in order to see a diachronic trend. One can only draw cautious conclusions, as we are only looking at 67 examples altogether. The low absolute numbers are also the reason that centuries and not half-centuries are considered in the following table. The chi²-test is nevertheless not applicable, since although the criterion that all e > 1 is fulfilled, the criterion that 20% of all e > 5 is not. Table 13: Types of progressive + ALWAYS uses in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Objective progressive + ALWAYS

--

2

13

5

20

Subjective progressive + ALWAYS

8

7

13

19

47

TOTAL

8

9

26

24

67

Of the 67 instances of progressive + always-type adverbial, 20 belong to the ‘objective’ type of use. A recent trend towards a limitation of progressive + ALWAYS to subjective uses is difficult to establish, due to the low absolute numbers. However, the existence of such a trend would explain the apparent differences in distribution between the 19th and the 20th century. Such an assumption would be supported by the investigation on PDE in Kranich (2007: 131, table 1), where 92 out of 100 uses of the combination of progressive + ALWAYS were classified as subjective. We shall come back to this apparent change in the discussion of the semantic development of the progressive. Looking once more at the general picture emerging from table 12, we may state that temporal adverbial types other than the always-type, the durational type, and those supplying a temporal reference point are found much more rarely with the progressive. Looking at the adverbials explicitly indicating increase and decrease, we should note, however, that among those uses classified as progressive + ‘objective’ ALWAYS, there are several instances where, due to the semantics of the lexical verb, the situation referred to is also one of constant increase or decrease, as in the following example:

The Progressive in Modern English

142

(108) a matter of general precaution, the necessity for which, however, owing happily to the good relations existing between the different sovereigns and Governments, was constantly being minimised, and would ultimately be entirely obviated. (archer\1850-99.bre\1893man2.n6) One might say that, in general, situations to which the always-type adverbials can be applied felicitously without using hyperbole tend to be those where there is a constant growth or decrease, which was also evidenced in example (34), The universe is forever expanding. This would seem to have to do with the general make-up of the world, where dynamic processes of a long, potentially infinite duration may often be of this kind. Finally, to come to the last group of temporal adverbials, one may note that the rare occurrence of adverbials denoting frequency of recurrence of habitual activity discourages the assumption that reference to habits is a common meaning of the progressive. Furthermore, this meaning does not seem to be a recent development. We find a handful of cases not only in the 19th and 20th century but also in the 17th century, as evidenced in the example below: (109) During my residence there I delighted much to be in the Hasl, where she was often working with many others. (archerii\1650-99.bre\1664bult.f1a) The number of occurrences of the combination of progressive + temporal adverbial indicating frequency of recurrence is very low so that one cannot say whether the absence of it from the 18th century data is meaningful or not. Since the progressive was used commonly for habits, characterizations, descriptions and the like in OE and ME, one could assume that this use was continued into EModE and then given up, as the progressive form developed into a marker of progressive aspect and thus became more associated with dynamic situations.132 In this hypothesis, the habitual use would have re-emerged later, but it would have then been limited to temporary habits, as this would be more in accordance with the general association with dynamic events and hence with events of a typically temporary nature. However, the number of instances is too small to verify this hypothesis on the basis of the ARCHER data. 6.6

Subject types

As we have seen, the progressive apparently had an association with agentive subjects which becomes weaker over time (cf. 6.2). Strang (1982: 443-445) assumes that it is only after around 1800 that the progressive becomes extended to use with inanimate subjects. Both Brunner’s (1955: 221) remark that the progressive in Shakespeare is most common in expressions of human action 132

This would be in line with findings by Smith (2007: 216, table 2), who shows that the progressive was used in imperfective, non-progressive contexts rather frequently until the 16th century.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

143

(based on an unpublished investigation by Sonderegger 1954) and Núñez Pertejo’s analysis of the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus (1500-1710) point in this direction. Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a: 178, table 15) results also show, however, that inanimate subjects are not completely lacking: They are used with 17% of all progressives, so that while favored with animate subjects, progressives are by no means highly unusual with inanimate ones. A diachronic trend is not apparent from Núñez Pertejo’s data. As we have seen, Hundt’s analysis of an earlier version of ARCHER (1700-1899) shows that, although Strang’s conclusion is too strong,133 both inanimate as well as non-agentive subjects are disfavored by the progressive in 18th century British as well as American English and that this tendency becomes less and less pronounced over time. Within the period studied by Hundt, progressive use with inanimate subjects rises in British English from 15% in 1700-1749 to 22% in 1850-1899; if one uses the criterion agentivity vs. nonagentivity instead of animacy vs. inanimacy, this yields an even more notable rise from 19% non-agentive subjects in 1700-1749 to 33% in 1850-1899 (Hundt 2004b: 60). Results for American English are very similar (Hundt 2004b: 65, figures 8a and 8b). Smitterberg’s data for the 19th century, on the other hand, show no diachronic change: “[T]he proportion of the relevant progressives that have nonagentive subjects is [...] constant across the 19th century” − they constitute either 11% or 12% of all progressives in each sub-period (Smitterberg 2005: 185). This constitutes quite an obvious difference from the 32% and 33% found by Hundt for the time spans 1800-1849 and 1850-1899 respectively. Compared to the results of Strang (1982) and Hundt (2004b), Smitterberg’s (2005) result is easier to reunite with the assumption that the PDE progressive is still used typically with agentive subjects (Biber et al. 1999: 473, cf. 3.2.3). The two corpora, ARCHER and CONCE are relatively similar: The BrE part of ARCHER contains mostly writers from England; CONCE only contains texts by English writers. The genres contained in the two corpora are not exactly identical: CONCE includes trials, debates, and history lacking from ARCHER, while ARCHER contains texts from journals and newspapers, medical texts as well as religious sermons. Both contain drama, fiction, and letters. These differences would not seem likely to be responsible for such a great difference in the distribution of agentive vs. nonagentive subjects with the progressive. One might assume that the difference is caused by the use of different criteria in the classification. Smitterberg has categorically excluded stative and stance situations, based on the definition of the agentive subject by Quirk et al. (1985: 207) as the “‘doer’ of the action”. The main criterion for defining agentivity in his view is control, i.e. the subject needs to be viewed as being able to direct the situation. Inanimate subjects can be agentive mostly in cases where they are presented as personified (Smitterberg

133

Strang (1982: 445) does present a note of caution, though, in stating that it is “in the nature of things [that] novels do favor +human subjects”.

144

The Progressive in Modern English

2005: 181-183).134 Hundt (2004b: 48-51) discusses the concept of agentivity in some detail and also points out the importance of the factor control. However, she takes a “metaphorically extended notion of control and responsibility” (2004b: 49), which also includes such uses as the fire is lurking in the ashes (from ARCHER, 18xxbroo.h7). Such an instance would not have been counted by Smitterberg, since it contains a stative predicate. This makes the results even more surprising, since it would lead one to expect a greater quantity of subjects classified as ‘agentive’ in Hundt’s study than in Smitterberg’s.135 Smitterberg (2005: 182) notes as a possible test for the factor control (in his more restricted view of it) Schlesinger’s (1995) criterion that if a subject has control over the action, it must be able to terminate it, whereas no such tests are discussed by Hundt (2004b) for her larger take on the concept. Ziegeler (2006) also claims that she bases her distinction of agentive vs. non-agentive on the factor of control, but she sees this factor as reflected in the Vendlerian situation types, rather than in any feature of the subject. But the relation between situation type and agentive subjects is not that clear-cut. Thus we find both examples of accomplishment situation types with non-agentive subjects (as in example (110)) and of agentive subjects combined with the situation type activity (as in example (111)): (110) I feel like a man on a ship that is sinking. (archer\185099.bre\1895wild.d6) (111) Quite a lot of men were skating again today, as the ice still bore (archerii\1900-49.bre\1912elmh.j8) The present study will follow Smitterberg’s approach to the classification of agentivity, in so far as a subject is seen as agentive if it has control over the situation in such a way as being able to terminate the situation. It will not follow 134 135

As an example Smitterberg (2005: 182) offers the jocund spring is chaunting her matin song (from CONCE. Drama, Morton, 1800-1830). One may also note in this context that the two sets of data used by Núñez Pertejo (2007a) in her study of 18th century progressive use yield quite different results: the 18th century data from ARCHER produce the result that 20.4% of progressives are used with non-agentive subjects, while the data from COPC (1680-1780) only yield a result of 11.5% (Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 377f.). This result is, unnoted by Núñez Pertejo, almost identical to Smitterberg’s findings for the 19th century. Again, this difference in results is hard to explain, since COPC, too, is not that different in design from ARCHER, also containing diverse genres which partly overlap with those included in ARCHER (e.g. science, letters, fiction are included in both corpora) (cf. Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 379). So it looks like differences between the samples included in the different corpora, rather than differences in classificatory principles, may be responsible for the divergent results.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

145

Smitterberg in the categorical exclusion of stative situation types. The following example shows that there are also stative situations that should be understood as under the control of the subject in the sense that the subject is capable of willfully terminating the situation: (112) A Portugese captain and his company were waiting for something to do, so I said, “Here, my brave fellows, take these ladders” (archer\180049.bre\1812simm.j5) The study of agentivity and/or animacy should be based exclusively on the active uses, excluding both passivals and passives. In passivals and passives, the subject is clearly not an agent but a patient. Taking these criteria, the following picture emerges: Table 14: Agentivity and the progressive in ARCHER-2 (actives only) Agentive

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

11

72

109

127

178

325

475

549

1843

(52%) (76%) (80%) (74%) (67%) (69%) (75%) (75%) Nonagentive TOTAL

10

23

27

45

89

146

156

186

(48%) (24%) (20%) (26%) (33%) (31%) (25%) (25%) 21

95

136

172

267

471

631

735

(73%) 819 (27%) 2528

For the sake of comparison, we shall also see what picture emerges when subjects are classified according to the criterion of animacy: Table 15: Animate vs. inanimate subjects of the progressive in ARCHER-2 (actives only)

Animate

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

15

82

114

149

202

385

545

633

2125

(71%) (86%) (84%) (87%) (76%) (82%) (86%) (86%) Inanimate

6

13

22

23

65

86

86

102

(29%) (14%) (16%) (13%) (24%) (18%) (14%) (14%) TOTAL

21

95

136

172

267

471

631

735

(84%) 403 (16%) 2529

The Progressive in Modern English

146

What we can see from tables 14 and 15 is that there is a strong tendency to use the progressive with agentive and/or animate subjects throughout the ModE period. As Hundt (2004b: 61) has pointed out, “[r]egardless of whether animacy or agentivity of the subject is correlated with the occurrence of the progressive form, the tendency is much the same”. On the basis of the results from ARCHER2, it seems as if the factor animacy bears an even stronger connection to progressive use than agentivity. In other words, the number of subjects used with the progressive which are animate but not agentive is higher than those which are agentive but not animate.136 The chi²-test produces the result that the distribution is non-random in both instances. Leaving aside the first half of the 17th century, with its low number of absolute occurrences, we can see the development up to the end of the 19th century that Hundt (2004b) has discussed: in the modern period up to 1900 the association of the progressive with agentive subjects becomes less pronounced. Apparently, the somewhat more extended view of agentivity taken by Hundt (2004b) does not alter the results greatly, as my results for the same time span analyzed by Hundt (1700-1899) match her results rather closely. However, the additional analysis of the 20th century data presented here shows an interesting change, for the trend seems to be reversed: the proportion of uses with agentive subjects among all progressives increases again. Similarly, when using the criterion of animacy, the connection between progressive use and animacy seems to grow weaker in the 19th century, but in the 20th century, the trend is reversed. This can be visualized as in the following figures: Figure 8: Relative frequency of progressives with agentive subjects (active progressives only) 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

17th/1 17th/2 18th/1 18th/2 19th/1 19th/2 20th/1 20th/2 Non-agentive

136

Agentive

The distribution of the possible combinations of the two factors [animate] and [agentive] will be presented in the detailed discussion of agentivity in its relation to the semantics of the progressive (7.2.3).

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

147

Figure 9: Relative frequency of progressives with animate subjects (active progressives only) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

17th/1 17th/2 18th/1 18th/2 19th/1 19th/2 20th/1 20th/2 Inanimate

Animate

A possible explanation might be arrived at if one notes that the absolute numbers of progressives contained in ARCHER with inanimate as well as with nonagentive subjects have not changed much in the last three half-centuries (cf. tables 14 and 15). This may indicate that the use of the progressive had more or less become grammaticalized by 1900 and that the grammaticalization up to this period led to a spread of the construction into contexts where it was originally felt to be less appropriate, such as in the co-occurrence with non-agentive and/or inanimate subjects. As long as stylistic considerations governed the use of the form, it was mostly avoided in these contexts; but when its use became fully grammaticalized, it became obligatory in certain contexts, so that the progressive had to be used regardless of the nature of the subject. We may assume that such a stage of the development was reached by 1900. The increase in frequency in the 20th century would then have to be due to different factors, and, in fact, we have already seen that an increase in subjective uses may be responsible for this increase. If, however, it is the increasing use of the progressive with subjective meaning that produces the overall rise in the 20th century, then one cannot logically expect this increase to affect use with non-agentive subjects. After all, one can assume that speakers generally tend to make value-laden statements or offer interpretations about their own, their addressee’s, or other people’s behavior, and not about involuntary states of affairs. In some studies, classifications of subject types have been made in a different way: instead of semantic criteria, grammatical persons are distinguished. Catherine Smith (2004: 171), having effected such an analysis, states that in her 18th century personal letter corpus, “the progressive occurs with all three subject types”. The distribution across the subject types varies from one author to another, which leads Smith (2004: 171) to the conclusion that “[n]o recognizable pattern can be identified for subject collocation [...], illustrating that the progressive had not stabilized in its subject collocation patterns”. But why the

The Progressive in Modern English

148

progressive should “stabilize” any particular subject collocation pattern is not elaborated on. It might be interesting to compare occurrence of the progressive with the three grammatical persons to occurrence of the simple form, which Catherine Smith (2004), however, does not do. One can safely assume that the kind of variation she discusses merely reflects differences in the semantic content of the letters. Findings by Nicholas Smith (2002: 324, table 4) for PDE also support this: he finds that the person of the subject in the present progressive varies immensely between use in spoken quotations and all other occurrences. If any ‘stabilization’ with regard to grammatical person of the subject should have accompanied the grammaticalization of the progressive, one would expect it to have occurred by 1961 (i.e. the earlier part of N. Smith’s data). His results thus indicate that the choice of the different persons is simply connected to different communicative exigencies, as is also recognized by Sairio (2006: 177f.). She notes a rise in the use of first person subject in Montagu’s letters and relates this to different communicative concerns, i.e. “that Montagu refers to her own ongoing activities more and more as the years go by” (2006: 178). Such an observation is interesting in the context of a social-network study such as Sairio’s, but as far as the grammaticalization of the progressive is concerned, variation in the use with the three grammatical persons on its own cannot be deemed indicative of any general change. The variation between the different grammatical persons may, however, prove relevant for our investigation if correlated with other factors. Wright (1994) has suggested that the use of the ‘modal progressive’ (the use of the progressive with more speaker-based meanings) is characterized among other factors by its occurrence with first or second person subject, so we will come back to the distribution across grammatical persons in the context of the subjective uses of the progressive (7.3). 6.7

Situation types

The co-occurrence of the progressive with different situation types or specific verb classes has to date not been studied in a long diachronic perspective. Hancil (2003) attempts such a study, but the size of her corpus is not sufficient to be reliable. Her results indicate that the increase is mainly due to a higher and higher use of the progressive with activity verbs, while the use with punctual and achievement verbs remains low (starting with one example in the 17th century, and between 5 and 7 examples in the 18th to 20th centuries). Stative verbs only occur in the 19th and 20th century with 4 examples each (Hancil 2003: 8). Unfortunately, she does not provide any information on the criteria she used for her categorization. This is a great problem, since she does not use the wide-spread terminology by Vendler (1957). Thus, it is not clear which of her terms would cover the Vendlerian situation type accomplishment. Another problematic aspect of her study – particularly given the small numbers of examples − lies in an inclusion of examples where the combination be + v-ing does not really represent a progressive. For instance, her examples of “the first occurrences of the

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

149

expanded form with a stative verb” include both the example reproduced in (113), where we are truly looking at a periphrastic verb form, with the verb having its ordinary meaning ‘desire, wish for’, and the example reproduced in (114), where we are in all probability looking at a typical use of adjectival wanting with the meaning ‘lacking, missing’.137 (113) We have been wanting very much to hear of your Mother (Jane Austen, letter 130) (114) The Curacy only is wanting I fancy to complete the business (Jane Austen, letter 139) In view of such doubtful classifications, one has to be a bit skeptical concerning her results. In EModE, Elsness (1994: 19f.) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 164-166) show that the progressive was still remarkably different from the PDE progressive in that it occurs in stative contexts where one would not use the progressive in PDE, as can be seen in examples (115) and (116): (115) And fyrst we cam to Torrens Cedron, which in some tyme ys Drye, And in wynter, and specially in lente, it is mervelows flowyng with rage of watir (EModE Period 1: 1500-1570, NN_TRAV_TORKINGT: Sample 1, P27, example from Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 165)138 (116) In all thes for sayd yles ys growing wondyr myche licores, tyme, Sage... (EModE Period 1: 1500-1570, NN_TRAV_TORKINGT: Sample 2, P61, example from Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 165) While one could argue with respect to example (115) that the progressive here may serve to underline the temporary nature of the event, which would then be in accordance with the PDE use of progressive with statives, the predicate in (116) aims at giving a general description of the flora of the islands. The state of affairs described is thus not temporary. In PDE, the progressive would not be acceptable in a context as in (116), and it would be the marked option in (115). K. Aaron Smith’s (2007: 216, table 2) results provide further evidence for a decline of progressive constructions in stative contexts, since they show a steady decline of the construction in imperfective, non-progressive contexts. However, his results also show that such imperfective uses still exist in the late 17th, early 18th century,

137 138

Verbal uses of want with the meaning ‘to be lacking/missing’ rarely occur since the 17th century (OED, s. want (v), cf. also 2.4). The meaning of the abbreviations giving information about the origin of the example is laid out in Núnez Pertejo (2004a: 141f.).

150

The Progressive in Modern English

even though by that time they only represent around an eighth of all uses included by him.139 Unusual uses with stative predicates are not commented upon by Catherine Smith (2004), so one may assume that there are no longer any instances in her 18th century data which from a present-day standpoint would appear strange. Smith (2004) uses a rather fine-grained classification (including such categories as ‘mental’, ‘occurrence’, ‘existence’), yet she still finds that the category ‘activity’ represents 64% of all progressive instances (Smith 2004: 177, table 6). However, she concludes that “[t]he collocation of the progressive with these seven verb types is remarkable because this varies substantially from the progressive’s Old English preference for activity verbs” (2004: 177). Smith (2004) does not offer any evidence for the claim that the OE progressive was most common with the situation type activity. As we saw in chapter 4, in OE, progressives also occur rather commonly with stative situations. However, even if the preferred use in OE was with ‘activity verbs’,140 there is nothing in Smith’s results that allows one to conclude that this has changed. Her results show that the preferred situation type is still represented by ‘activity verbs’, followed by verbs of communication (16%) and mental verbs (10%).141 Verbs of communication are also not 139

140

141

K.A. Smith excludes all perfective (thus surely subjective) uses of the construction from the presentation of his quantitative results (cf. Smith 2007: 218). A methodological problem with Smith’s results lies in the fact that he does not lay open the criteria for his classification. It is therefore not clear whether the imperfective, non-progressive uses all represent stative uses of the type evidenced in (115) and (116) (i.e. uses not acceptable in PDE) or whether he also includes uses with stative predicates in this category which would also be possible in PDE (e.g. I’m standing in front of the town hall). The practice followed in the present work is to base classifications not on the verb on its own but on the whole predication. This is preferred because the same verb may belong to different situation types, e.g. I’m reading represents an activity, I’m reading this letter an accomplishment. One might assume that Smith’s findings are partly due to the nature of her corpus, consisting solely of private letters, which could be expected to be prone to an over-representation of verbs of speaking and possibly also of mental verbs. However, Núñez Pertejo’s (2007a) study of 18th century use of the progressive in a cross-genre perspective supports Smith’s assumptions. She finds that ‘movement’ verbs (particularly come and go) are most common in the progressive, followed by verbs of ‘communication’ (among which she also includes e.g. write and read, which may have been classified as general activity verbs by others) and “activities of a general kind” (e.g. do, make, which may, in Vendler’s terminology, refer not only to activities but also to accomplishments, depending on their complements). ‘Private’ verbs, on the other hand, which may be comparable to the category ‘mental verbs’ used by Smith (2004), are not very frequent in her corpus (Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 369f.). Since Núñez Pertejo only offers numbers for single verbs (from which

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

151

infrequent in OE progressive use, as we have seen: in Nickel’s (1966) lists of verbs which occur in the progressive form in a particular OE text, verbs of speaking are commonly represented (cf. Nickel 1966: 95, 103, 120). Mental verbs also occur in the progressive form in OE (cf. Nickel 1966: 103, 120). So without a detailed quantitative analysis of OE progressive forms, one certainly cannot see any ‘substantial’ difference here – in fact, the results point rather to continuity between OE use of the progressive and EModE and even LModE use (cf. also Núñez Pertejo 2007a: 371). Results from Strang’s study indicate that the progressive in the 18th century was mainly used with “activity verbs”, e.g. make, read, write (Strang 1982: 445). The most common verb in the 18th century part of her corpus is prepare. From this summary, one can gather that Strang fails to distinguish between activity and accomplishment in her classification of verbs (rather than situation types). The 19th century seems to witness a rise in the use of the progressive with less typical situation types. Smitterberg’s (2005) results show that although ‘active’ and ‘processive’ situations (corresponding roughly to ‘activity’ and ‘accomplishment’ in the terminology used here) make up the majority of progressive use (i.e. over three quarters of occurrences in each sub-period), the use of the progressive with reference to stative situations increases from 4% in 1800-1830 to 7% in 1870-1900, which is statistically significant (Smitterberg 2005: 174f., tables 56a and 56b). Smitterberg’s findings also indicate that this increasing use of progressive with the stative situation type may point to an increase in subjective uses of the progressive. Progressive with statives may, rather than expressing an aspectual meaning, be used in order to “give[...] a more general emotional coloring to the sentence than the non-progressive” (Smitterberg 2005: 171), particularly when combined with an always-type adverbial. Other uses of the progressive with stative predicates can be related rather to its aspectual use, as when it is used to express the temporary nature of a state of affairs (cf. Smitterberg 2005: 170f.). The question, then, is whether an increasing use of the progressive with stative predicates mainly stems from an extended use of the aspectual function or from a rise in the subjective uses. Although Nicholas Smith (2002: 322) uses a different, very fine-grained categorization, his findings appear to point in a similar direction. Smith’s categories ‘activity’ and ‘simple occurrence’ (defined as “non-volitional activity”) together furnish more than three quarters of the occurrences both in LOB (BrE 1961) and FLOB (BrE 1991). Smith does not seem to distinguish between telic and non-telic situations, so that the categories ‘activity’ and ‘simple occurrence’ presumably also include, in Vendlerian terminology, accomplishments. The frequency of the progressive with verbs of communication and mental verbs rises in the later data, which may, once more, indicate an

go emerges as most frequent), not for verb classes or situation types, her results are, however, in general somewhat difficult to compare with the findings from the other relevant studies referred to in the present section.

152

The Progressive in Modern English

increasing use of the progressive with subjective meanings (Smith 2002: 323).142 Smith (2002: 323) also supposes that “[t]here may be a general trend towards relaxing the constraints on certain verb classes that previously were highly resistant to the progressive, notably the stative types”. However, the later study by Leech et al. (2009: 130) arrives at the conclusion that “use of the progressive with stative verbs did not contribute substantially to the growing use of the construction between the 1960s and 1990s”. In the analysis of the progressives in ARCHER the classification of situation types I have used mainly relies on the classification proposed by Carlota Smith (cf. 3.1.1.2, table 2), but an additional differentiation has been made concerning the category states, where, following Quirk et al. (1985) the sub-type stance (predicates indicating position in space) has been distinguished from other stative situations. Smith’s (1997: 16-25, 85-90) concept of ‘derived situation types’ has been used in this analysis. That means that for instance iterated semelfactives are taken to represent derived activities; accomplishments such as [eat an apple] can be the basis of derived activities when the object is pluralized and indefinite [eat apples] etc. Such a derived activity would be classified as ‘activity’ not as ‘accomplishment’. This analysis yields the following picture:

142

It may particularly point to a rise of the interpretative progressive. As Girard (2002: 81f.) has pointed out, the interpretative function of the progressive is especially common in uses with mental and communication verbs.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

153

Table 16: Situation types and the progressive in ARCHER-2 17/1

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20t/2

TOTAL

--

4

9

14

38

43

78

190

(3%)

(5%)

(5%)

(8%)

(6%)

(10%)

(7%)

6

1

15

18

18

21

80

(4%)

(1%)

(5%)

(4%)

(3%)

(3%)

(3%)

9

71

98

145

279

394

453

1501

(43%)

(50%)

(55%)

(53%)

(56%)

(59%)

(58%)

(56%)

11

62

69

97

159

204

224

869

(52%)

(43%)

(39%)

(35%)

(32%)

(31%)

(29%)

(33%)

Semelfactive

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

----

Achievement

1

--

1

3

2

8

7

22

(1%)

(1%)

(<1%)

(1%)

(<1%)

(1%)

178

274

496

667

783

2662

States

Stance

---

Activity

Accomplishment

(5%) TOTAL

21

143

Figure 10: Relative frequency of the progressive across situation types 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17th/1

17th/2

Stance

18th/1

States

18th/2 Activity

19th/1

19th/2

Accomplishment

20th/1

20th/2

Achievement

154

The Progressive in Modern English

The results presented in table 16 and figure 10 largely confirm results of previous studies. That is, in all of the periods, the progressive is used with reference to situations of the type activity and accomplishment in the overwhelming majority of cases. These two situation types together make up for almost 90% of all instances in the corpus. Note that the two situation types which are [- durative] are extremely rare in the data: Semelfactives do not occur at all in the data, which proves Smith’s (1997: 29f.) account, and achievements are, as Dowty (1977: 49) assumed, very rare throughout the ModE period.143 No clear diachronic change is apparent in this respect. As far as a diachronic development is concerned, the tendency toward an increasing use of the progressive with stative predicates in the course of the 19th century, noted by Smitterberg (2005), is also reflected in ARCHER. However, the diachronic trend is not very clear, since the proportion of statives among all progressives actually goes down again somewhat in the early half of the 20th century, only to rise again in the latter half. Overall, the use of the progressive form with stative predicates is very old. We have seen that it occurs in OE and ME, often in contexts where a progressive would not be grammatical in PDE, e.g. in geographical descriptions as in example (87), reproduced as (117) below for convenience. (117) the flood is Into the grete See rennende (Gower 7.567, Confessio Amantis, example from Mossé 1938: II, 184) This use is very similar to some examples found in EModE, as has been shown by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a). One may hypothesize the following development: As the function ‘progressive aspect’ becomes more and more common, the use of the progressive with stative situations at first decreased. This development seems to have occurred before the period covered by ARCHER-2. Only when the expression of progressive aspect was firmly associated with the construction did new possibilities to use it with stative predicates emerge, producing different types of meaning which bear an association with the dynamism (and thus, typically, more limited duration) expressed by the progressive. This may be an alternative hypothesis for explaining the rise of stative uses.The other possibility is, as pointed out by Smitterberg, that it has to do with a rise in the use of subjective uses of the progressive which have been claimed to be particularly common with stative verbs. Once more a final explanation is thus postponed to the semantic analysis in chapter 7.

143

The present results also confirm the presentation found in Biber et al. (1999: 473), who generally state that the progressive does not tend to occur with situation types that are [- durative]. Just like Smith (1997) and Dowty (1977), Biber et al. (1999) speak of the progressive in PDE. We can see here that their assumptions are also correct with regard to ModE in general.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive 6.8

155

The progressive of full verbs be and have

Both full verbs be and have come to be used in the progressive only rather late in the history of the construction. As far as the use of full verb have is concerned, Denison (1998: 147) notes that “[w]ith a direct object, HAVE hardly occurs in the progressive in ModE before the nineteenth century, and then never in the meaning ‘possess’” (1998: 147). Furthermore, one can note that the meaning of have in the progressive is often non-stative (Denison 1998: 148). The following two examples represent early attestations: (118) We are now having a spell of wind and rain. (1808, Southey, Life III. 163, OED, example from Warner 1995: 546) (119) It seems the ‘Goddems’ are having some fun. (1830 J.P. Cobbet, Tour in Italy 8, OED, example from Denison 1998: 148) These examples show, however, that there are differences in degrees: in (119) the meaning of have seems further removed from ‘possess’ than in the earlier example (118), and while the situation referred to in (118) is certainly temporary, it must nevertheless be classified as stative. In (119), on the other hand, the situation referred to seems rather dynamic. In the data from ARCHER, examples of uses with full verb have are relatively few: the earliest instance is found in the 1850-1899 sub-period, followed by three examples from the first half and nine from the second half of the 20th century. It is interesting that the first example in ARCHER, presented in (120) below, is the only one that is close to the stative sense of have, but just as in (118), a temporary state of affairs is referred to. All twelve examples from the 20th century are of the type instantiated in (119), i.e. the meaning of have is far removed from the meaning ‘possess’, and it can often be seen as part of a more or less fixed expression (have fun, have a bath, have a quarrel, etc.) referring to a dynamic situation. An example is presented in (121). (120) Her flushed silence was obvious enough for any one, except Lady Susan, who merely supposed that champagne at luncheon was having its almost inevitable result on the complexion. (archer\1850-99.bre\1897some.f6a) (121) When they went into the lounge afterwards she realized Jane and Robin had been having a mild quarrel, something about Robin’s swimming before breakfast in the river, which Jane seemed to resent. (archerii\195099.bre\1957lark.f9) Concerning the use of the progressive with the main verb be, Denison notes that, apart from a couple of examples from the 15th century and some doubtful

156

The Progressive in Modern English

theological usages, progressive of be is first recorded in the following “notably informal usage of Keats” (1998: 146): (122) You will be glad to hear ... how diligent I have been, and am being (Keats 1819, Letters 137, p. 357, example from Denison 1998: 146) Denison (1998: 146f.) rightly notes that one has to be wary of misinterpretations, as in the following example, where the combination is + being does not represent the progressive. Instead, is is the full verb, complemented by the gerundial phrase being wicked.144 (123) but this is being wicked, for wickedness sake (1761 Johnston, Chrysal II 1. x.65, example from Denison 1998: 147) Just like with the use of the progressive with have, one can note that uses of the progressive with be generally bring out a dynamic reading of the predicate. This is stressed by Hirtle and Bégin, discussing the use of the progressive of full verb be: “[T]he progressive as always evokes an impression of development, of an event open to change” (Hirtle & Bégin 1990: 7). They suggest that uses with animate subjects occur earlier and refer to dynamic behavior, as in (124) below, while in the 20th century, instances with inanimate subjects such as (125 ) begin to occur, where the meaning of the progressive can be paraphrased as ‘it is/was turning out to be’ (which is also a dynamic concept) (Hirtle & Bégin 1990: 9). (124) She was being a heroine in a romance. Hannele could see her being a heroine, playing the chief part in her own life romance. (D.H. Lawrence, The Ladybird, cited by Hirtle & Bégin 1990: 5) (125) My holiday at Crome isn’t being a disappointment. (Huxley, Crome Yellow, cited by Hirtle & Bégin 1990: 9) One should point out, however, that the hypothesis concerning the diachronic development is not verified by Hirtle and Bégin (1990). Uses of the type presented in (125) are apparently very rare, as there is not a single occurrence of this type in the ARCHER data. Overall, instances of progressive with main verb be are even more scarce than the instances with full verb have. We find none in the 19th century data; in the first half of the 20th century, three instances occur, and there are five instances in the second half of the 20th century. All eight occurrences in the corpus are used with animate, human subjects; in half of the instances, either the speaker or the addressee is the subject of the utterance. What 144

Such gerundial uses are discussed together with verbal uses of is + being by Bailey (1996: 225), without any remark concerning the difference between these structures.

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

157

is referred to is temporary, dynamic behavior, never a stative quality characteristic of the subject. A typical example is presented in (126): (126) I took seven games out of nine off the young squash pro this morning, but of course he was being gentle with me. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1963whit.j9) Different reasons for the new uses of the progressive with the full verbs have and be have been proposed. Hirtle and Bégin discuss the emergence of progressive with be and explain it as “the progressive as a grammatical form coming to grips with its lexical matter” (1990: 9). Once the progressive construction became more and more established within the grammatical system as a marker of aspect, the use of the form spread to basically all lexical verbs. As an expression of progressive (imperfective + dynamic) aspect, it would remain limited in application to certain types of verbs, such as those generally referring to stative situations. Both be and have are of this type: they get used with the progressive only when the situations referred to have certain dynamic properties that the speaker wants to stress. The incompatibility with the most common stative meanings of be and have would then furnish a semantic explanation why they only get used relatively late with the progressive. The instances in ARCHER are not numerous, but all instances fit this explanation, as all of them represent dynamic uses of the verbs be and have (or at least, in one case, have in common with typical dynamic uses that reference to a temporary situation is made). Another hypothesis concerning the use of the progressive with be could be that in these cases, the progressive is not really used in its nature as aspectual marker but rather in one of its subjective functions, namely as a marker of a subjective interpretation. The examples in (124) and in (126) would fit this explanation, and it may also be argued that in (125) the speaker gives his subjective evaluation. Furthermore, the striking use of progressives of be with 1st or 2nd person subjects in half of the instances could be understood as a sign of this function, since it can be shown that interpretative progressives tend to occur with these grammatical persons, being used for the evaluation or interpretation of one’s own or one’s addressee’s behavior (cf. 7.3.1). A good example of this can be seen in (127): (127) “Yes but I mean when will you stay here?” “I’m staying here.” “Please be serious, Mr Corker.” “I am being serious.” (archerii\195099.bre\1964berg.f9) The emergence of progressive be and have has also been viewed from a more formalist perspective. Both uses emerge only slightly later than the progressive passive, so it makes sense to investigate whether they can be explained with reference to the same principle. We have already discussed Warner’s (1995, 1997) account of the emergence of the passive progressive, which is based on the view that at some point, the different forms of be became dissociated: language learners classified finite forms of be as auxiliary but they stored the participle

158

The Progressive in Modern English

being as a full verb, which made the sequence is being possible. The same process would allow the formerly blocked progressive of be, since is (AUX) being (V) is then no longer any different from e.g. is (AUX) making (V), as the competent speaker supposedly no longer has the finite forms of be and the participle being stored together. Warner’s view of the emergence of is having is based on a parallel account for have: “The paradigm of auxiliary HAVE should have ceased to be directly predictable from the paradigm of verbs, along with the paradigm of BE” (Warner 1995: 545), but it would be hard to imagine a competent speaker who has stored the individual forms of have separately. In the case of have, one cannot even adduce the argument of the extreme irregularity of the paradigm, since it should not be problematic to learn that have, has, had (past and past participle), and having belong to the same lexical verb. While it would be nice to find a common explanation for the emergence of the passive progressive and the progressives of be and have, it seems that such an explanation must be sought elsewhere. Smitterberg (2005: 157f.) sees support for the view that the development of progressive forms of full verb be and full verb have is connected with the evolution of the passive progressive in the fact that the genre distribution seems to be similar: in CONCE, progressives of have occur most commonly in the genre letters (eight out of a total of ten occurrences), where most of the early passive progressives are also found.145 However, this could also be due to the fact that both types of use were more typical of less-monitored language use. ARCHER actually shows a somewhat different picture (although the scarcity of the data does not allow far-reaching conclusions). The genre distribution of instances of progressives of full verb have and be seem to occur more commonly in genres that are [- formal] and more speech-based (drama, fiction, personal letters, journal), which is in line with Smitterberg’s findings that they are more common in personal letters. Only in the late 20th century do we find one instance each in news and in a religious sermon (written in rather informal style). The early instances of passive progressives in ARCHER, on the other hand, exhibit a rather different pattern of distribution across genres, namely a clear preference for this use in news. Passive progressives even occur in medical texts from the period 1850-1899, which points to the fact that in the latter half of the 19th century, the passive progressive had become largely accepted in all registers. A preference to use this construction in less formal styles is no longer apparent from the present study, but this will have to do with the absence of truly early examples of passive progressives from the data.

145

Smitterberg’s results for full verb be in the progressive are inconclusive, there being only one instance of this use in the whole of CONCE (Smitterberg 2005: 157).

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

159

Table 17: Genre distribution of progressives of have and be and early passive progressives in ARCHER-2

Drama Fiction Letters Journal News Religious Science Medical Total

have (all periods) 2 7 2 1 1 ------13

be (all periods) 1 4 --2 --1 ----8

passive progressives (before 1900) --5 1 --13 ----4 23

We must say that there is nothing in the ARCHER data either to firmly prove or disprove the connection between passive progressive and full verb be and have progressives. The development of be and have progressives seems to be somewhat later from the present data. It is clear that their occurrence remains more infrequent, even in the 20th century when the passive progressive is already firmly established, but this does not necessarily weaken a claim concerning a common motivation for their emergence. However, the developments seem to be somewhat different in kind. The emergence of the passive progressive would seem like a necessary step in the grammaticalization of the progressive as a marker of aspect: if a language develops a fully grammaticalized progressive aspect marker, one may expect this marker to become combinable with all other markers of tense, voice and mood which this language contains. As far as the use with full verbs be and have is concerned, one can rather assume that once the meaning of the progressive was established, speakers experimented with the construction in less typical lexical contexts, using it e.g. with stative verbs, which we have seen to become more common in the progressive around the same time as the occurrence of progressives of be and have. From the data it looks as if have and be are used in the progressive generally only when (at least some parts of) the concept of a dynamic situation ongoing at TT is applicable or when the progressive has an interpretative function. Hirtle and Bégin’s concept of “a grammatical form coming to grips with its lexical matter” thus seems to capture the development nicely. 6.9

Linguistic contexts of the type to be a-hunting

In EModE, the nominal origin of the to be a-hunting construction apparently still had an impact on its linguistic contexts. In the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus, all instances of this type are found in intransitive contexts (regardless of whether they are introduced by the preposition in or by a-) (Elsness 1994: 22). Elsness (1994: 22) has explained this as “evidence that the -ing-form in these

The Progressive in Modern English

160

cases was felt to retain some of its gerundial status: even though gerundial verbs may also take objects, such objects are less likely in constructions of the original prepositional type”. Such a trend is, however, not apparent from the ARCHER data: Out of the ten instances, five are intransitive, while three occur with a direct object (as example 128), and the remaining two are used with a prepositional object (such as example 129). (128) Here have I been a treating the case as one of a garden, and jest as I’m a goin’ to pass sentence on the malefactors, you tell me they [the supposedly stolen peas, S.K.] were growing in a field! (archer\180049.bre\1845surt.f5) (129) Soldiers of France - The eyes of Europe are a-looking at you! (archer\1850-99.bre\1867robe.d6) Apparently, then, the reluctance to use the prepositional type with an object vanished. This development is probably connected to the fact that a- was no longer interpreted as a preposition but as a prefix. As a consequence, the following ing-form was identified as verbal rather than nominal, in analogy to the much more common progressive. We have already seen that the frequency of the to be a-hunting construction is extremely low. The extension across linguistic contexts also appears to be somewhat more restricted than what was observed with regard to the progressive proper: The to be a-hunting type occurs mainly in present and past tense; one instance of a combination with a perfect and one with a modal was found. Combinations (e.g. modal + perfect) were not found at all: Table 18: Variation across the verbal paradigm of the type to be a-hunting in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

Present

1

--

--

--

Past

2

1

1

--

Perfect

--

--

--

Modal

--

1

Non-finite

1

TOTAL

4

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

1

--

1

3

--

--

--

--

4

--

1

--

--

--

1

--

--

--

--

--

--

1

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

1

2

1

--

1

1

--

1

10

Linguistic contexts of the Modern English progressive

161

Such a distribution could, at first sight, signal a lower degree of grammaticalization of this construction. However, we must note that, concerning the progressive proper, combinations of modal + perfect + progressive are extremely rare, occurring only six times in the 2662 occurrences. Their absence from the ten instances of the type to be a-hunting is therefore not surprising and does not allow for any conclusions as to the integration of the construction in the language. What is interesting, though, is the complete absence of a formally marked passive, which can be presumed to be ungrammatical (i.e. there would appear to be no such construction as *The deer was a-being hunted.). It is also interesting that all the ten instances are semantically active, which constitutes a decisive difference from the Helsinki Corpus data, where passival uses of the type are common. According to Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 154), five of the altogether 17 examples of the prepositional type are used for conveying passive meaning (cf. also Elsness 1994: 15-17). It has been claimed (Elsness 1994: 16) that the passival was “more common if the progressive contained a preposition, or at least a prepositional remnant [i.e. a-] before the main verb”. This is not evidenced in the ARCHER data, which might point to a diachronic change. As far as the other factors considered in the preceding sub-chapters are concerned, the type to be a-hunting shows distributions that are rather similar to those of the progressive. Main clause use is proportionally a little higher: seven out of the ten instances are main clause uses, compared to the progressives proper at 57%. Otherwise, there are no great differences: one out of ten instances shows adverbial modification (progressives proper: 15%), and six out of ten have agentive subjects (progressives proper: 69%). A difference can be noted in the distribution across situation types, but due to the low numbers one should not make too much of it: seven out of ten prepositional uses occur with the situation type activity, one with accomplishments and two with a stative predicate (progressives proper 58%, 33% and 5% respectively). To conclude this section, it seems that apart from a much lower frequency in the data and the absence of a marked passive, the type to be a-hunting is used rather similarly to the progressive proper with regard to its preferred linguistic environments.

7.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

Although, as we have seen in 3.4, it is not possible to find one basic meaning for the progressive in PDE that accounts for all its uses, it seems obvious that the present-day progressive is, in one of its central functions, a marker of (imperfective or progressive) aspect. This function is not yet clearly visible in OE and ME, as we have seen in 4.2.2.1, so that an obvious question to be dealt with in this chapter is: when did the be + v-ing construction acquire its progressive function, that is, when did the grammaticalization of its function occur? Other issues that emerge from the comparison of the semantics of the present-day construction and its OE and ME use concern the nature of the situation that the progressive refers to and the development of the subjective uses. Regarding the former, it is particularly noteworthy that the progressive form appears to have gradually lost its ability to occur with stative situations of unlimited duration and has become associated with dynamic situations. Concerning the latter, a development must have occurred which led from the rather unspecific emphatic use in OE and ME to the three distinct types of subjective use we were able to distinguish in PDE. We will find out how this specialization is reflected in the data from ARCHER. Another difference between OE and ME on the one hand and PDE on the other is that the subjective use of the progressive seems to have become comparatively less important: while for OE and ME, the wish for greater descriptivity or emphasis appears to be the primary motivation for using the form (cf. e.g. Vezzosi 1996, Hübler 1998, Wischer 2006, Killie 2008), the subjective meanings of the PDE progressive are normally only presented as marginal, as occurring only in certain contexts (e.g. with always) or with certain types of verbs (e.g. hope) (cf. e.g. Quirk et al. 1985, Mair & Hundt 1995a). On the basis of preceding research, we can thus say that there are substantial differences which make it obvious that a great deal of change must have happened in the period under investigation here. Their motivation and connection to each other as well as their exact chronology are, however, still matters of debate. The present sub-chapter is organized in a manner parallel to chapters 3 and 4.2.2, i.e. we will first discuss the development of the aspectual uses (7.1), then the relevance of the characteristics of the situation referred to by the progressive (7.2), and then the subjective uses (7.3). After a brief consideration of the functions of the ten instances of the type to be a-hunting (7.4.), we shall focus on the overall diachronic development of the functions of the progressive as visible in the ARCHER data (7.5) and consider how the functions are distributed across the different genres (7.6).

The Progressive in Modern English

164 7.1

The progressive as marker of aspect

7.1.1

General overview of the development of the aspectual function

The notion that the progressive construction developed into an aspectual marker sometime during the time span focused on in the present work is not highly contested. But as to the details of this development and its exact chronology, opinions vary widely. Strang gives the following account: [I]t appears that the rules for the use of the construction were established in the seventeenth century [...], we can classify the pre1600 period as one of unsystematic use, and the post-1700 period as one of systematic or grammatically-required use. Thus up to the seventeenth century we find structures lacking be+ing which in present-day English require it if they are not to be misunderstood.146 (Strang 1982: 429) Görlach (1994: 78) also assumes that the general rules for using the progressive as an aspectual marker were being established in the late 17th century, although the 18th century is understood by him as the time in which the differentiation between progressive and simple forms became more clear-cut and in which obligatorification has to be situated. Nehls (1974: 170) also views the 18th century as a period of transition from mainly ‘intensifying’ use of the progressive to the aspectual use, while Rissanen (1999: 216) faithfully renders Strang’s description in his overview, stating that the progressive functions as “a grammaticalised aspectual indicator in the verbal system by 1700”.147 A similar view is already expressed in Traugott’s (1972: 178) handbook, who states that “[b]y about 1700 be + Prp was restricted in Southern British roughly as it is now to the expression of ongoing activity at a moment of time”. This would mean that the ARCHER data do not actually cover the period of varying use but only that of ‘systematic or grammatically-required use’, so that we would be looking at material from too late a period to uncover the grammaticalization process. However, the correctness of these assumptions is questionable. As far as 17th century usage is concerned, Elsness (1994: 19-23) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 177-191) show that there are still considerable 146

147

One may note that the qualification “if they are not to be misunderstood” is inappropriate, since often a progressive is grammatically required in PDE even if non-use would not result in misunderstanding, e.g. We’re currently working on it, and other common uses of the progressive form with an adverbial which on its own would suffice to bring out the progressive nature of the situation. Denison (1998: 143) also refers to Strang (1982), but in pointing out the 19th century examples presented below in (130) and (131), he makes it obvious that he has some doubts about the correctness of her conclusions.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

165

differences from PDE even in the latest period covered by the Helsinki Corpus (1640-1710), which is particularly evident in its common use with stative predicates and with adverbials expressing unlimited duration without any subjective meaning. Brunner (1955: 221) states that in Shakespeare’s English, aspectual uses such as time-frame cannot be understood as “the primary cause for their choice by the poet” but that EModE progressives are better understood as constructions that “describ[e] action or event […] placing it as important in the centre of interest”. Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 177, 185) is somewhat contradictory in her conclusions, since on the one hand, she notes that the EModE progressive “could be used side by side with simple forms, which is indicative of the stylistic function of be + -ing”, but underlines on the other hand that there are many similarities to PDE use “which may lead us to the general conclusion that the grammaticalization process of the progressive was not far from being completed”. It is the latter statement which should rather be doubted. Even in the 19th century, examples can be found which show considerable differences from PDE, containing “structures lacking be + ing which in present-day English require it” (which according to Strang 1982: 429 is typical of 17th century use): (130) Now I will return to Fanny – it rains (July 1818, Keats, personal letter, example from Denison 1998: 143) (131) How is Mr. Evelyn? How does he bear up against so sudden a reverse? (1840, Bulwer-Lyton, Money, example from Denison 1998: 143) Denison (1998: 143) passes the following judgment on the instances presented in (130) and (131): “nonuse of the progressive is odd to my ears”. It may be appropriate to go further and state that their grammaticality might be doubtful, particularly in regard to (130). Although evidence from two such uses does not allow firm generalizations, they do point to the lack of complete grammaticalization of the progressive function in the early 19th century, as complete grammaticalization should also be visible in the obligatorification of the progressive in certain time-frame uses, particularly the use for ‘Aktuelles Präsens’. The obligatorification of the use of the progressive for the reference to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ has been assumed by Nehls (1974: 170, 177) to have occurred in the course of the 17th century: examples (130) and (131) indicate that it should be situated later. A study that compares the use of progressive and simple forms in the relevant time span would be needed here to furnish more conclusive results. Next to the time of obligatorification, another interesting question is: when does the aspectual meaning become the central motivation for using the construction? Unfortunately Núñez Pertejo (2004a) does not present a quantitative analysis of the semantics of the progressive in EModE, but she does state that “[o]ne of the main ideas expressed by the present progressive is actuality, which seems to be present in dialogues referring to actions or situations

166

The Progressive in Modern English

taking place at the moment of speaking” (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 178). She also presents a list of meanings the progressive can have in EModE, which includes aspectual meanings such as time-frame uses, simultaneity, imperfectivity and incompletion, as well as characteristics such as duration and dynamism relating to the nature of the situation, and also more subjective meanings (Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 177-186). In the end, it is not really clear from her discussion whether the progressive in EModE is more like it was in OE and ME, showing a certain association with durative, imperfective situations but at the same time commonly used for emphasis/stylistic purposes, or whether it is more like the progressive in PDE and already used predominantly in contexts where a progressive aspectual meaning can be assigned to it. The only clear difference between EModE and PDE emerging from both Elsness’ (1994) and Núñez Pertejo’s (2004a) studies is the apparently more common use of the progressive with stative situation types already discussed in 6.7. As far as the 18th century is concerned, the state-of-the-art is hardly more satisfying. Núñez Pertejo (2007a) does not discuss the semantics of the construction at all, while in another article, she proceeds in a way very similar to her study of the EModE progressive, merely presenting a list of meanings that can be associated with the progressive in the 18th century, but it is impossible to get an idea of which functions were most prominent (Núñez Pertejo 2007b). The list of meanings she provides for the 18th century is broadly speaking identical to the one she presented for EModE. Changes in relative quantities would have been more telling, but she does not present any results on these. Results from the studies of 18th century letters (Smith 2004, Sairio 2006, 2009) cannot offer a good insight into the overall semantics of the progressive form, since they are not using a sufficiently large data basis to obtain such general results.148 Sairio’s (2006, 2009) results show that while aspectual uses of the progressive constitute the majority, subjective uses are also found. In Sairio (2009), she uses the same classificatory principles as the present study, based on Kranich (2008a). This leads to the result that between 61.5% and 78.8% of the progressives in the different time spans of Montagu’s correspondence constitute aspectual uses (Sairio 2009: 186). A typical discourse function of the progressive in her letter corpus is said to be the “expression of immediacy” (Sairio 2006: 185, cf. also Sairio 2009: 187-189). Sairio (2009: 188) states that ‘immediacy’ may perhaps be viewed as a sub-type of the aspectual function, but one might also suggest that it is rather a specific, genre-dependent textual effect of using the aspectual progressive. All the progressive instances she advances as examples of 148

Smith’s (2004) discussion is further flawed by certain misconceptions about the historical development of the progressive. With regard to the aspectual function, she makes the claim that this was the usual function of the progressive in OE (Smith 2004: 181), whereas any subjective meanings are understood by her as an innovation. That this is not a well-founded description of the historical development of the functions of the construction can be seen in 4.2.2 and in the studies cited there.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

167

‘expressions of immediacy’ can be classified as aspectual, like the following example: (132) Dr Monsey is now sitting by me with a face of impatience but he shall wait till I have desired my compts to the Dear Mrs Friend and Miss Friend. (Elizabeth Montagu to Sarah Scott, 1760, example from Sairio 2006: 185) The overall discourse function of the utterance, to which the progressive contributes, can certainly be described as the writer’s attempt to let the addressee “participate in the moment in which s/he is writing” (Sairio 2006: 185). But in a more restricted perspective, looking only at the meaning of the progressive construction, one can classify the use as aspectual, more precisely as [progressive, subtype: time-frame, subtype: ‘Aktuelles Präsens’]. In the studies on the 19th century use of the progressive, we find the view that the aspectual value of the construction becomes increasingly dominant (Arnaud 1983: 88), but we also find skepticism as to how far advanced this development truly is. Smitterberg (2005: 67) expresses doubts concerning the claims that the progressive had already grammaticalized in the 17th or 18th century, since, as he points out, in the 19th century grammaticalization apparently had not yet led to obligatorification. This view is supported by the examples we have seen in (130) and (131), but Smitterberg’s line of argumentation is different. He bases his conclusion on the persistent differences in progressive frequencies between different genres. I assume, on the other hand, that these differences are rather due to the different subject-matters discussed and the different objectives pursued in the different genres and cannot be taken as a sign of absence of obligatorification (cf. 5.4). If one considers the treatment of the progressive in 18th and 19th century grammars, one can note that in those cases where authors discuss the function of the form, they tend to use labels that refer to the aspectual use of the progressive. Wischer’s (2003) study shows that among 18 grammars from the 18th century (including one from the late 17th century), eight make reference to ‘continuation’, ‘progress’, or ‘imperfect’ aspect, four mention ‘definite tenses’, and one speaks of ‘emphatically expressing time’ (Wischer 2003: 154f., table 1). We can note that several grammars only present a list of forms and that none of the descriptions make reference to an emphatic or emotive function, but this is to be expected in the spirit of laying down the logical rules for correct language use. The 19th century grammars generally do not content themselves with providing lists of forms but try to give information as to the use of the construction. Of the eight grammars taken into account, seven provide such information, and they all make reference either to ‘definite’ or ‘specified time’, or to the ‘continuing’, ‘progressive’ nature of the situation. Only one (Kerl 1878) additionally notes the ‘expressive, vivid’ character of the form (Wischer 2003: 170f., table 11). In the minds of grammarians, at least, the progressive is apparently present as aspectual marker rather than as marker of emphasis or speaker attitude, and it seems to have become more clearly linked to the expression of progressive aspect in the 19th

The Progressive in Modern English

168

century compared to the 18th. However, as Wischer (2003: 152f.) stresses, grammar writing had undergone significant changes from the 18th to the 19th century, so that the fact that more 19th century than 18th century grammar writers give a basically appropriate description of the aspectual function of the progressive does not need to be linked to any kind of change in the language itself. One can assume rather that 18th century grammar writers did not recognize an aspectual marker in their language because they were bound by their dedication to the Latin model, where such a marker did not exist, whereas 19th century grammar writers were already somewhat more usage-oriented. In fact, the oldest grammar included by Wischer (2003), by Miege (1688), actually makes reference to the aspectual meaning indirectly, by showing through examples that the progressive can be used for ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ (exemplified by What are you doing?) and for time-frame (exemplified by What was you doing, when I came in?). Wischer (2003: 162) notes that other 17th century grammars generally make no reference to the progressive form at all but that Miege as a non-native speaker “was probably more aware of the features of the English language than native authors” (cf. also Wischer 2004: 204f., 210f.). In the present work, a basic distinction is made between what have emerged as the two main types of functions, the aspectual use and the subjective uses. The basic criterion for the classification of aspectual uses is based on Klein’s (1994) model: aspectual uses have to be characterized by TT being included in TSit. In other words, the progressive makes a claim about some middle-part of the situation not including its endpoints. Subjective uses, on the other hand, are characterized by the fact that the progressive apparently does not fulfill the aspectual function but instead marks speaker attitude, emphasis or the speaker’s subjective interpretation. The criteria for distinguishing them from aspectual uses are discussed in more detail in 7.3.1. If we look at the development of the two main functions across time, the following picture emerges: Table 19: Functions of the progressive across time: aspectual vs. subjective in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

Aspectual uses

14 (67%)

80 118 168 253 447 592 675 (80%) (83%) (94%) (92%) (90%) (89%) (86%)

2347 (88%)

Subjective uses TOTAL

7 (33%) 21

20 25 (20%) (17%) 100 143

315 (12%) 2662

10 (6%) 178

21 (8%) 274

49 (9%) 496

75 108 (11%) (14%) 667 783

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

169

Figure 11: The functions of the progressive: aspectual vs. subjective 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 17th/1

17th/2

18th/1

18th/2 aspectual

19th/1

19th/2

20th/1

20th/2

subjective

The aspectual meaning of the progressive accounts for altogether 2347 out of the 2662 instances in ARCHER. Taking the modern period together, it is evident from this result that the aspectual meaning is the predominant function of the progressive. The chi²-test tells us that the differences are significant. We will now attempt to find answers to the questions raised in chapter 3.1 concerning the exact nature of the aspectual meaning of the progressive. In particular the open question whether the aspectual meaning of the progressive is evolving into a ‘general imperfective’ rather than ‘progressive’ marker will be dealt with. Furthermore, we will try to find out more about the ‘imperfective paradox’ in actual language use. 7.1.2

General imperfective, progressive, and derived aspectual meaning

The concepts of general imperfective and progressive aspect have been discussed in detail in 3.1.2. Here it will suffice to recall that general imperfective markers refer to all situations which are viewed without their boundaries: in Klein’s (1994) terminology, TT is included in TSit. Progressive markers are a subtype of imperfective markers and are characterized by the specific use for situations which are viewed as both unbounded (TT included in TSit) and dynamic. Examples from ARCHER for both types are supplied below, example (133) showing a use as imperfective marker, where reference is made to a stative situation, example (134) showing the use as progressive aspect marker for a dynamic situation:

The Progressive in Modern English

170

(133) Fellows hated them all. They were living in the hotel, taking up all the available rooms, crowding the bar… (archerii\1950-99.bre\1956mons.f9) (134) She looked out of the window […]. A milkman was going round to the side of the house. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1957lark.f9) In the present analysis, three types of aspectual use of the progressive construction have been distinguished: general imperfective, progressive, and ‘derived aspectual meaning’. The third category encompasses uses of the progressive where the meaning which the construction brings to the overall proposition can be derived from its aspectual (general imperfective or progressive) meaning but is not identical with it. We will concentrate in this section on the development of the general imperfective and the progressive use of the form. The suggestion has been made that the PDE progressive, rather than being a marker solely of progressive aspect is developing into a general imperfective marker, following a widely attested path of grammaticalization. We shall see how this is borne out by the analysis of the data: Table 20: Aspectual functions of the progressive across time in ARCHER-2 Progressive aspect

17/1 17/2 18/1 18/2 19/1 19/2 20/1 20/2 TOTAL 14 66 104 142 200 339 452 487 1804 (100%) (83%) (92%) (85%) (79%) (76%) (76%) (72%) (77%)

General imperfective aspect

--

4 (5%)

2 (2%)

6 (4%)

54 72 (9%) (11%)

214 (9%)

Meanings derived from aspectual TOTAL

--

10 (13%)

12 20 27 58 86 116 (7%) (12%) (11%) (13%) (14%) (17%)

329 (14%)

14

80

118

2347

168

26 50 (10%) (11%)

253

447

592

675

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

171

Figure 12: Relative frequencies of three types of aspectual function 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 17th/1

17th/2

18th/1

Meanings derived from aspectual

18th/2

19th/1

19th/2

General imperfective aspect

20th/1

20th/2

Progressive aspect

We can see that progressive aspect is the most common meaning of the progressive construction in all time frames included in ARCHER. What Leech et al. (2009: 119) have stated for the late 20th-century progressive is therefore also true of the progressive construction in the modern period overall: progressive aspect is its prototypical meaning. At the same time, the results show that the English construction is an ‘extended progressive’, as, for instance, Heine (1994: 280) and Comrie (1995: 1245) have stated, occurring in up to 11% of all aspectual uses per time span with reference to unbounded situations that are not dynamically in progress. One can note a certain rise in the absolute numbers of general imperfective instances.149 In most of the time span under consideration, this rise merely reflects the general rise of the aspectual progressive, i.e. the specific use with reference to non-dynamic situations does not have an overproportional share in the increase. However, if one compares the first half and the second half of the 20th century, one can see that the general imperfective uses show an increase of + 33%, while the overall increase of aspectual uses is only + 14%. So one can assume that recently, the aspectual progressive has been used more commonly with stative predicates. This result stands in contrast to Leech et al.’s (2009: 130) conclusion that the use of the progressive with stative predicates does not contribute significantly to the overall rise of the progressive. Differences in classificatory principles as well as the difference in data considered can explain the diverging results. Leech et al. (2009) study differences in language use between 1961 and 1991, whereas the insights on changes within the 20th century 149

The application of the chi² test shows that the overall results presented in table 20 exhibit a non-random distribution.

172

The Progressive in Modern English

based on ARCHER differentiate between the first and the second half of the century. What we can say on the basis of the present investigation is that the kinds of stative situations referred to using progressives have remained largely similar through most of the period considered here, at least since the 18th century (before, they are not numerous enough in the data to make a certain assertion). The typical stative verbs that occur with the progressive generally refer to states which only last for a limited amount of time, such as the subcategory ‘stance’ (e.g. sit, lie, stand) or verbs such as wait, feel, wear. The following examples are typical illustrations of the similarity between earlier and later instances: (135) In this manner these amiable youths conferred, till they arrived at the Castle. The Baron was sitting in the great hall on a high chair with a footstep before. (archer\1750-99.bre\1778reev.f3) (136) Leiter was sitting in Bond’s chair in the motel and Bond was pacing up and down the room… (archerii\1950-99.bre\1956flem.f9) (137) Advices from Cambray say, that they are still waiting for the return of the Expresses. (archer\1700-49.bre\1723dai1.n2) (138) But she could not see the boys who were all waiting on the beach. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1958lamm.f9) One cannot see any indication of a recent spread of the progressive into new contexts where it was previously unacceptable. It seems rather that progressive use in those stative contexts where its occurrence was not unusual before simply became more frequent in recent times. Thus, one should probably remain cautious concerning the claim that the construction is developing into a general imperfective marker. What one does see in the data is a certain rise in the proportion of what we have called ‘derived meanings’ of the aspectual progressive. We will discuss these in detail in 7.1.4. 7.1.3

Specific meanings of general imperfective and progressive markers

Different specific meanings of both general imperfective and progressive markers can be distinguished. In a few cases, general imperfective progressives occur in ARCHER with reference to habits where it is not evident from the context that limited duration of the habitual activity is implied, as in the following instances: (139) “the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs.” (archerii\1900-49.bre\1908yeat.d8)

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

173

(140) Using his stock phrase, “Small rooms for small men and small ideas,” he expressed annoyance when he heard the conferences were being held in one of the smaller editorial rooms on the second floor (archerii\190049.bre\1920clar.j8) (141) Friday 30 January. An hour with Professor Bernard Crick who is writing articles on the RSC and the National for the Times Higher Educational Supplement. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1976hall.j9) This type of use is rare, as overall reference to unlimited duration is infrequent (cf. 7.2.1). The use of the progressive construction for habits that are not marked as temporary occurs only eleven times in the data, twice in the 17th century, once in the 19th century, and eight times in the 20th century. The two 17th century instances (one of them presented in (109) …the Hasl, where she was often working with many others) can be understood in the light of findings by Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a) as evidence of the progressive not having crystallized as progressive aspect marker and still being used with reference to all sorts of stative situations. The remaining nine instances are all a bit peculiar, for specific reasons: in two cases non-standard language use is represented, as in example (139). The other seven examples are like (140) and (141), in which the context does not give sufficient clues as to whether the habit is supposed to be temporary or not. Example (141) does seem to refer to a general habit, used to characterize the subject. But the speaker may have background knowledge which lets him assume that it is only temporary. In example (140), it is not clear whether the conferences will be held indefinitely in this room or only for a certain time span, but what is clear is that this situation is presented as new, so it could be said in some way to show dynamic characteristics. Overall, of the eleven instances in this category, seven were classified as having reference to stative, characterizing habits of unlimited duration and thus as general imperfective for want of evidence to the contrary. It is not impossible, however, that some characteristic of the situation known to the writer bears a resemblance to a dynamic situation and thus motivates the choice of the progressive. The evidence gained from this analysis is thus also not strong enough to justify the assumption that the English progressive is developing into a general imperfective. The instances of progressives used with reference to temporary habits are more numerous by contrast, but these have been classified as ‘progressive’ rather than ‘general imperfective’, since the conception of the situation in these instances emerges as something in progress, as the following example illustrates: (142) The washing-machine had long since ceased to operate, but he was still paying monthly instalments to the United Dominions Trust hire-purchase organisation. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1973trev.f9)

The Progressive in Modern English

174

This type of use is not clearly different in kind from other uses of progressive aspect; it can, for instance, be compared to the reference to accomplishment situations where it is evident from world knowledge that reaching the result will take a long time and that the subject is not engaged in the activity that should lead to the result at all moments during TT, as in the following instance: (143) In the biggest operation of the war 25,000 American and South Vietnamese troops are reducing the “Iron Triangle”, the Viet Cong’s jungle stronghold 4 miles up-river from Saigon. (archerii\195099.bre\1967stm1.n9) In both types of use, temporary habitual situations as presented in (142) and accomplishment situation types of long duration as presented in (143), the situation can be viewed as dynamically in progress, although actual bouts of activity are interspersed by bouts of time where the activity implied is not actually ongoing. Therefore, reference to temporary habits is taken as a subtype of progressive meaning.150 Their distribution across the period covered by ARCHER can be seen below: Table 21: Subtype of progressive aspect: reference to temporary habits in ARCHER-2 Temporary limited habit

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

--

--

--

1

1

6

5

19

32

We can see from table 21 that these cases are in fact not numerous. The absolute numbers show a rise, but although the type does seem to get more common in the latter half of the 20th century, the low absolute numbers prevent us from taking 150

One could say that the view taken here is partly similar to the approach advocated by Michaelis (2004: 21), who analyzes both habits and iterated events as heterogeneous activities, i.e., broadly speaking, habits make reference to situations where bouts of activity are interspersed with bouts of rest. Michaelis takes this view of habits in general, which differs from the approach used here. To my mind, characterizing habits such as [work for Tesco] or [smoke] are probably better analyzed as statives (cf. also Brinton 1987), since typological studies show that such situations are normally only referred to using general imperfectives. More restricted progressives, exclusively used with dynamic predicates, cannot be used with reference to habits at all. Following the same line of argumentation, temporary habits would appear to share certain characteristics of dynamic situations, since more extended progressives, such as the English one, are used to refer to temporary habits but not to general and characterizing habits (cf. e.g. Dahl 1985/1987, Heine 1994).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

175

this as evidence of a clear diachronic trend. It may be fruitful to undertake a detailed study of temporary habits in the progressive with late 20th century data (e.g. using the ‘BROWN-family’) to get a clearer picture. We shall now come to two other prominent uses of the aspectual progressive. As we have seen in 3.1.2.5, two specific uses have been singled out in descriptions of the present-day use of the construction: the use of the progressive to refer to a temporal frame that encompasses another (often punctual) situation and the ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ use, where the progressive refers to a situation that is ongoing at TU. With regard to both time-frame in general and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ in particular, it can be regarded as certain that a quantitative study will produce extremely divergent results depending on whether a more narrow or a wider definition is given to the concepts. A more narrow definition of ‘time-frame’ was applied here. I have only classified such examples as time-frame uses where the situation expressed with the progressive serves as frame to an explicitly mentioned other situation. Such instances are not infrequent, but they are certainly not frequent enough to justify seeing time-frame use as the prototypical function of the progressive. Examples which show clear instances of the meaning ‘time-frame’ are presented below: (144) Huxley was leaving for the country, when he met Robert Chambers in the High Street. (archer\1850-99.bre\1896duff.j6) (145) They were recovering slowly from this hilarious adventure when they realised that Penelope had taken a dangerous route towards the shallow. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1958lamm.f9) In the classification of ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ uses, a rather narrow definition was also applied, taking the definition offered by Nehls as starting point. Instead of seeing it as a category which is marked by being a possible answer to the question “What are you doing right now?” (Nehls 1974: 60), the criterion is made more generally applicable by reformulating the question as “What’s happening right now?”. Examples which fit this definition are presented below: (146) Get me a Fly! it’s 99.bre\1889madd.d6)

raining

cats

and

dogs!

(archer\1850-

(147) It is a bright October but very cold. This is being written in bed to keep warm. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1952rhys.x9)

The Progressive in Modern English

176

The distribution of time-frame use and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ use across time as well as their relative frequency among all instances classified as markers of aspect can be gathered from the following table: Table 22: Subtypes of imperfective/progressive aspect: time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

8 21 Time-frame (not including ‘Aktuelles Präsens’) ‘Aktuelles 2 8 Präsens’ Proportion of both 10/14 29/80 categories among (71%) (36%) all aspectual uses

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

30

47

42

48

43

56

295 (13%)

21

24

22

68

84

79

308 (13%) 51/118 71/168 64/253 116/447 127/591 135/675 603/2354 (43%) (42%) (25%) (26%) (21%) (20%) (26%)

Figure 13: Relative frequencies of subtypes of imperfective/progressive aspect 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 17th/1

17th/2

18th/1

18th/2

19th/1

19th/2

20th/1

20th/2

Other aspectual uses Time-frame (including Aktuelles Präsens)

The chi² test demonstrates that the distribution is non-random. The numbers in table 22 show that, understood in the manner outlined above, reference to timeframe and to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ altogether only make up roughly a quarter of the occurrences of the construction as expression of aspect in the period 1600-1999. It is possible that the criteria are too narrow. But if one takes less restricted criteria, there is not much left that justifies taking ‘time-frame’ use as subtype of aspectual meaning, or anything much that distinguishes ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ from any use of the progressive aspect in the present tense.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

177

Concerning the diachronic development, it is evident from figure (13) that the share the time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ uses have among all aspectual progressives becomes smaller as time goes by. In the half-centuries up to and including the sub-period 1750-1799, the percentages vary between 36% and 71% (although the latter percentage is based on too small a number of instances to be fully generalizable), while the percentages in the 19th and 20th centuries vary between 20% and 26%. One may assume on this basis that time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ are indeed prototypical contexts for progressive markers to occur and that in the last two centuries the English progressive has undergone an extension into other, less typical contexts. This result speaks against the hypothesis brought forward by Bertinetto et al. (2000) about ‘focalized’ (i.e. timeframe) uses becoming more and more common in the course of grammaticalization. While such a trend did become evident from Killie’s (2008) study of the development in OE and ME, the tendency is in fact reversed for the later stages of the grammaticalization process analyzed in the present study. The examples below may serve as illustrations of progressive aspect uses that have not been classified as time-frame or as ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ in the present study. Examples (148) and (149) show uses of the progressive construction in the past where the construction simply signals an unbounded view on the situation referred to, without serving as frame to another situation referred to: (148) “Very good, sir.” “Hey! what’s this? What’s this?” Old Rowbotham had lowered his cup and was eyeing us sternly. He tapped Jeeves on the shoulder. “No servility, my lad; no servility!” “I beg your pardon, sir?” “Don’t call me ‘sir’.” (archerii\1900-49.bre\1923wode.f8a) (149) “Where did you learn to sing?” She smiled and blushed and hid her face. A porter and some other people were looking wonderingly on, so I thought it best to end the conversation. But there was an attractive power about this poor Irish girl that fascinated me strangely. (archer\185099.bre\1872kilv.j6) Although in both cases, the situation referred to using the progressive is viewed as unbounded, it does not serve as a frame for the situation referred to next, using the simple form, in the same way as is the case in examples (144) and (145). The connection between the two events is considerably weaker, it would not make sense to say that the speaker uses the progressive in (148) and (149) to note explicitly that the situation [Old Rowbotham tap Jeeves on the shoulder] fell within the duration of [Old Rowbotham eye us sternly], or that the situation [people look wonderingly on] serves as temporal frame to [I think it best to end the conversation]. Rather, the uses here can be taken as evidence of the backgrounding textual function that the progressive can serve in narrative (cf. Weinrich 1977, Hopper 1979).

178

The Progressive in Modern English

The following uses present evidence for the present progressive used in the progressive aspectual function but not as typical ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ (if one applies the definition that ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ is only represented by uses that constitute a possible answer to the question ‘What’s happening right now?’): (150) Yesterday lorry drivers in South Wales voted to strike from tomorrow and drivers in East Anglia are following suit. In the South, the picture is more patchy, but drivers in the Port of London and Southampton have struck. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1979obs1.n9) (151) I am reading Time and the Western Man with ever growing admiration and envy - what energy! - and I am driven back to my reed-pipe. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1927yeat.x8) (152) Meantime, let us not say all that is just to say of the Mother, when we are speaking of the Daughter. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1964berg.f9) (153) “And the boiler,” says Mr Corker. “Yes?” says Alec. “I came and lit it two Sundays ago, just to see. You want to get everything prepared first when you’re making a move, that’s the secret.” (archerii\195099.bre\1964berg.f9) Examples (150) and (151) provide quite typical cases of present progressives not matching the ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ definition in that they refer to a time span that encompasses the present moment but in a more vague way than something that could serve as a probable answer to ‘What’s happening right now?’ would. That is, the situation of [drivers in East Anglia follow suit] just like the situation [I read Time and the Western Man] is one that is viewed as dynamically in progress (it has begun before TT, it will go on after TT, and TT encompasses the TU), but nothing implies that ‘right now’ any activity is ongoing. In regard to example (151) it is in fact absolutely clear that the subject is not engaged in reading at TU, because he is at that moment busy writing a letter. Examples (152) and (153) represent a somewhat more special case showing that progressives are occasionally used even when the overall function of the proposition is to give a general rule or state a general truth. The present progressives do not refer to something actually ongoing at the TU but are used to state that whenever a situation of type A is ongoing, a situation B should obtain. We can thus conclude here that the definition of the progressive construction as a marker of progressive aspect captures its main aspectual function in PDE best and that time-frame or ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ uses only denote certain subtypes of this function. Diachronically, we see that these subtypes used to be responsible for a greater proportion of occurrences. This result allows the assumption that time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ represent prototypical contexts of progressive markers, from which the construction spreads to less

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

179

typical contexts in the process of grammaticalization which is characterized by context expansion. From a typological perspective, this view receives support from the fact that less grammaticalized, less extended progressives, such as the German type Ich bin am Arbeiten, occur typically in time-frame and ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ contexts (cf. Dahl 1985/1987). Concerning the data from ARCHER, one should, however, also remark that, since ARCHER consists only of written data, the subtypes may be less strongly represented than if spoken data had been taken into account as well. ‘Aktuelles Präsens’, at least, may be presumed to be considerably more common in spoken use, e.g. in everyday conversation. This assumption is supported by the fact that the occurrence of instances classified as ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ in the ARCHER data is particularly frequent in drama: 108 out of the total of 311 occurrences of this type of use are found in this genre. 7.1.4

Derived aspectual meanings

The following types of use will be discussed in the present section: firstly, the use of the unmodified progressive to refer to the ‘near future’ will be considered. Secondly, specific meanings of the progressive in combination with other verbal constructions will be dealt with, starting with the combination perfect + progressive, then coming to will/shall (in future use) + progressive, which in turn leads to a discussion of modal + progressive. The uses with modals have not been analyzed as exhibiting a meaning derived from the aspectual meaning but as representing the aspectual meaning proper. However, since they exhibit similarities to the combination of future will/shall + progressive, they are dealt with in this context. ‘Near future’ can be assumed to be closely related to the progressive aspectual function, since the ‘near future’ use of the progressive often denotes a situation which is firmly planned and may already be envisaged as in progress, as e.g. preparatory activities are already ongoing. Leech et al. (2009: 133) speak of “a metonymic extension of the basic meaning of the progressive”. In a number of cases it is difficult to be absolutely certain whether a situation is envisaged as just begun or just about to begin, even taking into account considerable context (cf. also Mair & Hundt 1995a: 116-118; Leech et al. 2009: 132f.).151 An example is 151

Mair and Hundt (1995a: 116-118) are very skeptical of the possibility of distinguishing uses that indicate that preparatory activities are already in progress from those uses which indicate that an activity is merely planned, particularly in those cases where no temporal adverbial that explicitly anchors the situation in the future is present. They conclude that it is “impossible to come up with conclusive statistical evidence” concerning the diachronic development of the progressive with future reference. The approach taken in the present work has been to count all instances which denote a situation that at TT has not yet begun as such as this specific type of derived aspectual meaning. In (154) for instance, the situation referred to by the progressive may, more vaguely speaking, already be understood as being realized, since

180

The Progressive in Modern English

provided in (154), where the subject has not yet left, but the event of leaving is firmly planned so as to be understood as already in progress, in a way: (154) You doubtless remember Charles –with whom I have lived these eighteen years in the most unreserved intimacy. He has been governor at Cape Coast, where he acquitted himself nobly, and is going back to the same place in the same character. (archer\1750-99.bre\1759smlt.x3) Considering the meaning of the combination perfect + progressive, one can see a connection to the aspectual meaning the progressive predominantly has, but it remains rather unspecific. There are a number of possible effects that the combination can have, such as the expression of absence of result, focus on the activity as such (rather than on the result), focus on concomitant effects, or focus on duration (cf. König 1995: 162f.). These meanings should be understood as being pragmatically rather than semantically determined. The different meanings can be derived from the combination of the meanings of progressive and perfect, but the context only can offer clues about the actuation of one of the possible meanings.152 Two clear examples are provided below: (155) He wishes to honour you and to save your energies. You have been talking all night, and you must save your voice. After all, you will have to speak to us all to-morrow - when the King has come… (archerii\190049.bre\1943haml.d8) (156) Then the two sledge-hammermen on the Orologio, which are such a delight to tourists, begin their labour. One is always just two minutes behind the other. I believe they have been hammering that bell since sometime about 1497, the vecchio and the giovane. (archerii\190049.bre\1923bere.j8) In both (155) and (156), we can see that the progressive underlines the long duration of the situation, further stressed by the use of the adverbial. This type of combination can be seen as fairly typical. As we have noted in 6.5, durational adverbials commonly co-occur with perfect progressives. Furthermore, concomitant effects of the situation referred to with the help of the perfect

152

preparatory steps are being taken. However, in the more restricted view on which classification was based, the situation denoted by the predicate [go back to the same place] has not yet begun at TT but is merely planned. Understanding these meanings as pragmatically determined is preferred here, since attempts to analyze the perfect progressive in a strict formal semantic framework do not seem to account for all characteristics of actual use (cf. 3.1.1.3, where the proposal by Klein (1994) and the criticism provided by Lucko (1995) are discussed).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

181

progressives are alluded to in (155): the situation of talking all night may have an effect on the voice of the subject. The contrast between the idea of ‘concomitant effects’, connected to the perfect progressive combination, and the notion of ‘result’ can also be illustrated with the help of example (155): while the perfect progressive implies that talking all night has the potential to lead to undesired effects on the voice of the subject, the simple perfect in the example refers to a situation in which the desired result of a particular activity is achieved, i.e. the king has come. [Come] as a typical accomplishment predicate can be seen as consisting of a preceding activity and a result implying a change of state. To be in a state of having arrived is the desired result of the preceding activity. In such cases, a clear contrast between simple perfect and perfect progressive can be established, in that it would be impossible to use the perfect progressive to refer to a state of affairs in which a certain result has been achieved. Nor is it possible to use a simple perfect to refer to the fact that a certain event was ongoing for a certain time leading up to TT (e.g. You have talked all night would lead to the odd impression that through this activity a certain preconceived result has been achieved).153 In example (156), an additional factor would seem to play an important role, and that is the unboundedness of the situation: while in (155), a situation is referred to that is not supposed to continue after TU, in (156) the situation is evidently envisaged to continue, i.e. the final endpoint is not included in TT, which makes use of the progressive appropriate. One should, however, note that there are also instances where the difference between simple and progressive in the perfect is considerably less clear, as in the following example: (157) The NAO, the investigative arm of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is Parliament’s public spending watchdog has been examining the use of staff by Whitehall. It concluded that the Home Office, which runs the Passport Office, had a questionable record in planning its use of manpower. It noted that in contrast to other parts of the government 153

The notion of “concomitant effects or partly conditioned outcomes” is particularly stressed by Bégin (1996: 46), who presents this as the primary meaning of the perfect progressive. He comes to the conclusion that “it is neither an idea of emphasis on the activity nor one of activity continuing into its results that is foremost in the speaker’s mind when he uses the Perfect Progressive in cases where the activity is over, but rather something that strikes him as having arisen somewhere within the event’s coming-to-bephase, i.e. an outcome conditioned by only part of the event” (Bégin 1996: 49). Bégin (1996) relates this to the idea that the perfect progressive presents the result of a part of a situation, whereas the simple form presents the result of a situation considered as a whole. His view that this is a valid explanation for all occurrences of perfect + progressive is not shared here. If one looks for instance at examples (156) and (157), one can detect no reference to any kind of result of a partial event or any concomitant effect.

182

The Progressive in Modern English machine “productivity in the Passport Department has not increased in recent years”. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1989tim1.n9)

Here, all one can say is that the use of the progressive is probably motivated by a wish to stress the duration of the examination, maybe also to stress the duration of the event that was examined (the failure to increase productivity within the last years). None of the other effects of the combination perfect + progressive (absence of result, concomitant effects, unbounded situation) can be detected. One can see this as a sign of ‘layering’ (Hopper 1991) of older and newer functions, as the progressive in uses such as (157) seems to fulfil similarly vague functions (merely providing a certain stress of the duration of an event) as it did in OE and ME (cf. Kranich 2008b). The meaning of the progressive is also often quite difficult to determine in combination with will and shall to indicate future. Leech assumes that this combination can express the idea of the time-frame in the future, as in (158) below (taken from Leech 1987: 67), or express a more vague idea, described by Leech (1987: 68) as “FUTURE-AS-A-MATTER-OF-COURSE”. (158) Don’t phone me at seven o’clock – I’ll be watching my favourite TV programme. The type of use evidenced in (158) is not found in the ARCHER data. The other meaning postulated by Leech, ‘future as a matter of course’, on the other hand, appears to govern the use of the combination quite generally. Thus, the combination “indicates that a predicted event will happen independently of the will or intention of anyone concerned” (Leech 1987: 68). This can be seen as related to its function of presenting a situation as already in progress: if one says that in the future, the situation will be in progress, this turns the statement more into one referring to a situation that will as a matter of fact arise, than if one says that the situation will occur, which makes the proposition more of a prediction. The modal meaning of will and shall can also occasionally still be visible in combinations with the simple infinitive (e.g. Will you do this for me?) but not with the progressive infinitive (cf. also Leech et al. 2009: 141). Whitaker (1983: 147-150) points out that a number of the uses of the will/shall + progressive future are not appropriately captured by the idea of ‘future as a matter of course’. He notes that the combination is actually used particularly in cases where the addressee “is being invited to share a prospect, where there is implied a marked communion of anticipated experience” (Whitaker 1983: 150). An example presented to illustrate this function is reproduced below: (159) In this Block we are concerned with… We shall be looking at the full range of handicaps… (Brochure for Open University, example from Whitaker 1983: 150)

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

183

One might note that the effect of ‘shared anticipated experience’ stems merely from the fact that an inclusive first person plural pronoun is used (I shall be illustrating the full range of handicaps would, in spite of the progressive use, not have this effect). It is actually not difficult to interpret Whitaker’s example as representing evidence of the ‘future as a matter of course’ meaning: a university course can be expected to follow a preconceived syllabus which (at least theoretically) will be adhered to as a matter of course regardless of the spontaneous desires or decisions of any of the subjects. In ARCHER, all aspectual uses of will/shall + progressive can be analyzed according to this concept proposed by Leech.154 Examples can be found in (160) and (161) below: (160) “We shall be suffering a critical handicap in the election if the trade unions can’t help us on this,” he urged. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1974cast.j9) (161) ‘Will you be going straight back to Valetta Road when the company packs up, Clara?’ (archerii\1950-99.bre\1952whit.f9) Example (160) provides a very clear instance of the concept of ‘natural course of events’, where the future situation referred to by shall + progressive is presented as a natural consequence of the condition related in the if-clause. Example (161) shows how the use of the progressive allows the speaker to mark his question as an enquiry for information about what will happen in the future rather than as enquiry after the speaker’s personal wish or inclination (the way that Will you go straight back…? could be interpreted). In this respect, one can notice a similarity of the combination will/shall + progressive and the combination modal + progressive: just as the progressive makes sure that one possible reading of will is blocked in future contexts such as (161), the progressive blocks the interpretation of a modal as deontic or dynamic, selecting the epistemic function,155 as example (162) illustrates: (162) You’d better not do that again. You must be looking for trouble. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1958john.d9) 154

155

There are 19 uses in ARCHER where will ~ shall be v-ing is not analyzed as belonging to the category of ‘derived aspectual meaning’. Ten of these are subjective uses like the one presented in (199), which is discussed in 7.3.1 (…there’s no girl on earth worth what you’ll be bringing on yourself, if you don’t mind.). In the remaining nine uses, will functions as an epistemic modal, not as a future marker. An example is presented in (165) below. This is true only of the aspectual uses. In the subjective uses of modal + progressive, we find several examples where the modal is used with deontic meaning, such as in example (198) (since they must be leaping, they shall find it is unsafe to venture in my Pasture) discussed in chapter 7.3.1.

184

The Progressive in Modern English

If no progressive was used in (162), the meaning produced would be very odd, as the modal would be interpreted as having deontic function (i.e. You must look for trouble. ‘You are under an obligation to look for trouble.’). While deontic modals generally refer to activities that the subject has to or is allowed to engage in at a moment later than the TT, epistemic modals refer to situations that, if they hold, hold at TT, signaling only that the speaker is not fully convinced that they do. Since the progressive refers to a situation that holds at TT, choosing a progressive brings out the epistemic sense of the modal with which it is combined. In these uses, the meaning of the progressive form is, however, the same as that in most unmodified propositions, i.e. it marks the ongoing nature of the situation. Therefore these instances have not been counted among the ‘derived meanings’; they have simply been counted as instances of the function ‘progressive aspect’. Some further examples may underline the justification of this choice: (163) Extensive and highly dangerous inflammation may be going on with every variety in the pulse. (archer\1800-49.bre\1820aber.m5) (164) I wrote and told him that he must be labouring under some hallucination. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1930toml.f8a) It can be noted that such uses also occur with epistemically used will, as in example (165). These uses have also been analyzed as representing progressive aspect rather than a meaning derived from the aspectual function: (165) I really must be getting along. Headmaster will be wondering what’s happening to me. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1975gray.d9) In all of these examples, a situation is referred to whose aspectual make-up is progressive (if in fact it is true that it holds). The modal expresses the speaker’s doubt as to the truth of the proposition. Thus (163) may be paraphrased as: ‘it is possible that inflammation is going on’, (164) may be paraphrased as ‘on all evidence, he is labouring under some hallucination’, and (165) as ‘it is likely that the headmaster is wondering (right now) what’s happening to me’. So the meaning ‘progressive aspect’ is present, not only a certain pragmatic effect that can be derived from this meaning, as in the combinations with perfect and with will/shall in their use for pure future reference. Concerning the use with modals, we may come back to Smitterberg’s (2005) hypotheses about the decreasing use of the progressive with modals in the 19th century. He brings up three hypotheses to explain this result: firstly that modals generally decrease, secondly that the progressive itself developed modal meanings, and thirdly that the progressive became more restricted in its combinatory possibility with modals. The second hypothesis is disproved by the present results, since the use of modal + progressive is very different from the use of the progressive with subjective meanings, which is, rather confusingly,

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

185

sometimes referred to as ‘modal progressive’ (e.g. Wright 1994). But while the subjective progressive serves as an expression of speaker attitude or of emphasis, in the combination modal + progressive, the progressive marks the unbounded and dynamic nature of the event and the modal expresses the degree of commitment to the truth of the proposition. There is absolutely no indication that a progressive on its own can fulfill this sort of function. Concerning the third hypothesis postulating a narrowing of the use of modal + progressive, one can say that the combination of modal + aspectual progressive is used only with the kind of meaning discussed here, and this is the case throughout the time span considered, without any indication of diachronic change. However, the use of the progressive with deontic modals is possible when the progressive is used with subjective function, so Smitterberg’s findings in fact may reflect a decrease in the use of a certain type of subjective use (cf. 7.3.1). Another possibility is, of course, that the first hypothesis is the correct one, but this can unfortunately not be tested here.156 Let us now consider the distribution of the different types of uses which have been classified as derived aspectual meanings:

156

Some support for this hypothesis can be found in Mair’s (2006: 100-108) results on the 20th century development, which show that the use of the modals must and shall at least is decreasing. This may well be a process that was already on its way in the earlier parts of the LModE period. Krug’s (2003) study may be understood as pointing in a similar direction, as he shows that the ‘emergent modals’ (such as have to, have got to ~ gotta) are on the rise in the LModE period, so that one might presume that, as the competition increases, some of the more established modals are decreasing in frequency. On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that the emergent modals seem to be generally used in deontic function, as Mair’s (2006: 105, table 4.13.) results indicate, so that they should not have a considerable effect on the use of the core modals in combination with the progressive, where normally only epistemic uses of the modals occur (at least in the much more common aspectual use of the combination).

The Progressive in Modern English

186

Table 23: Derived aspectual meanings in ARCHER-2 17/1 --

17/2 6

18/1 7

18/2 17

19/1 22

19/2 31

20/1 39

20/2 37

TOTAL 159

Future will/shall + progressive effects

--

1

--

--

1

2

5

22

31

Progressive as expression of near future TOTAL

--

3

5

3

4

25

42

56

138

--

10

12

20

27

58

86

115

328

Perfect + progressive effects

We can see that the majority of the derived uses are due to combinations with the perfect. Uses of will/shall + progressive, while being overall quite infrequent in the data, show a rise in the last half-century. This is in accordance with results by Leech et al. (2009: 139), who describe a significant increase in British English for this type of combination between the 1960s and 1990s. The idea that the progressive as an expression of near future is to some extent responsible for the general increase (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 116-118) has already been taken up by Nesselhauf (2007), whose results confirm the assumption. Leech et al. (2009: 133), on the other hand, presume its impact on the overall rise in frequency of the progressive to be small. This may be considered true, since the instances are not all that numerous. Nevertheless, as the ARCHER data show, this type of use has been on the rise since the second half of the 19th century. Comparing the second half of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century, one notes that it has more than doubled. More precisely it shows a rise of + 108%, while overall the increase in frequency of the progressive has gone from 496 to 783, constituting a rise of + 78%. From this result, it can be concluded that the increasing use of the progressive with near future reference has had its share in the general rise of the construction in recent times.157 157

This could reflect either the tendency that this use of the progressive has become more common in the language in general, or the general tendency in the recent development of English genres to increasingly use ‘oral’ features in writing (cf. Biber & Finegan 1989, 1992, 1997, Mair 2006). As the expression of future with the help of the progressive can be considered a feature more typical of oral than of written language use, as has been shown in a corpus study by Römer (2005), the rise in frequency of this use in the ARCHER data may also be explained as a spread of constructions originally associated with spoken language use into written registers (cf. also Nesselhauf 2007).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English 7.1.5

187

A short reconsideration of the ‘imperfective paradox’

In our discussion of the imperfective paradox, the approach presented by Michaelis (2004) was understood as an appropriate solution to the imperfective paradox: the progressive is understood as a construction that makes reference to activities so that other situation types are ‘shifted’ into the activity situation type when occurring in this construction. In the case of accomplishments, only the activity part of the situation referred to is asserted by the progressive. This hardly requires a large conceptual leap, since accomplishments contain both an activity and a result phase. Through ‘permutation’, the progressive selects only the former component (cf. 3.1.3). Such cases are common in the data: as we have seen in 6.7, accomplishments represent a considerable quantity of progressive instances with overall 868 occurrences (out of 2662 progressives total). They are only surpassed by the situation type activity with 1541 occurrences. In the case of achievements, Michaelis (2004) assumes the process is somewhat different, since achievements per se do not contain an activity component, but only the meaning ‘transition’ from one state to another. These must therefore first be shifted to accomplishments (they are viewed with duration and thus include the activity leading up to the change of state), and then the activity part is selected. The greater cognitive complexity of such a process may be responsible for the scarcity of achievements in the progressive; as we have seen, only 22 out of the 2662 progressives in ARCHER belong to this type. Michaelis (2004) has given a successful construction grammar-based account of the interaction of situation type and grammatical aspect in these cases, but data-based insights can fruitfully complement her presentation. Using an example of the kind typically discussed in the literature dealing with the imperfective paradox (She was drawing a circle, but then she drew a square), she states: Since this activity can be identified with the preparatory activity that circle drawing entails, circle drawing can be distinguished from square drawing, etc., within the narrow window afforded by a progressive assertion. (Michaelis 2004: 38) On the basis of the analysis of the ARCHER-data, we should note that made-up examples of this type, although obviously grammatical, do not mirror actual language use. In the data, the relation between the activity described and the accomplishment lexical root is much more obvious. Normally reference is made to a kind of activity which is very easy to recognize as being part of a particular accomplishment type. The implied resultant state of the accomplishment is rarely as precisely defined as the existence of a circle drawing. The following examples may demonstrate this:

188

The Progressive in Modern English

(166) The Duke of Holstein is preparing for his Journey to Petersburg (archer\1700-49.bre\1723dai1.n2) (167) Where’s my countess? - Lady A: Not up yet, look! Or stay, she is making Bichon’s toilette. (archer\1800-49.bre\1844bouc.d5) (168) All the while he was being baptised he was making Turk’s eyes at a couple of pig-tails. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1920firb.d8) (169) Dusk was falling as I stopped the car (archerii\1950-99.bre\1975huxl.j9) Examples (166) to (169) are similar in that the ongoing activity is very easy to link to the accomplishment situation to which it belongs. With regard to (166), (167) and (169), one may further note that the coming into existence of the resultant states of the activities is rather vaguely defined, e.g. it is difficult to say at which precise moment one has reached the end-state of preparing for a journey, or at which precise moment dusk has fallen etc.. The progressive seems to be much more typical in such instances than with accomplishment predicates whose resultant state component refers to a clear-cut change of state, such as the coming into existence of a new material entity. Exceptions certainly exist, however, as the following examples show: (170) Nixt to it be Trinity Colledge. It hath 2 courtes: the inner is a new building. Not far from this are they building the stately Theater. Nixt day I went to the Physick Garden (archerii\1650-99.bre\1667laud.j1) (171) I am just now constructing a photometer about two feet in diameter, and two or three inches deep, with which I hope to appreciate the effect of heat in the feeble rays of the moon. (archer\1800-49.bre\1825pond.s5) (172) “Yes, I was making an entry. And with your permission I will complete it”. Knight then stood still and wrote. (archer\1850-99.bre\1873hard.f6) Such instances are not numerous; searching for instances of the progressive of build, make, and prepare in the data yielded the result that the majority of references were made to situations where no concrete object was built, made, or prepared, as in examples (166) and (167). This means that the type most commonly discussed in the literature on the imperfective paradox, where reference to an accomplishment situation type which has a concrete, tangible product as its final result is made, is very rare in actual language use. In the cases where the predication is of this type, we actually find that it is normally implied that the endpoint will be reached in the future, as in examples (170) to (172). This speaks in favor of viewing the reaching of the final endpoint as the default assumption in such uses of the progressive, as proposed by Asher (1992).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

189

These findings support Michaelis’ (2004) analysis, since a construction that makes reference only to the activity component of an accomplishment situation can be assumed to be chosen typically in those cases where it is the activity that plays the crucial role, not the result. Concrete envisaged outcomes such as the existence of a new object (as in She was drawing a circle) are thus not common overall among progressives of accomplishments. When they occur, however, they seem to typically refer to such accomplishments whose result is presumed to be reached in the future and not to situations such as those discussed most commonly in the formal semantics tradition where the final result is not reached. So questions of the type ‘when exactly can She is drawing a circle be truthfully uttered’ and ‘throughout which period would She is drawing a circle, but then drew a square be true?’ are of interest to the student of logic rather than the student of language use. 7.2

The progressive and the nature of the situation

Four main concepts or concept pairs have been introduced repeatedly in the discussion of the meaning of the PDE progressive concerning the nature of the situation the construction refers to: (unlimited and limited) duration, dynamism/stativity, agentivity, and overt/covert nature of situations (cf. 3.2). The findings presented in chapter 6 concerning the distribution of progressives across linguistic contexts can furnish insights relevant for the discussion of these factors. Additional analyses of the ARCHER material will supplement them, so that we can gain a more complete picture of the relevance of the properties of situations referred to using the progressive. 7.2.1

Duration

We saw that the progressive occurs in the data with different types of adverbials, some of which indicate limited, while others indicate unlimited duration (cf. 6.5). Concerning the two factors duration and the dynamism-stativity dichotomy, we noted that the progressive is most common with those two situation types which are characterized as durative and dynamic, i.e. activities and accomplishments. With non-durative predicates, on the other hand, the progressive is extremely rare (in the case of achievements) or completely absent from the data (regarding semelfactives). This points to the fact that it is hard for speakers to envisage basic situation type radicals which lack duration, such as [Mary notice a spot] and [Mary cough once], in a way that makes them readily combinable with the progressive, which, as Michaelis (2004) has convincingly argued, requires an activity situation as input. No diachronic change is apparent in this regard. Brunner (1962: 377) notes that EModE progressives generally refer to durative situations. On the basis of the ARCHER data, we can say that this is true of progressives throughout the modern period up to the present day. Elsness (1994) and Núñez Pertejo (2004a) make a contrast between EModE and PDE use by underlining the “more general durative meaning” (Elsness 1994: 19) of the

190

The Progressive in Modern English

progressive in EModE. It seems, however, that the progressive does not in fact have duration as its meaning either in EModE or in ModE in general but rather that as an (emerging) aspectual marker it is preferred with durative situations, since only they can be viewed imperfectively or as in progress. An interesting point is that the progressive seems to occur with predicates denoting unlimited duration much more commonly in OE, ME, and apparently also in EModE, whereas in PDE it is mostly associated with limited duration. Núñez Pertejo (2007b: 2) makes the cautious suggestion that in LModE, the progressive is already associated with limited duration. As she does not present a detailed semantic classification of her examples,158 one is led to assume that this conclusion is merely impressionistic. Analyzing the reference to limited or unlimited duration in the aspectual uses of the progressive in ARCHER, we can see that the association with limited duration is strong, though not absolute. The examples we have found of aspectually used progressives combined with ALWAYS are evidence that the form occasionally refers to dynamic situations whose duration is envisaged as enduring for a very long time.159 Concerning the aspectual uses of the progressive form for stative situations, where its use can be classified as ‘general imperfective’, we saw that these are not very numerous overall in the data (cf. table 20). These uses will be studied in more detail with regard to the duration of the events referred to, since, if we do find progressives with reference to situations of unlimited duration which are not explicitly marked as such by the use of an adverbial, we should expect to find them among the instances classified as ‘general imperfective’. The results of this analysis show, however, that the aspectual progressive with reference to stative situations is mostly used for situations of limited durations:

158

159

Núñez Pertejo (2007b: 1) actually notes that “[m]eaning, or semantics, is not the type of feature that can be analysed quantitatively”, although, surely, the classification of different meanings of a form and the presentation of quantitative results of this classification are by no means uncommon practices in corpus linguistics. An example of aspectual progressive + ALWAYS could be seen in (102) The pith index and the whole of the surrounding bodies are incessantly exchanging heat-rays.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

191

Table 24: Progressives with general imperfective meaning in reference to situations of limited and unlimited duration in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

Reference to -unlimited duration

2

1

--

3

3

10

2

21

Reference to -limited duration TOTAL -General imperfective aspect

2

1

6

23

47

44

70

193

4

2

6

26

50

54

72

214

Apparently the tentative conclusion arrived at in 3.2.1, that the progressive form has an association with limited duration in PDE, can be confirmed on the grounds of the analysis of ARCHER for the whole of the modern period. A growing extension to contexts of unlimited duration cannot be documented on the basis of the ARCHER data, although they do show a certain peak in the earlier half of the 20th century (with 10 occurrences). The small numbers make it difficult to establish a clear diachronic trend. The fact that the use with reference to unlimited duration accounts for half of all general imperfective uses prior to 1750 and only for relatively small percentages of the general imperfective uses in the halfcenturies after 1750 could, however, be a sign of grammaticalization: as the function of the progressive form as marker of progressive aspect crystallizes more and more, its use for situations of unlimited duration becomes less and less often acceptable. Of course, due to the limitations of the data, this can only be a tentative suggestion. While it is plausible that both general imperfective and progressive markers are associated with situations that are [+ durative] (since a situation has to have a certain temporal extension to be viewed without its endpoints), the association with situations of limited durations might be understood as naturally related to the function of a progressive marker: since situations that are dynamic require an input of energy, they are not normally ongoing throughout an unlimited stretch of time (cf. 3.2.1.2). This view is confirmed by the results that have been presented here in table 24. These also reinforce the conclusion arrived at in 7.1.2 that the progressive does not show clear signs of being on its way to becoming a general imperfective marker. 7.2.2

Stativity and dynamism

As pointed out in 3.2.2, the idea that the progressive functions as stativizer was not accepted on the basis of logical argumentation. The hypothesis that the

192

The Progressive in Modern English

progressive functions as dynamizing construction when used with statives appeared intuitively more plausible, since the function ‘progressive aspect’, which has emerged as the most common function of the construction, contains the elements [+ dynamic] and [+ unbounded]. We have seen, however, that not all examples of stative progressives actually show this effect. In general, stative situation types, i.e. states and stance, do not occur very commonly in the progressive, as we saw in 6.7. They are never completely absent from the data, however, and they do show a certain increase from the second half of the 19th century on. The effect of the progressive on stative predicates can indeed be understood as dynamizing in some instances, as in example (173) below; however, most uses show no such effect (as example (174)): (173) The Independent Labour party are having a lot of internal trouble, and there is reason to expect a split in their ranks before the close of the year. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1907pall.n8) (174) Sorrell had been making entries in a ledger. He was wearing a blue serge suit. A box of cigarettes lay on the desk, and he put down his pen, and lighting a cigarette, leaned back in his chair. (archerii\190049.bre\1926deep.f8a) The use in (173) can indeed be interpreted as giving a dynamic feature to the expression, since the representation of the situation bears an association with activities conducted by agents. The use represented in (174) is, however, more typical overall. There the progressive is used with a stative predicate not to add a truly dynamic component to the meaning but rather to underline that this state holds at TT but probably does not hold for a considerable duration of time before and after it (cf. Joos 1964). In other words, the progressive is used to refer to a state of limited duration, which can be related to the more typical use of the construction in dynamic contexts, as these can be expected to be most often temporary. The results on situation type presented in 6.7 were based on all progressives in ARCHER, without a distinction between aspectual and subjective uses. In the present section we will endeavor to find out what impact the subjective uses have on the rise of the progressive used with ‘states’ observable in the late 20th century. The situation type ‘state’ is the only one of the two stative situation types that shows this rise; the frequencies of ‘stance’ remain more or less the same. This may lead one to suspect that subjective meanings play a role, since the situation type ‘stance’, as expected, does not occur in subjective uses, while the situation type ‘state’ can be found in progressives with subjective meaning. The following instances may serve as examples: (175) d’ye hear, ask Mr. Cobblecase to come and dine here, he’s a Batchelor. -You should always be thinking of Peggy. (archerii\165099.bre\1697pix.d1)

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

193

(176) And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. (archer\1850-99.bre\1895shaw.d6) (177) …Yes, I’m a plop, Hench. Whom one can now define, after so many years ploppity lived, as a chap who goes straight from masturbation to matrimony to monogamy. SIMON. Oh, now there I think you’re underestimating yourself. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1975gray.d9) These instances show use of stative situation types with the three subjective meanings distinguished in the present study, example (175) showing the subjective use with ALWAYS, example (176) representing the use without such an adverbial and example (177) containing an interpretative progressive. If we look at the distribution of the functions of progressives referring to states across time, the following results are obtained: Table 25: The functions of stative progressives in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

3

2

8

12

30

37

67

159

--

1

2

1

2

8

6

11

31

--

4

4

9

14

38

43

88

190

Aspectual uses of progressives of the situation type ‘State’ Subjective progressives of the situation type ‘State’ ‘State’ uses TOTAL

This table indicates that progressives used with the situation type ‘state’ have a somewhat elevated proportion of subjective uses over progressives on the whole: considering the data of the whole period, 16% of progressives used with states have subjective meanings compared to 12% of all progressives (cf. table 19). The small rise in the use of progressives with ‘states’ observable in the late 20th century goes back, however, to aspectual uses rather than to the overall increase (visible in table 19) of the subjective uses. Of the 88 uses in the period 1950-1999, all but eleven instances are aspectual. That means the recent spread of stative uses of the progressive goes back to an extension of established aspectual uses of the progressive with predicates indicating states of limited duration like wait, wear etc. (cf. 7.1.2). 7.2.3

Agentivity

There is a certain association of the progressive with agentivity, but it is not absolute, as we saw in 6.6. Hundt (2004b), basing her observations on data from

The Progressive in Modern English

194

the 18th and 19th century, reaches the conclusion that non-agentive subjects and inanimate subjects become more and more common with the progressive, as indeed they do up to the end of the 19th century. Their absolute numbers basically stabilize from then on, however, so that their relative proportion decreases in the 20th century. What we can gather from this is that the 20th century increase in the use of the progressive must be almost exclusively due to a more frequent use of the form with agentive and/or animate subjects. If we consider the functions of the progressive, such a connection does not come as a surprise. As we have seen, the majority of aspectual uses of the construction refer to dynamic situations, i.e. the construction in these cases expresses progressive aspect. Dynamic situations require an input of energy by definition, and most commonly, it is entities that are [+ animate] and [+ agentive] which supply this input of energy. One of these typical instances is presented below: (178) Shephard was walking away, but Penelope did not welcome them. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1958lamm.f9) Subjects that combine the features [- animate] and [+ agentive] occur in metaphorical uses, as Hundt (2004b: 50) has pointed out, such as in the following example: (179) Typhus fever had now set in, and was filling the land with fearful and unexampled desolation. Famine, in all cases the source and origin of contagion, had done, and was still doing, its work. (archer\180049.bre\1847carl.f5) Such metaphorical uses are, however, not very common; only 49 out of all 2528 active progressives in the data fall into this category.160 Subjects that are both [animate] and [- agentive] are in fact more common, with 343 occurrences in active sentences. These generally represent dynamic ongoings where a situation is happening without any agentive control, such as weather-related phenomena (as in examples (180) and (181)) or other mere occurrences outside of human control (as in example (182)): (180) It was then 11.15; and, as it was beginning to rain slightly, the equestrians from the Bois de Boulogne were returning in masses (archer\185099.bre\1861elio.f6) (181) The sign is swinging 99.bre\1964berg.f9) 160

slightly

in

the

wind.

(archerii\1950-

Again, only active uses are considered here, as in 6.6, because in passivals and passives, the subject is obviously not an agent but a patient.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

195

(182) The doctor suspecting from the account the patient gave of his disease, and from the appearance of this tumor, that an abscess was forming in the stomach, ordered him a milk diet… (archer\1700-49.bre\1735jami.m2) Situations in which animate but non-agentive subjects are used generally refer either to activity outside of the control of the subject (as in example (183)) or to stative situations (as in example (184)): (183) Knight then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut in her wrist (archer\1850-99.bre\1873hard.f6) (184) Mr. J […] has some time had symptoms of angina pectoris. He is looking extremely pale. (archer\1800-49.bre\1820sand.m5) From the survey of the uses of the aspectual progressive with the different subject types, we may assume that progressive aspect markers in general will typically occur in agentive contexts because a majority of dynamic situations that speakers talk about can be assumed to be situations which involve directed and controlled doings of (most commonly) animate subjects. As the progressive spreads from the more typical contexts to less typical contexts in the process of grammaticalization, its use with inanimate and non-agentive subjects increases somewhat in the 19th century. It then stabilizes – one may assume because the majority of dynamic situations worth communicating simply involve agents. This is confirmed by the quantitative analysis of the aspectual uses of the progressive only: Table 26: Aspectual progressives and subject types in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

[+ Agentive] [+ Animate]

65 (73%)

202 (74%)

421 (63%)

852 (72%)

1540 (69%)

[- Agentive] [+ Animate]

7 (8%)

31 (11%)

102 (15%)

152 (13%)

292 (13%)

[+ Agentive] [- Animate]

1 (1%)

7 (3%)

18 (3%)

18 (2%)

44 (2%)

[- Agentive] [- Animate] TOTAL

16 (18%) 89

33 (12%) 273

127 (19%) 668

167 (14%) 1189

343 (15%) 2219

The Progressive in Modern English

196

Figure 14: Relative frequencies of subject types used with aspectual progressives 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

[- Agentive] [- Animate]

[+ Agentive] [- Animate]

[- Agentive] [+ Animate]

[+ Agentive] [+ Animate]

As far as the aspectual use of the progressive is concerned, we see that, although [+ agentive] [+ animate] subjects are the clear majority in all time spans (79% across the whole period), subjects that are [- animate] as well as [- agentive] still make up for 15% of the uses, with 343 out of a total of 2219 active aspectual progressives. Turning now to the subjective uses of the progressive, we can see that there the connection with agentive and animate subjects is much more striking: 82% are of the [+ agentive] [+ animate] type, and only 12 out of a total of 309 subjective progressives are [- animate] and [- agentive], which translates to only 4%.161

161

With regard to the aspectual progressives, the chi² test indicates that the distribution across subject types is non-random. With regard to the subjective progressives, the chi² test is not applicable.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

197

Table 27: Subjective progressives and subject types in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

[+ Agentive] [+ Animate]

18 (67%)

27 (77%)

56 (80%)

153 (86%)

254 (82%)

[- Agentive] [+ Animate]

6 (22%)

3 (9%)

8 (11%)

21 (12%)

38 (12%)

[+ Agentive] [- Animate]

1 (4%)

--

3 (4%)

1 (1%)

5 (2%)

[- Agentive] [- Animate] TOTAL

2 (7%) 27

5 (19%) 35

3 (4%) 70

2 (1%) 177

12 (4%) 309

Figure 15: Relative frequencies of subject types used with subjective progressives 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

[- Agentive] [- Animate]

[+ Agentive] [- Animate]

[- Agentive] [+ Animate]

[+ Agentive] [+ Animate]

This tendency can be explained through the typical concerns of speakers: generally situations involving human agents produce more emotional responses (such as statements about one’s attitude to them) than situations involving inanimate entities. Often, speakers use subjective progressive either with reference to themselves (typically to explain their own actions using interpretative progressives, as in example (185)) or with reference to the addressee (to interpret activities of the latter, or to criticize them with the help of a subjective progressive + ALWAYS, as in example (186)):

The Progressive in Modern English

198

(185) ELLEAN. Ah, I knew you would only sneer! PAULA: I’m not sneering; I’m speaking the truth. (archer\1850-99.bre\1893pine.d6) (186) Ay, ay, you are always suspecting me, when Heaven knows I am such a poor constant Fool, I never so much as dream of any man but my own dear Fubby (archerii\1650-99.bre\1697pix.d1) In the rare cases that subjective progressives are used with [- animate] [agentive] subjects, these are very specific, highly value-laden types of inanimate, non-agentive entities such as heart, beauty, moral vigour. An example, showing the use in an interpretative progressive, is provided below: (187) We had lost hope. It seemed as if all our moral vigor was dying down, and as if nothing could restore it. (archer\1850-99.bre\18xxdale.h6) The fact that subjective uses are so rare with [- animate] and [- agentive] subjects is responsible for the overall decrease in the proportion of this subject type in the 20th century data. As can be gathered from table 19, subjective progressives are on the rise in the 20th century and represent an increasing relative proportion of instances. Since the very strong tendency of subjective progressives to disfavor inanimate and non-agentive subjects becomes, if anything, stronger over time, an overall decrease of this subject type with the progressive compared to the 19th century can be observed. Ljung’s (1980) hypothesis according to which the progressive with stative predicates shows a particularly close association with agentive subjects (cf. 3.2.3) has to be rejected on the basis of the present investigation, as the following table shows: Table 28: Stative progressives and subject types in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

[+ Agentive] [+ Animate]

--

--

16 (31%)

14 (12%)

30 (16%)

[- Agentive] [+ Animate]

3 (75%)

11 (85%)

34 (65%)

93 (77%)

141 (74%)

[+ Agentive] [- Animate]

--

--

--

1 (1%)

1 (1%)

[- Agentive] [- Animate] TOTAL

1 (25%) 4

2 (15%) 13

2 (4%) 52

13 (11%) 121

18 (9%) 190

Since statives make up for only 190 instances of the progressive in ARCHER, the classification yields rather low absolute numbers. One can nevertheless observe that agentive subjects are in fact rather infrequent with statives. This is not

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

199

surprising, as agentivity seems to bear more of a notional relation to activities and accomplishments, as it involves control of the subject of what is going on. The factor animacy, however, is shown to have a high impact of progressive choice with a stative predicate: 90% of all subjects fulfil this criterion. This result can be linked to the fact that animate subjects are more often in states which have limited duration, and we have seen that in ModE, stative predicates typically only take the progressive when they refer to states of limited duration. 7.2.4

Overt and covert situations

It has been suggested that the progressive in EModE can be explained as marking action as opposed to mere statement of a fact/result (cf. Brunner 1955: 220f., 1962: 377f., Strang 1982: 443). Concerning PDE use, the same dichotomy between action or overt situation (expressed by the progressive) and mere fact/result (expressed by the simple form) has been claimed to play a role in the choice of progressive vs. simple form, e.g. by Bodelsen (1936-1937), Calver (1946), Hatcher (1951), and others (cf. 3.2.4.1). There is, however, a significant difference between Brunner’s and Strang’s view, in that Brunner (1955, 1962) seems to understand PDE use as mainly governed by this criterion as well, whereas Strang proposes the activity-versusfact criterion as decisive for 18th century use only (Strang 1982: 443). She sees evidence for this assumption in the infrequent use of the progressive with inanimate subjects, which, in her corpus, are only slowly gaining ground at the turn of the 19th century (Strang 1982: 443-445), and in the exclusive use of the progressive in her 18th century data with “activity verbs” (Strang 1982: 445). A further argument advanced by Strang (1982: 446) lies in the more common use of the progressive in subordinate clauses in her corpus, which help to contextualize the activity referred to by the progressive. She assumes that these factors lose importance as the progressive becomes more ‘independent’; in the terminology used here, this would presumably translate as ‘more grammaticalized’. We can see that the evidence from a more balanced corpus such as ARCHER presents somewhat different results in all respects (cf. 6.4, 6.6, 6.7). While there is a certain increase in main clause use from the 17th to the 20th century, it is much less drastic than one would expect from Strang’s description. With regard to subject type, we can see that the ‘animacy-activity’ criterion is not, as Strang assumed, only characteristic of 18th century use and later becomes less and less pronounced. In fact, use with animate and agentive subjects as well as with the situation type activity remains strongly favored by the progressive throughout the period studied here. A certain connection of the progressive to the expression of overt actions can be observed in the whole ModE period, as has been stressed before. A construction used for expressing ‘progressive aspect’ denotes situations that are viewed as dynamic and unbounded, and such situations can be considered to have certain typical properties. Ongoing dynamic events can be imagined to be more typically ‘overt’, i.e. observable, than other situations. The criterion ‘overt

200

The Progressive in Modern English

situation’ (or ‘activity as such’ as opposed to ‘statement of fact’) is advanced in comparisons of typical contexts of simple and progressive forms. It is only natural that the progressive appears to be more closely associated with overt situations than the simple form, since the latter is the default form in the language and as such is used not only for actual situations but also for generic statements, characterizations, habits etc., i.e. for all sorts of situations in which no actual activity needs to be ongoing at TT. This is particularly noteworthy in the present, and in fact Hatcher’s (1951/1974) claim, that reference to overt activity is the maxim governing the use of the progressive, was only meant to be valid for the use in the present tense. It can be expected, however, that such a relation between progressive aspect and overt activity is far from absolute, since situations which are not immediately observable can also be in progress, for instance when speakers make reference to processes that go on within them, using so-called private verbs, as in the following examples: (188) This brought into my Mind, what I had formerly read in the Philosophical Transactions, for the Month of October, 1698, of the Scarabeaeus Galeatus Pulsator, found, and describ’d, by Mr. Benjamin Allen. While I was thinking upon the Account there given, I fancied I heard the Beatings somewhat stronger than before, which encourag’d me to search after it; (archer\1700-49.bre\1724fair.s2) (189) I couldn’t hear what they said. Besides, I was beginning to feel sleepy. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1977fras.f9) So while the progressive probably has a clearer association with overt situations than the simple form, it is not the case that dynamic situations viewed without their final boundaries are all overtly observable activities, as examples (188) and (189) illustrate. The progressive construction in its aspectual function can evidently also be used with reference to covert situations. Other scholars have suggested that the progressive actually bears an association with covert situations, as we have seen (cf. 3.2.4). In its radical form, this hypothesis has been brought forward by Bäcklund (1986), who claims that the progressive is unlikely to be used with reference to overt situations in naturally occurring English. On the basis of numerous instances from ARCHER where the progressive clearly refers to overt situations,162 this hypothesis can firmly be rejected. Ljung’s (1980) view that there is a connection between covert situations and one particular use of the progressive, viz. the interpretative progressive, seems immediately much more plausible. And indeed, this specific use of the 162

To cite just two instances again fully, take e.g. (181) The sign is swinging slightly in the wind or (183) Knight then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut in her wrist.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

201

progressive exhibits a very clear association with covert situations, as the following table shows: Table 29: Interpretative progressives and overt/covert situation in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Overt situation or close-fit predicate

3 (75%)

1 (8%)

4 (10%)

11 (8%)

19 (11%)

Covert situation or loose-fit predicate

1 (25%)

11 (92%)

35 (90%)

129 (92%)

176 (90%)

In all centuries, apart from the first one included in ARCHER, interpretative progressives occur in an overwhelming majority of instances with reference to covert situations or with ‘loose-fit predicates’, i.e. with reference to situations that from mere observation are not clearly identifiable for what they are but are in need of interpretation. Examples include [tell the truth], [vow revenge], [search for a flaw]. A great number are actually predicates that refer to a specific type of speech act, with speakers commonly using the progressive to either interpret their own or their interlocutor’s speech act, as in the following use: (190) FROME. Was there anything, in the course of that morning - I mean before the discovery - that caught your attention? COKESON. Ye-es - a woman. THE JUDGE. How is this relevant, Mr. Frome? FROME. I am trying to establish the state of mind in which the prisoner committed this act, my lord. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1910gals.d8) Here we can see how the progressive truly “sums up or interprets”, in Ljung’s (1980: 71) words, the communicative goal of the whole preceding exchange. This is a typical use of the interpretative progressive. It is thus clear how the association of this function with covert situations comes about, since a communicative goal is not immediately observable with the help of the five senses but is often in need of further explanation. The uses in the 17th century are so few that the different distribution in this period should not be made too much of. Still, it is interesting that of the four uses in this time, three are of the overall decidedly less common type with reference to overt situations. One may relate this difference to the fact that the interpretative function had not yet gained independence in the 17th century. We will discuss this in more detail in 7.3.4. It should be noted here that the uses of interpretative progressives with overt situations can be seen to occur generally only in specific contexts, namely when the interpretation is effected via a comparison with a state of affairs that does not actually hold in the reference world but is adduced as

202

The Progressive in Modern English

metaphor for something presented more neutrally before (using the simple form). An example is offered below: (191) Giant Thomabedlamus full of high roaring thoughts, set his bugle to the corner of his mouth, and blew such a blast, as if all the Bulls of Basan had been roaring together; (archerii\1650-99.bre\1661flat.f1) Here we can also say that the progressive gives a more subjective interpretation of what is more neutrally described before using the simple form (blew a blast), but this communicative function is additionally marked by the use of as if, which explicitly introduces the following predication as a comparison. These uses represent the majority of the ‘overt situation’ uses of the interpretative progressive: the predicates refer to overt situations, but these situations are not presented as real. This may indeed have been the origin of the interpretative function (cf. 7.3.4). 7.3

The progressive as expression of speaker attitude and emotion

The use of the progressive as an emotive or expressive device has sometimes been understood as a modern invention. Smith (2004) believes it to be a sign of functional expansion in the 18th century. Wright (1994) is more cautious: while stating that “the modal progressive is almost exclusively associated with Modern English”, she adds that “the historical status of this modal interpretative use of the progressive” is “not clear” (Wright 1994: 470f.). We have seen that subjective uses of the progressive have been evidenced ever since OE, where, as Killie’s (2008) study shows, such uses even had a greater relative share among all progressive uses than in ModE. Subjective uses in EModE have been discussed by Wright (1994), Killie (2004), and Fitzmaurice (2004a), but none of these studies contain a quantitative investigation of the relative frequency of subjective and aspectual uses. They concentrate more on the quest for formal criteria which may serve to distinguish subjective progressives from aspectual progressives. The suitability of such criteria for the distinction of subjective progressives will be the topic first discussed in this chapter (7.3.1). Following this, we will discuss the three different types of subjective progressive also distinguished in the discussion of PDE: subjective progressives with ALWAYS (7.3.2), subjective progressives without ALWAYS (7.3.3), and interpretative progressives (7.3.4). These three types can be differentiated for PDE but not for OE and ME where one can speak rather of a generally emphatic use or a use to underline the ‘remarkableness’ of a situation, as Hübler (1998) put it. It remains to be seen firstly how the distinct types of subjective use have developed within the ModE period and secondly, how the overall relative importance of subjective uses compared to the aspectual uses has changed. The subjective function of the progressive has been included by Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 185) in her list of various meanings observable in her EModE

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

203

data. An example offered by her shows a subjective use of progressive + ALWAYS: (192) He had a faculty of speaking indefatigably upon every subject: but he spoke ungracefully, and did not know that he was ill at raillery, for he was always attempting it. (EModE Period 3: 1640-1710, NN_HIST_BURNETCHA: Sample 1, P1, I, 174, example from Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 184). So, clearly subjective progressives of what we have distinguished as type 1 in PDE exist in EModE, but this is not surprising, since subjective progressives have combined with always-type adverbials since OE. A specialization to negative contexts of this combination is not apparent in earlier stages of the language, neither for OE nor for ME (cf. also Kranich 2007), so that we can suppose this to be a ModE development. The use in (192) represents this type of negative evaluation, but on the basis of the few examples adduced by Núñez Pertejo (2004a), it is not possible to ascertain whether this was already the most common use of the combination in EModE. The details of this development will become clearer on the basis of the study of the ARCHER data. Subjective progressives of type 2 are much more difficult to distinguish from aspectual uses than type 1, since a clearly definable criterion such as the presence of an always-type adverbial not objectively referring to ‘at all times’ is lacking. Formal criteria have been proposed to distinguish subjective progressives in general from aspectual progressives, but we will see that these criteria are problematic. On the basis of formal criteria, discussed below, Núñez Pertejo (2004a) tries to find evidence for this type of use in her data, but she comes to the conclusion that the criteria are not very reliable, since they are also present in apparently aspectual uses. Among her examples, there are, however, also some that furnish evidence of the subjective use without ALWAYS, e.g. the following instance: (193) Sorrow consume thee, thou art still crossing me, And know’st my nature. (EModE Period 2: 1570-1640, XX_COME_MIDDLET: Sample 2, P18, example from Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 185). Interpretative progressives (type 3) can be classified using Ljung’s definition (1980: 70f.), according to which an interpretative progressive “sums up or interprets” a situation either referred to by a simple form or accessible from the given frame of a speech situation. Wright (1994) finds evidence of this type of use in 17th and 18th century letters, as in the following example: (194) I am disputeing againe though you tolde mee my fault soe Plainly, ile give it over (Dorothy Osborne [1652-1654], example from Wright 1994: 471)

The Progressive in Modern English

204

In this use, the speaker gives an interpretation of what kind of communicative activity she has engaged in. As we have seen, this represents a typical context for the use of interpretative progressives. On the basis of previous studies it is possible to see that all three types distinguished in the discussion of PDE subjective progressives can also be found in earlier stages of ModE. The details of their development, in particular those regarding the diachronic change in their frequencies (both absolutely and in relation to the aspectual progressive), are, however, still far from clear. Before we go on to examine the development of the three types of subjective use in detail on the basis of the evidence from ARCHER, it will be necessary to discuss how subjective progressives can be distinguished from aspectual progressives. 7.3.1

The classification of subjective progressives

The notion that subjective uses of the progressive are characterized by a number of lexico-grammatical co-occurrence features has already been brought up by Wright (1994). Wright (1994: 472) proposes that subjective uses of the progressive can be differentiated from other uses on the grounds of the following typical linguistic contexts: i. ii. iii. iv. v.

present tense (no modal or perfect combination) main clause first- or second-person subject lexical verb referring to a cognitive state rather than to activity modification by an always-type adverbial

Wright (1994: 472) bases her choice of criteria on Biber (1988) and Biber and Finegan’s (1989) findings about features that generally tend to occur often in ‘involved’ (as opposed to ‘detached’) speech-production. One should note, however, that these features were meant to characterize whole text types and not to indicate the subjective or objective meaning of a specific form. The criterion of adverbial modification, namely by always-type adverbials, is given special weight; Wright (1994: 478) suggests that “the adverb itself signposts the construction as operating modally”.163 However, as was seen in the general discussion of adverbial modification in 6.5, the co-occurrence with an alwaystype adverbial alone cannot allow the classification of a progressive as subjective, since these adverbials can also co-occur with aspectual progressives. Killie (2004) follows Wright (1994) in identifying the combination with an always-type adverbial as the safest criterion of a subjective use of the progressive. Killie’s (2004: 44) view that “[a] statement to the effect that somebody constantly does 163

Susan Fitzmaurice, formerly Wright, also underlines the importance of these adverbials in her later article on uses of the progressive in the late 17th and early 18th century (Fitzmaurice 2004a: 133). The terms ‘modally’ and ‘modal’ are used by her in the sense of ‘subjective’ or ‘attitudinal’.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

205

(or is doing!) the same things must necessarily be a subjectively coloured statement” does not take into account that there are some activities which one can objectively always be engaged in, such as [decrease/grow], [become better/warmer/more efficient etc.] and similar situations, as the not infrequent occurrence of aspectual progressive + ALWAYS has shown. Taking the presence of the adverbial as a safe starting point, Killie proceeds to analyze the progressives thus retrieved from a corpus of EModE prose (1500-1700), with the main aim of verifying Wright’s (1994) hypothesis concerning the specific linguistic context of the subjective progressive. She finds that, concerning clause type, the majority of her subjective progressives, namely 63%, actually occur in subordinate clauses (Killie 2004: 33, table 1). The tense criterion was also found to be unreliable, since only 31% of the instances counted as subjective by Killie were used in the present tense (Killie 2004: 37, table 2). With regard to grammatical person and type of predication, Wright’s (1994) assumptions were also not confirmed: Killie finds that only 14% of the progressives + ALWAYS in her corpus occur with 1st and 2nd person subjects and only 4% occur with cognitive predicates (Killie 2004: 39, table 3, 41, table 4). Figurative use of the verb, a supposed characteristic of subjective progressives particularly stressed by Fitzmaurice (2004a: 169), is also concluded to be an unreliable criterion by Killie (2004). Her data show that 25 out of 73 uses occur with figurative meanings, which makes up 34% (Killie 2004: 42, table 5). The result that a third of all uses occur with figurative meaning does not allow a clear conclusion as to whether figurative uses are typical of subjective progressives, as Killie (2004: 42) points out, “since we have no clear ideas about the general frequency of metaphorical uses of verbs”. This is also true of the other criteria, which is why the present study will compare the results of aspectual and subjective progressives in ARCHER regarding the presence of the linguistic markers supposedly typical of subjective uses. Smitterberg (2004, 2005) has used a modified version of the formal criteria proposed by Wright (1994) for the distinction of subjective progressives (or as he terms them ‘not-solely-aspectual’ progressives):164

164

The use of the label ‘not-solely-aspectual’ is rather misleading, as has already been pointed out in 3.3, since the progressive in these uses often does not fulfill its aspectual function at all. Sometimes the situation expressed in the predicate containing the progressive is actually perfective, cf. e.g. the presentday example I am not speaking to you, where the situation cannot be viewed as in progress, because if it were, this sentence could never be truthfully uttered (cf. Ljung 1980: 76; one may also note that in German the same fact would normally be expressed with a perfect i.e. Ich habe nicht mit dir gesprochen.) Smitterberg (2005: 239, footnote 28) is not actually unaware of this possibility but assumes that in the majority of cases the progressive form refers to situations in progress, regardless of additional subjective shades of meaning.

206

The Progressive in Modern English

i. Tense: present, no perfect or modal aux. ii. Clause: progressive occurs in a main clause iii. Person: has a first- or second-person subject iv. Situation type: progressive is part of a stative situation (Smitterberg 2005: 221, table 73) If one compares this list of factors with Wright’s (1994: 472) original list, one notes that Smitterberg has excluded the modification by an always-type adverbial. The reason is that Smitterberg classifies these uses as a distinct type, just as it is done in the present work. Furthermore, Smitterberg has taken the criterion ‘stative situation type’ as distinguishing feature, while Wright (1994) noted that subjective progressives occurred with cognitive verbs rather than with activity verbs. Cognitive verbs may often be expected to occur in stative predications, but this is not necessarily always the case.165 Smitterberg (2005: 220) counts all progressives which fulfill at least three of these four criteria as ‘potentially experiential’ or ‘not-solely-aspectual’ uses. Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 184f.) notes that applying Smitterberg’s list of criteria to her data does not yield satisfactory results,166 as many of the progressives which satisfy three or all four of the criteria actually seem to convey aspectual meaning, as the following example shows: (195) I am studying who to get for Godmother Sutable to your Worship, Now I ha’ thought on’t. (EModE Period 3: 1640-1710, XX_COME_MIDDLET: Sample 2, P21, example from Núñez Pertejo 2004a: 185) The use in (195) seems to be motivated by the aspectual view of the situation, referring to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’. This is also true of some examples in ARCHER: (196) Terry had to rush his `redraft’ down to Southampton by train yesterday and it turned out to be almost the same wording which we criticized so strongly at the December joint meeting with the Parliamentary Committee. I am waiting for him to phone me for my comments - in vain. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1974cast.j9) Example (196) fulfills all four criteria used by Smitterberg (2005): it occurs with first person subject, in a main clause, in present tense, and with a stative verb. 165

166

Thus, the instance presented in (188) While I was thinking upon the Account there given, I fancied I heard the Beatings [...], which evidently contains a cognitive verb, has been categorized as representing an activity, since the subject is engaged in a dynamic process (requiring an input of energy) of thinking about an article he has read. Núñez Pertejo (2004a) uses the same list of criteria which are laid out in Smitterberg (2005), referring to an earlier presentation of them by Smitterberg (2000b).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

207

The meaning of the form can, however, be understood to be aspectual: it refers to a situation that holds at TT, which in this present tense use equals TU (at the moment of making the diary entry, the speaker is waiting for the call). While the speaker in (196) also appears to have a certain (negative) attitude toward the situation, this attitude seems to be conveyed lexically (by the addition of the comment in vain) rather than by the use of the progressive. It is not inconceivable to find uses of the progressive form where both meanings of the form may have played a role in its choice, the aspectual and the subjective meaning. The following instance can serve as an example: (197) Today, Sunday, I go to the country, with Brinnin, until Tuesday, when I make my way to Yale University & from there to Harvard, Boston. After that, I’ve got about 10 readings in 20 days. Don’t you worry about me, now. I’m feeling tiptop. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1950thom.x9) The speaker obviously has a positive attitude toward the situation referred to in the progressive. The whole passage is characterized by ‘involved’ as opposed to ‘informational’ (cf. e.g. Biber & Finegan 1989: 491f.) language use: the use of deictic elements (e.g. today, I, until Tuesday) shows that informational explicitness is not deemed necessary, and the explicit communicative goal of the passage is to convince the addressee not to worry about the speaker, hence the passage has an interpersonal function. At the same time, it has to be noted that the progressive refers to a situation that holds at TT, and this fact can be deemed sufficient to motivate the use of the progressive construction. The instance is therefore classified as aspectual. This decision is based on the view that it is not appropriate to assign more than one meaning to the form in a particular instance, as Smitterberg (2005) does.167 If a speaker chooses the form in a specific context to express the aspectual viewpoint taken on the situation, then the same form cannot also convey the emotional involvement of the speaker or subjective attitude towards the situation. How could it be appropriately interpreted by the hearer? In what way would a purely aspectual use be marked as different from a use that is both aspectual and subjective? My impression is that there is no way this could be done, particularly in later periods of ModE when the progressive begins to become obligatory in certain contexts (e.g. for reference to ‘Aktuelles Präsens’). In such contexts, it can no longer be invested with subjective meaning, since in order for a marker to convey a subjective meaning, the speaker has to be free to choose whether or not to use it (Hübler 1998: 15, cf. also 8.2). Concerning example (197), one may remark that the impression of subjective shades of meaning may be attributed to the sentence preceding the progressive and to lexical choice (tiptop) rather than to the use of the progressive. In the present work it has been assumed that the progressive form is chosen either for reference 167

Smitterberg (2005: 239) assumes that “many, if not all, not-solely-aspectual progressives also have aspectual functions”.

208

The Progressive in Modern English

to the aspectual view taken on the situation referred to or for the expression of emphasis/speaker attitude/subjective interpretation.168 We can see, then, that the use of formal criteria will carry the risk of categorizing aspectual progressives as subjective. One must also remark further that the criteria fail to capture a number of uses that, in an analysis based on close reading, one would wish to classify as subjective, as the following examples show: (198) But to my business, these Letters from my Wife, must serve to draw the Woodcocks Bonavent and Squeezewit in, and since they must be leaping, they shall find it is unsafe to venture in my Pasture. (archerii\165099.bre\1693powe.d1 67) (199) The policeman shouted after him: “Take care, my man! there’s no girl on earth worth what you’ll be bringing on yourself, if you don’t mind.” (archer\1800-49.bre\1847gask.f5) (200) there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster having means in his hand to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1908yeat.d8) As one can see, the formal criteria are not fulfilled in these instances. Example (198) fulfills not a single one of the criteria, while (199) fulfills only the person criterion. In (200) the progressive occurs in an infinitive which refers to the present, but this is the only one of the criteria this use matches. Still, it seems fairly obvious that these uses are subjective. What is it that gives this impression? It would seem to be the presence of other markers of the emotional involvement of the speaker, as visible in the lexical choice (evaluative lexis like woodcocks in example (198), involved form of address like my man in example 199), the use of metaphor (in (198): leaping, venture in my pasture), repetition (in (200): great dearth and great scarcity), and exclamation (in (180): Take care, my man!). The 168

This inevitably involves choices that are not always easy to make and may sometimes attract criticism. Hopefully, the criteria chosen to distinguish subjective progressives from aspectual uses are clear enough to reduce the part of subjective interpretation to a minimum, but in this kind of semantic analysis, subjective choices cannot, it seems, be eliminated completely. The criteria which were used in the classification are laid out in detail at the end of the present section, so that the principles on which these choices were based are made transparent, but their application is of course not as straightforward as classification based on such formal categories as clause type or grammatical subject. It still seems a more reliable method than using formal criteria for semantic classification, as should become apparent from the discussion in the rest of this section.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

209

use of a deontic modal with the progressive as in (198) also clearly indicates a subjective meaning, since in its aspectual meaning the progressive generally evokes an epistemic interpretation of a modal with which it combines (cf. 7.1.4). Such clues in the co-text have been taken as a more reliable way of classifying subjective uses, on the basis of the insight that subjective elements have a tendency to cluster: speakers who wish to express a certain attitude toward a proposition generally seem to do so by using more than one linguistic marker. So the presence of other devices available for expressing emotions in close vicinity to the progressive, such as interjections,169 lexical metaphorizations, and connotation-loaded lexemes (cf. also Hübler 1998: 13), has been taken as a good indication of a subjective meaning of the progressive. With regard to subjective progressives without ALWAYS (type 2), the criterion that was used was the presence of emotion-expressing elements of the kind listed by Hübler (1998: 13). Thus, a progressive was classified as subjective type 2 when other subjective elements were present in the context and when a reading of the construction as a marker of an unbounded situation (i.e. as aspectual progressive) did not impose itself.170 With regard to subjective progressives of type 1, the presence of an always-type adverbial was by definition established as a further criterion, and this adverbial had to be understood as being used hyperbolically rather than as neutrally referring to ‘at all times’. Concerning subjective progressives of type 3, the interpretative progressive, the definition by Ljung (1980) already cited in 3.3.3 was taken as a starting point, according to which interpretative progressives are used to “sum up or interpret” a situation either referred to before more neutrally using a simple form or retrievable from the communicative context. The semantic classification of the progressives effected here thus relies fully on co(n)textual information. The problem of using formal criteria for distinguishing subjective from aspectual uses is already addressed in Kranich (2008a), using a small subpart of ARCHER as a testing ground. In that study, all progressives in the time span 1650-1699 classified as subjective on the basis of close reading and the presence of other markers of speaker involvement in the near co-text were tested for the presence of these formal criteria, with the result that the criteria cannot provide trustworthy results.171 The test is carried out in this work on the basis of the whole 169

It is interesting to note that in Shakespeare’s use of the progressive, the form appeared in 36% of all cases after interjections and various kinds of exclamations (Brunner 1955: 221). 170 On the premise that each progressive use fulfils only one function, an instance meeting the criteria for an aspectual reading (i.e. the main function throughout the modern period) was classified as aspectual, even if markers of speaker involvement were present. 171 In the 1650-1699 period, ten out of 19 subjective progressives occurred in the present tense, ten out of 19 occurred in a main clause (not the same ten that occurred in present tense contexts), four out of 19 occurred with a first- or second-person subject, and only two out of 19 were used with a stative

The Progressive in Modern English

210

data, considering all progressives classified as subjective together, since the criteria were meant to be valid for all subjective progressives. To understand the relevance of the distribution of the subjective progressives, the presence of the same criteria in the aspectual uses of the progressive was then verified in a second step. The results can be gathered from the following tables: Table 30: Subjective progressives in ARCHER-2 meeting Smitterberg’s (2005) formal criteria 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Present tense

9 (33%)

16 (46%)

37 (56%)

116 (63%)

178 (57%)

Main clause

13 (48%)

18 (49%)

37 (56%)

125 (68%)

193 (62%)

1st or 2nd person

5 (19%)

17 (49%)

3 (52%)

107 (58%)

163 (52%)

Stative situation type

1 (4%)

3 (9%)

6 (9%)

18 (10%)

28 (9%)

Progressives fulfilling a minimum of 3 out of 4 criteria All progressives manually classified as subjective

1 (4%)

4 (11%)

16 (24%)

66 (36%)

87 (28%)

27 (= 100%)

35 (= 100%)

66 (= 100%)

183 (= 100%)

311 (= 100%)

situation type. None of the 19 progressives fulfilled all four criteria (cf. Kranich 2008a: 248).

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

211

Table 31: Aspectual progressives in ARCHER-2 meeting Smitterberg’s (2005) formal criteria 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Present tense

4 (47%)

112 (39%)

269 (38%)

586 (46%)

1011 (43%)

Main clause

42 (45%)

122 (43%)

390 (55%)

774 (61%)

1328 (56%)

1st or 2nd person

23 (24%)

10 (37%)

188 (27%)

353 (28%)

671 (29%)

Stative situation type

4 (4%)

19 (7%)

65 (9%)

97 (8%)

186 (8%)

Progressives fulfilling a minimum of 3 out of 4 criteria All progressives manually classified as aspectual

4 (4%)

24 (8%)

104 (15%)

187 (15%)

319 (14%)

94 (= 100%)

286 (= 100%)

705 (= 100%)

1267 (= 100%)

2353 (= 100%)

The results show that the formal criteria are not reliable indications. Only 28% of the progressives that were manually categorized as subjective would have been counted as subjective on the basis of the formal criteria. This is not to say that all four criteria are completely inappropriate. One may note that only 14% of all aspectual progressives fulfill three of the four criteria, so that there is a somewhat greater tendency for these criteria to co-occur in a subjective rather than in an aspectual use of the progressive. The criteria do not all emerge as equally suitable or misleading. Regarding tense (if we leave aside the results for the 17th century, based on rather low absolute numbers), there is an indication that subjective progressives do show a tendency of occurring in the present tense, and this tendency becomes more pronounced in the 19th and 20th century. This result lends some support to the view brought forward by Smith (2002) according to which the increase of subjective uses in the 20th century may be responsible for the rise in present tense uses observed between LOB (1961) and FLOB (1991), as subjective uses apparently favor present tense contexts more than aspectual uses do. Concerning the use with grammatical person, we can establish a manifest tendency for first and second person use to be more common when the progressive has a subjective function (disregarding once more the 17th century results, which show a different distribution). 52% of all subjective progressives occur with the first and second person pronouns, while this is true of only 29% of aspectual progressives. Both the higher percentage of present tense uses and the common use with first and second person subjects can be related to the genre distribution of the

212

The Progressive in Modern English

subjective progressive. As we will see in 7.6, the subjective uses of the progressive are found most often in the genres drama and private letters. These genres can be safely assumed to be characterized overall by a higher than average proportion of first- and second-person subjects and by a higher proportion of present tense use. Main clause occurrence, on the other hand, is only slightly more common among the subjective progressives; certainly the difference is not pronounced enough to be a safe indication of the function of a particular occurrence. With respect to uses with stative situation types, the difference between aspectual and subjective progressives is even less pronounced, so that Smitterberg’s conclusion that “progressives in ‘stative’ situations may be more marked and in this respect a stronger indication that the progressive has a not-solely-aspectual function” (Smitterberg 2005: 225) cannot be regarded as valid.172 As far as the criterion situation type is concerned, we have pointed out that in his decision to establish the general label ‘stative situation type’ as criterion, Smitterberg departs noticeably from Wright’s (1994: 472) original suggestion that cognitive and private verbs are particularly common in subjective progressives as well as from her later view that particularly progressives with a metaphorically-used lexical verb are likely to have a subjective meaning (Fitzmaurice 2004a: 234). Among the progressives with stative predicates one finds uses with the stative subtype ‘stance’ (i.e. location in space). It is not surprising that stance uses are not typical among the subjective uses of the progressive. Susan Fitzmaurice (formerly Wright) persists in the use of the criteria concerning tense, clause, and subject type, but she gives up the criterion that a cognitive rather than an activity verb is generally used in subjective progressives. She notes that of the 980 progressives in her corpus, 114 fit all grammatical criteria (present tense, main clause, first- or second-person subject) but that of these, only 14 collocate with mental verbs (Fitzmaurice 2004a: 163). She comes to the conclusion that subjective progressives are in fact distinguished from aspectual uses by their figurative or metaphorical use of the predicate. An example she offers is reproduced in (201): (201) I wish I knew how to Court you into Good-Humour, for Two or Three Quarrells more will dispatch Me quite. If you have any Love for Me believe I am always pursuing our Mutuall Good. (Richard Steele, Letter to his wife, 7 June 1708, example from Fitzmaurice 2004a: 165) 172

Smitterberg bases this conclusion on the fact that among those progressives that fail to meet one of the four criteria, the great majority do not meet the situation type criterion, namely 82% of the 394 progressives counted as “potentially experiential progressives” (Smitterberg 2005: 225). On the basis of the present findings, however, we can see that stative situation type is in fact the least trustworthy of the four formal criteria: the majority of the instances classified as subjective on the basis of a co(n)textual analysis do not meet this criterion.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

213

Fitzmaurice (2004a: 164) states that although the verb refers to an activity, the predicate is obviously construed figuratively as pursue is used with an abstract object, and this underlines the subjective, emphatic use of the construction.173 A figurative use of the lexical verb would certainly appear to support the subjective meaning of the progressive construction, since it would represent the use of another marker of subjectivity. This criterion is captured by the method used in the present work, where the use of metaphor (be it in the progressive predicate itself or in the near cotext) as well as the presence of any other subjective markers nearby was taken as indication that a progressive should be classified as subjective. To conclude, we can state that the use of formal grammatical criteria such as tense, clause, and subject type, is not sufficiently reliable for a quantitative survey aiming to capture all subjective progressives in a given data-set. If one wishes only to extract a certain number of subjectively-used progressives from a tagged corpus, one can resort to a search for present tense progressives with first or second person subjects in main clauses (the stative situation type criterion not being appropriate) and then check those uses manually for other expressions of emotion in the co-text. If one wishes, however, to gain a complete inventory of the subjective progressives, one will have to turn to manual analysis of the data, taking into account a sufficient amount of context. 7.3.2

Subjective progressive with ALWAYS

There have been few studies of subjective progressives with ALWAYS up to now. Killie (2004) and Smitterberg (2005: 210-217) present interesting discussions of it, but they may have both included a certain number of aspectual progressives in their analysis of this type, since they have taken the co-occurrence of the progressive with an always-type adverbial as indication of its subjective, or in Smitterberg’s terms ‘not-solely-aspectual’, function. However, as was shown, the mere presence of an ALWAYS-type adverbial does not permit the firm conclusion that the progressive has a subjective function. We saw that in ARCHER objective uses of progressive + ALWAYS are by no means rare: in the 19th century part of ARCHER, the objective instances represent in fact exactly half of the instances of

173

Girard (2002: 81), speaking only of the interpretative type, stipulates that verbs of speaking are the most typical context for these uses, while mental verbs may also occur. The interpretative uses in the 18th and 19th section in ARCHER have been analyzed with regard to this hypothesis as well as the one brought forward by Fitzmaurice (2004) concerning the occurrence of subjective progressives in general with figurative verbs. The result was that while metaphorically used verbs and verbs of speaking each make up for a considerable proportion of these instances, these two types taken together represent 78% of the interpretative uses in the 18th and 19th century interpretative progressive (Kranich 2009: 348).

214

The Progressive in Modern English

the combination. Smitterberg (2005: 214f.) is not unaware of this possibility,174 but he nevertheless chooses to include all progressives modified by an alwaystype adverbial in his quantitative survey, which shows that overall 4% of progressives in CONCE are, in the terminology used here, subjective progressives of type 1 (Smitterberg 2005: 214, table 71). But these results cannot fully be relied upon. It is necessary to check, by means of a close reading of the examples, whether reference is made to a continuous process which is objectively qualified as going on at all times or whether reference is made to a process which is not objectively ongoing at all times but where the speaker uses the adverb hyperbolically and the progressive serves to underline the expression of speaker attitude. Examples of the objective use have already been provided in the discussion of the use of the progressive with different types of adverbials, (102) is repeated here as (202) for convenience. Example (203) shows a typical use of a subjective progressive with always-type adverbial: (202) The pith index and the whole of the surrounding bodies are incessantly exchanging heat-rays (archer\1850-99.bre\1875croo.s6) 174

He points out that his “selection process identified potential rather than actual not-solely-aspectual progressives” so that particular instances may “simply [...] not carry not-solely-aspectual force” (Smitterberg 2005: 215). Still, he also suggests that one might not read the progressives as carrying subjective force because one is no longer used to encountering subjective expressions in certain genres, such as scientific texts. He points this out in reference to examples of the type we examined in example (108) a matter of general precaution, the necessity for which [...] was constantly being minimised,. Example (108) is from news, not from the genre science, so that in this case, one can hardly say that genre expectations bias the interpretation of a presentday reader, since certainly present-day news texts commonly contain subjective markers. It still seems fairly clear that (108) does not contain a subjective use of the progressive but that the progressive merely expresses an ongoing, dynamic process (which is its basic aspectual function) and that this process can be qualified as ‘always ongoing’ on grounds of the nature of the situation in the real world. Speaker attitude does not play a role. Smitterberg et al. (2000: 112) suggest that this type of progressive + ALWAYS functions as a marker of general emphasis rather than of negative evaluation. This would be true of examples of the type evidenced in example (206), discussed below: Sorrell was for ever warning himself against playing the hen with the duckling (archerii\1900-49.bre\1926deep.f8a). Here the progressive does not refer to a situation that is objectively ongoing at all times. But in the examples adduced by Smitterberg et al. (2000: 112) as presumably denoting general emphasis (e.g. So in the Russian exchanges [...] the most violent fluctuations are constantly occurring, CONCE, Science, Goschen, 1850-1870), the most common meaning of the progressive, the aspectual function, would better be interpreted as motivating its choice.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

215

(203) At Popoff’s in the evening. [...] Glad Pierre was absent, he is always sighing for assistants. (archerii\1900-49.bre\1923bere.j8) The occurrence of subjective progressive + ALWAYS can also be gathered from the table provided in the discussion of adverbial modification of the progressive. We saw that the numbers are not very high, which is why once more the representation of whole rather than half centuries is chosen in the following table: Table 32: Subjective progressives + ALWAYS in ARCHER-2175 Subjective progressive + ALWAYS (percent progressives) All other progressives TOTAL

of

all

17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

8 (7%)

7 (2%)

13 (2%)

19 (1%)

47 (2%)

113 121

314 321

758 770

1432 1450

2622 2662

The difference between the proportion of subjective progressive + ALWAYS in the 19th century in ARCHER and Smitterberg’s results based on CONCE can be explained on the basis of the differing methodologies: since in the close reading analysis used here, a number of instances of progressive + ALWAYS were classified as objective, it is not surprising that Smitterberg’s (2005: 214, table 71) results are higher. Actually, the findings work out quite nicely: in the 19th century instances in ARCHER, only half of the instances of progressive + ALWAYS turned out to be subjective. While, 2% of the progressives in ARCHER are classified as subjective progressives + ALWAYS on this basis, Smitterberg finds that 4% of all progressives in CONCE belong to this type. The number of occurrences of the combination are too low to allow one to assume that generally only half of the 19th century progressive + ALWAYS uses are subjective, but the results match in this case. Smitterberg (2005: 214) notes a trend toward decreasing use of the combination in the latter part of the 19th century but states that it is not statistically significant, “so it is not possible to say whether the results indicate the beginning of a trend or random variation”. On the basis of the present findings, one may say that the relative proportion of this type among all uses of progressives is indeed constantly decreasing. This is, however, not due to the less and less common occurrence of this particular type − in fact, we can see that the absolute numbers are increasing − but rather to the considerable increase in the use of the progressive overall. Since it has often been suggested that the subjective uses of the progressive play an important role in its general increase in the 20th century (cf. Mair & Hundt 1995a, Smith 2002), it is already an interesting result that the overall increase is certainly not due to a significant rise in subjective progressives 175

The chi² test produces the result that the distribution is non-random.

The Progressive in Modern English

216

of this first type, at least not in written texts. The danger that an increasing use of progressive + ALWAYS “might prove to be the germ of destruction in the present system” (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 118)176 is thus not imminent. Unfortunately the absolute numbers of this type are rather low. Still, in view of the fact that the idea that the progressive + ALWAYS combination apparently bears a relation to the expression of negative speaker attitude in PDE (cf. 3.3.1), we will attempt a basic semantic classification of the subjective uses of progressive + ALWAYS, according to whether the construction is used to convey positive speaker attitude (as in (204)), negative speaker attitude (as in (203) above and (205)) or whether it appears to be used for the sake of pure emphasis (as in (206)): (204) … to feel that God’s hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but His fatherly correction; that He is all the time loving us, and supporting us (archer\1800-49.bre\18xxarno.h5) (205) KIT. I have nothing the matter with me; and still he is always saying I must not eat this and I must not eat that. USHER. What a nasty old fellow! KIT. Yes – isn’t he horrid? (archer\1850-99.bre\1899mart.d6) (206) “I can save him − so much,” was the thought at the back of his mind, but it was chastened by that very necessary touch of scepticism. “Was it wise − or possible − to save people from themselves?” Sorrell was for ever warning himself against playing the hen with the duckling. (archerii\190049.bre\1926deep.f8a) These uses are distributed across the four centuries as follows: Table 33: Semantic prosody of subjective progressives with ALWAYS in ARCHER-2 positive attitude

17th c 3

18th c 2

19th c 3

20th c --

TOTAL 8

negative attitude

4

2

7

16

29

mere emphasis

1

3

3

3

10

Total subjective progressive + ALWAYS

8

7

13

19

47

176

Mair and Hundt (1995a: 118) allude here to a remark by Schopf (1974: 26), who states that the PDE aspectual system shows signs of a beginning “Umwandlung und Auflösung” (‘mutation and dissolution’) in the affective use specifically of combinations of progressive + ALWAYS.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

217

The numbers are not very high, but they do seem to indicate that the trend to use the progressive + ALWAYS construction as expression of negative speaker attitude is a 20th century development. One could assume that it is on the way to semanticization177 via the generalization of a specific pragmatic inference; the construction refers to a situation presented as eternally in progress when it is clear to both speaker and hearer that it is not, objectively speaking, always ongoing. The hearer can now choose whether to interpret this use as motivated by the speaker’s wish to provide general emphasis, underline the positive nature of the situation, or to express a negative attitude to it. The tendency to choose the last of these possible interpretations in PDE is obvious from the fact that even when used with verbs that refer to activities generally not regarded as negative, one understands the combination as an expression of negative speaker attitude. We have seen this in respect to the example adapted from Leech (1987: 34) discussed in chapter 3, reproduced below: (207) Paul is always giving people lifts. Giving people lifts is not generally a habit deemed worthy of criticism, but without further context, a negative interpretation is given to (207). One may assume that this default interpretation is based on the tendency that speakers choose to describe an activity as perpetually ongoing, when objectively speaking it is not, most often in those cases where the activity is considered highly annoying, rather than when it is found particularly pleasant. A study of PDE use has lent further support to the view that the subjective progressive + ALWAYS is associated with negative speaker attitude (Kranich 2007). A larger study based on 20th century English might provide further interesting insights in the development of this use, as the growing specialization to negative contexts seems to be a rather recent development. It would be necessary to select a rather large and preferably spoken data set for such a study, since for instance the BROWN-family corpora yield too small a number of occurrences for a detailed analysis (cf. Leech et al. 2009: 134) 7.3.3

Subjective progressive without ALWAYS

Quantitative results for this specific type of subjective progressive in the period under consideration have only been presented by Smitterberg (2005). We have seen that the use of formal criteria cannot be expected to yield reliable results, firstly since the formal criteria may also co-occur in aspectual progressives and secondly because a number of subjective uses will not be captured by such a method. Smitterberg (2005) at least finds a way to avoid the former problem – counting aspectual progressives as subjective only because they happen to satisfy 177

The notion of ‘semanticization’ goes back to Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) general framework of semantic change.

218

The Progressive in Modern English

the formal criteria – by manually checking the instances retrieved on the basis of the formal criteria for expressions of emotion in the cotext, such as evaluative adjectives and exclamations.178 He notes that none of the ‘potentially experiential progressives’ in the genres history or science are used with such expressions and only a small number of the instances in letters, trials, drama, fiction, as well as a single example in debates co-occur with them (Smitterberg 2005: 226f.). The number of progressives which meet both the formal criteria and the cotextual criterion amounts to a total of 73 instances in CONCE, which can safely be assumed to represent subjective progressives. Concerning relative quantity, this is a result comparable to the one gained in the present study: 73 instances equal 3% of all progressives in CONCE, while in ARCHER 2% of all 19th century uses have been analyzed as subjective progressives of type 2. However, one should point out that the progressives in the present work have all been assigned only one meaning. Smitterberg (2005) proceeds differently, allowing for overlap of the three categories of subjective progressives, so that he can have “interpretative progressives that were also potentially experiential progressives or modified by ALWAYS-type adverbials” (Smitterberg 2005: 230). If he had captured all subjective instances, one would expect his category of ‘potentially experiential progressives’ to be larger than the present category, as his category would also include some of the instances which are categorized here as ‘subjective progressive + ALWAYS (type 1)’ or ‘interpretative progressive (type 3)’. In the preceding section, it was shown that the subjective progressive + ALWAYS cannot be understood as furthering the overall increase of progressive use, as its proportion among all progressives actually decreases in the 20th century. Let us now look at the diachronic distribution of subjective progressives of type 2:179

178

The approach followed by Smitterberg (2005) is therefore much more justifiable than Smith’s (2004). Smith takes over Susan Wright’s (1994) criteria uncritically, without checking the cotext in individual examples. She then uses these criteria to deduce the incorrect view that, since the subjective progressives are supposedly characterized by the criteria referred to above, aspectual progressives “tended to collocate with […] third person subjects, activity verbs, past tense, subordinate clauses and temporal adverbials” (Smith 2004: 153). 179 The chi² test produces the result that the distribution is non-random.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

219

Table 34: Subjective progressives without ALWAYS in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Subjective progressive Type 2 (percent of all progressives)

15 (12%)

16 (5%)

18 (2%)

24 (2%)

73 (3%)

All other progressives TOTAL

106 121

305 321

752 770

1426 1450

2619 2662

We can see from table 34 that the subjective progressive without ALWAYS is not responsible for the general increase in the use of the progressive either. In fact, this function of the progressive is relatively more common in the earlier part of the corpus, making up 12% of the instances in the 17th century. Its proportion among all progressives decreases consistently from then on, slipping to 2% both in the 19th and 20th century data. Mair and Hundt have based their assumption that the subjective uses are responsible for the overall rise in frequency partly on the increasing use of the progressive in BrE with the verb hope: [I]n LOB the simple/progressive ratio is 53:3, in FLOB 34:9. In spite of an overall decrease in frequency for this verb, progressive forms have expanded considerably. […] [I]t is at least justifiable to speculate whether a pragmatically determined exceptional use of the progressive − to underscore the tentativeness of the hope or the unlikeliness of its being fulfilled − has become habitualised to the extent that the contextual implicature originally associated with it has begun to fade. (Mair & Hundt 1995a: 119) This increasing occurrence of hope in the progressive may also be reflected in ARCHER, but the numbers are too low to be sure, since ARCHER only contains a total of nine instances using the verb hope, five of which, however, occur in the last half-century contained in the corpus. Yet they are not generally used to convey tentativeness. An absolutely clear example of tentativeness is lacking, although such uses undoubtedly exist. Maybe they are indeed a very recent trend that cannot be reflected in such a large-scale diachronic perspective as the one taken in the present work. An instance which has been classified as subjective progressive (type 2) is presented in (208) below, and it may be understood to present the writer as still entertaining some hope, not having given up on the addressee, so that in this way, use of the progressive also conveys greater politeness than e.g. use of the past perfect simple (use of the simple past would truly sound odd) would have. It is, however, not tentative in the way that e.g. I was hoping you’d come is.

220

The Progressive in Modern English

(208) My dear Henry - I was hoping that by now you were a settled family man and were going to sit down and give us the great fireside books of your later period. You can’t start all over again - I mean the travelling bohemian life - roving and suffering and starving - can you? (archerii\195099.bre\1951durl.x9) The use of the progressive with hope in the following example (209) has in fact been analyzed as representing an aspectual (general imperfective, with reference to a situation of limited duration) use of the progressive, since no subjective shades of meaning seem to be present. (209) He was thinking only of the bargain which they would make on their return from the cock-fights. That was their purpose in bringing Penelope to Bird Island. They had loaded three sacks of sand which were left under the grape tree, and they were hoping that she would agree to buy the sand. Rowley was using her presence as a way of distracting attention from his association with the boys; (archerii\1950-99.bre\1958lamm.f9) Certainly no note of tentativeness can be detected here. Rather, the progressive containing hope is used in a way very similar to the preceding progressive used in the same example, of the verb think, and to the progressive use shortly following the progressive of hope, of the dynamic predicate containing use: all three uses of the progressive indicate that these were situations that were taking place at TT. In the discussion of the PDE progressive (3.3.2), we have seen that Couper-Kuhlen (1995) hypothesizes that the progressive as a marker of ‘foregrounding’ can be characterized as a new use in recent English. Such a use does not occur even once in the ARCHER data. Mair and Hundt (1995b: 252) have also noted that there is not a single instance that can be characterized as this new type of use in the press section of the BROWN-family. One should point out that, just like the present work, Mair and Hundt (1995a, b) have looked exclusively at written data. Couper-Kuhlen (1995) has studied spoken language use, and within spoken language use, she has concentrated on the particular genre of conversational narrative (often termed Alltagserzählung ‘everyday narrative’ in the German literature, cf. Gülich 1980, Stempel 1987, Ehlich 1997). This discourse type is defined as a narrative embedded in an everyday conversational frame. It shows some typical linguistic characteristics, such as e.g. use of the present tense for past time reference, use of direct speech and other devices used to create more ‘immediacy’ (cf. Stempel 1987: 106-109).180 Hence, it is not far180

One may note that the use of such specific linguistic devices is particularly characteristic of a certain type of ‘everyday narrative’, namely the nonfunctional narrative, i.e. a narrative sequence which has the sole aim of entertaining the listener, and not, as the functional narrative, an additional or superseding aim such as giving force to an argument in a discussion (cf. Gülich 1980). On the basis of the short extracts presented by Couper-Kuhlen

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

221

fetched to assume that a particular development may occur in this specific discourse type but not be widely reflected in language use overall. On the present basis, this seems to be the most likely of the possible explanations offered by Couper-Kuhlen (1995) for her findings (cf. 3.3.2). What we can retain from the present section is that the type of subjective use of the progressive discussed in this section shows no evidence of being on the increase in 20th century British English from a longer diachronic perspective, although one cannot be sure whether such recent trends as have emerged from Mair and Hundt’s (1995a) and Smith’s (2002) study can in fact be captured using ARCHER. Concerning association with speaker attitude types, we can see that subjective progressives without ALWAYS are found in all three categories, for positive evaluation (as in example (210)), negative evaluation (as in example (211)), and for mere emphasis (as in example (212)): (210) They are full of suspicion, and require time to gain confidence and belief in anyone’s good intention towards them. Graham, his and J. Ellis’s landlord, is giving leases for ever; has secured his rental by it – gets now 8 to 10 p.c. on his outlay for the property, bought it for L15,000 about 6 yrs. ago; has refused L20,000 for it just lately. Is the only man who has a good tenantry in that district. (archer\1800-49.bre\1849brig.j5) (211) ‘tis a horrid age that we live in, so that an honest man can keep nothing to himself. If you have a good estate, every covetous rogue is longing for it (archerii\1650-99.bre\1680otwa.d1) (212) They were now able to speak to each other and consult. That Louisa must remain where she was, however distressing to her friends to be involving the Harvilles in such trouble, did not admit a doubt. Her removal was impossible. (archer\1800-49.bre\1818aust.f5) Contrary to subjective progressives with ALWAYS, subjective progressives without ALWAYS show no growing association with negative attitude. The following table indicates the distribution across the data:

(1995), one may assume that the narratives in her corpus belong to the nonfunctional type, as they contain the typical elements (e.g. direct speech, use of the present tense to refer to past time events, etc.).

The Progressive in Modern English

222

Table 35: Semantic prosody of subjective progressives without ALWAYS in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Positive attitude

--

3

1

2

6

Negative attitude

11

7

3

6

27

Mere emphasis

4

6

14

16

40

Total subjective progressive + ALWAYS

15

16

18

24

73

With the exception of the 17th century use, where we do in fact see quite a number of negative uses, the most common context for subjective progressives without ALWAYS appears to be the use for emphasis without a clearly positive or negative evaluation. We have explained the connection with negative evaluation of type 1 with reference to the presence of the adverbial. This hypothesis finds some support in the present result, since negative specialization does not arise in this second type, where no always-type adverbial is present. 7.3.4

Interpretative progressive

Just as with the other two types of subjective uses, one must note with respect to the interpretative progressive that detailed quantitative and qualitative studies of its development are lacking to date. The interpretative progressive is not considered separately in Susan’s Fitzmaurice work on the subjective progressive (Wright 1994, 1995, Fitzmaurice 2004a, 2004b) but is dealt with together with the other types of subjective use. Smitterberg (2005) discusses the interpretative progressive separately, but, as has been pointed out, he assigns more than one meaning to the different types of ‘not-solely-aspectual progressives’. In his categorization, an instance may therefore be classified as representing the interpretative progressive as well as the ‘potentially experiential’ progressive. Since subjective progressives of type 1 and type 2 already occur in OE and ME, while clear instances of an interpretative function, based on the overview of the literature (cf. 4.2.2.3) cannot be found, one might assume that there are considerable differences in the diachronic development of the different types of subjective use. Such differences get obscured if all subjective types are considered together. The results of the analysis of the ARCHER data support the view that the interpretative function is a more recent development than the other two types of subjective progressives, because it occurs only very sporadically in the earlier part of the data but shows a significant rise from the latter half of the 19th century onwards:

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

223

Table 36: Interpretative progressives in ARCHER-2181 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

Interpretative progressives

2 (10%)

2 (2%)

7 (5%)

5 (3%)

10 (4%)

29 (6%)

50 (7%)

90 (11%)

195 (7%)

All other progressives TOTAL

19

98

136

173

264

467

617

693

2467

21

100

143

178

274

496

667

783

2662

From this table it can be gathered that the increasing use of the interpretative progressive is the main factor in the 20th century rise of the progressive. This corroborates the assumption of Mair and Hundt (1995a) and Smith (2002) that subjective uses play an important role in the rise of the construction between 1961 and 1991. Leech et al. (2009: 136) present results which support the present findings, stating that “according to [their] most conservative estimate”, 52 interpretative progressives are found in LOB and 97 (almost twice as many) in FLOB. These absolute numbers are similar to what we find in ARCHER in the first and the second half of the 20th century, respectively. Note, however, that the half-centuries represented in ARCHER contain roughly a fifth of the word number contained in each single BROWN-family corpus. This difference points indeed to a very restricted interpretation of Leech et al. of what constitutes an interpretative progressive. In general they see the classification of interpretative progressives as rather unreliable, 182 so that they end their presentation of changes in progressive use in the 20th century with the pessimistic conclusion that “[c]loser examination of the present progressive active failed to identify any outstanding factor contributing to the increase”. In fact, an examination of the proportion of interpretative uses among present tense progressives might have 181 182

The chi² test demonstrates that the differences are significant. This view is also expressed by Mair (2006: 94f.). He states that “the “interpretive” reading is one option alongside others [, so that] only collecting the clear instances means under-reporting the phenomenon, whereas including all possible instances in the counts will lead to clear over-reporting” (Mair 2006: 95). In a semantic classification a certain subjective element generally cannot be completely eliminated. The classification of the progressive, or specifically of the interpretative progressive, does not constitute an exception. However, concerning the analysis of the whole data, the same principles of classification (laid out for the aspectual uses in 7.1.2 and for the subjective uses in 7.3.1) have been followed, so that the fact that a clear picture of a diachronic trend emerges from this analysis can be taken as indicative of true changes in frequency in the different uses of the progressive. Mair (2006: 94) notes that the interpretative progressive “may well be spreading, though not at a rate sufficient to show up in the overall statistics”. But it does in fact show up in the present quantitative analysis, and also in the “conservative estimates” of Leech et al. (2009).

The Progressive in Modern English

224

produced interesting results. Be that as it may, the present investigation shows that it is the particular subjective function of the construction to convey the speaker’s interpretation that is responsible for the recent rise, while, at least in written English, the two other types of subjective uses of the progressive do not increase in frequency in the course of the 20th century. In the earlier part of the data, the interpretative progressive occurs only rarely, and one should remark that the early instances are not as clearly interpretative as later uses. The following example of a 17th-century use may illustrate this: (213) they dooe moste nimbly bestur themselvs as if they were dancing the Hey. (archerii\1600-49.bre\1634butl.p0b 43) The classification of this instance as interpretative use was effected due to the applicability of the definition given by Ljung (1980), namely that the progressive is used to give a subjective interpretation of a situation referred to using a simple form in the preceding clause. König’s (1980: 280) view on the interpretative progressive also seems to apply as “it is the clause with the simple form […] which gives the more fundamental description, i.e. the description which is nearer to the merely physical”, while the progressive offers the more speaker-based description of what this physical situation amounts to. It should be pointed out that, in these early instances, we find a more subjective description which is rendered via a comparison introduced by as if. It is thus not the progressive alone which marks the interpretative function. In fact, this would seem to be the typical context of early uses of the interpretative progressive: of the four instances of interpretative progressives in the 17th century part of ARCHER, three are introduced by the same or a very similar conjunction, either by as if or by as (used in the same function as as if ). If we look at the proportions of interpretative uses that occur in such a context, the following picture appears: Table 37: Interpretative progressive in comparative subclauses in ARCHER-2 17th c

18th c

19th c

20th c

TOTAL

Interpretative use introduced by as if, as though etc.

3

2

14

12

31

Other interpretative uses Total interpretative uses

1 4

10 12

25 39

128 140

164 195

We can see that this type of use of the progressive remains particularly common in comparative subclauses until the 19th century. It is interesting that this particular subclause type is not mentioned by König (1980: 275f.) in his overview of preferred contexts of the interpretative progressive (cf. 3.3.3). This probably

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

225

has to do with the fact that the association between interpretative use and comparative subclause weakens over time. An example of an interpretative progressive in a comparative subclause is offered below, which may illustrate more clearly than the early uses presented in (191) (Giant Thomabedlamus [...] blew such a blast, as if all the Bulls of Basan had been roaring together) and (213) that the comparison can be seen as giving a subjective interpretation of a state of affairs: (214) And behind him there was little Dutch, crawling with her belly down, and her eyes turned up at us, as if we were dragging her to be hanged. (archer\1850-99.bre\1872blac.f6) Again, the more basic, physical description of the state-of-affairs is given first, and then the progressive is used to introduce a more subjective view, a more personal interpretation via a comparison. Such a comparison always represents a more subjective, speaker-based view of a situation, since there is nothing in the real world situation which would force a speaker to make a particular comparison. What one can also see from table 37 is that in the 18th century we already find instances in which the progressive alone marks the interpretative function. An example is provided below: (215) HARRY. Why, it is possible you may yet receive a valentine. SOPHIA. Nay, now, but don’t you go to think that I am asking for one; for that would be very wrong of me, and I know better. (archer\175099.bre\1792holc.d3) Here, we clearly observe the conversational nature of this function, which Wright (1994: 481) has stressed: what the speaker interprets, using the interpretative progressive, is not a situation verbalized before using a simple form but the communicative activity she is engaged in. In this case she interprets her own preceding speech act, or rather, she rejects the interpretation which she assumes her interlocutor to have. The common occurrence in the earlier part of the modern period of the interpretative progressive in subclauses introducing a comparison can give us an idea of how the interpretative function may have evolved. The choice of the progressive may at first not necessarily have been motivated by the interpretative function of the utterance. Rather, the progressive may have been chosen to link the unreal situation (introduced for the sake of comparison) to the real situation: it had to be clear that the two predications had the same referent. We can see here a connection to a well-established context of the aspectual progressive, which is commonly used to denote simultaneity of two situations, as in the following example:

226

The Progressive in Modern English

(216) While thus her fond fancy carried her back in many a flitting thought, to her loved home, the same sunset was gilding its grey walls. (archer\180049.bre\1847lefa.f5) This is also suspected by Charleston (1960: 246), who stresses that the two functions can be seen as similar, the difference being that the interpretative progressive refers to a situation “not parallel with, but identical with, another activity or state. This is a form of interpreting the implications of one activity or state in terms of another”. One could say that this is not a great conceptual leap: if one has a construction which can mark a situation B as simultaneous to a situation A, i.e. as having identical extension in time, it may be appropriate to also use the same construction to mark a more subjective description of a situation (B) as having an identical referent as the neutral description of the situation (A). So the development hypothesized here is the following: the interpretative function of the progressive originated in a particular context in which the aspectual function made the use of the form appropriate, and later on the interpretative function became more independent. This assumption is also in accordance with the apparent time line of the development. The progressive aspectual function becomes more and more established in the course of the period under investigation, so that it is plausible that a development which was triggered by a common use of the progressive form as a marker of aspect would only increase in frequency rather late (cf. also Kranich 2009). 7.4

The functions of the type to be a-hunting

As to the functions of the type to be a-hunting, one can expect, based on the literature, to find only aspectual and no subjective uses of this construction. Nehls (1974: 170f.) assumes that the type to be a-hunting merged with the progressive proper and that this led to the decrease in the use of the progressive with subjective (in his terms ‘intensifying) meaning. The reason for this assumption is that the aspectual meaning was expressed by both constructions, while only the progressive proper also expressed subjective meanings. After the two constructions merged, the merged construction would then be associated only with the function where the two original constructions showed an overlap. A similar view is expressed by Elsness (1994: 22). Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 156) also finds that the “prepositional patterns […] have a lot in common with Present-day English progressives”, as they are generally used to refer to “action in progress”. As has been pointed out before, one cannot prove a significant impact of the gerundial type to be a-hunting on the progressive proper on the basis of the corpus data, since the former is extremely infrequent at least in written sources. As far as the functional range of the type to be a-hunting is concerned, the results might be said to confirm Nehls’ assumptions, as all ten instances do indeed occur with aspectual meaning. However, the absolute number is too low to base any generalizations on this result, since it could be pure chance that a subjective use is

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

227

missing from the total of ten instances. The table below shows the distribution across the different types of aspectual functions distinguished in the present work: Table 38: Functions of the type to be a-hunting in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

Progressive aspect

2

2

1

--

--

1

--

1

7

General imperfective aspect

2

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

2

Meanings derived from aspectual TOTAL

--

--

--

--

1

--

--

--

1

4

2

1

--

1

1

--

1

10

Relevant examples of all three aspectual uses of this type of construction have already been presented in (91) (Nothing was awanting her […], general imperfective), (90) (When your father condescends to talk wisely to you of Stateaffairs, must your brains be a rambling after wenches?, progressive), and (128) (Here have I been a treating the case as one of a garden, derived aspectual) (cf. 5.5, 6.9). The assumption that the construction to be a-hunting may have occurred more often in speaking and that its exclusive aspectual use had an impact on the growing association with aspectual meaning of the progressive proper is not implausible; it is, however, impossible to find strong support for this assumption in the data, due to the extremely low frequency overall of the type to be ahunting. 7.5

Diachronic change in the functions of the progressive

While it is commonly assumed that subjective uses are on the rise in the modern period (Wright 1994: 467f., Killie 2004: 27, Smith 2004: 181),183 evidence for this claim is lacking to date. The present study first provides quantitative results on the distribution of the different uses of the progressive across the modern period. The general predominance of the aspectual uses has already been highlighted in 7.1.1 (cf. Table 19). Table 39 serves to sum up the results for all categories discussed in the preceding sections:

183

Killie (2004: 27), aware of the work on subjective uses in OE by Hübler (1998), explicitly stresses however that she is simplifying matters when she states that the progressive has been used more and more with subjective meanings since EModE times.

The Progressive in Modern English

228

Table 39: Complete overview of the functions of the progressive in ARCHER-2 17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL

Progressive aspect

14 (67%)

66 (66%)

104 (73%)

142 (80%)

200 (73%)

339 (68%)

452 (68%)

488 (62%)

1804 (68%)

General imperfective aspect

--

4 (4%)

2 (1%)

6 (3%)

26 (9%)

50 (10%)

54 (8%)

72 (9%)

214 (8%)

Meanings derived from aspectual TOTAL ASPECTUAL Subjective type 1

-14 (67%) 2 (10%)

10 (10%) 80 (80%) 6 (6%)

12 (8%) 118 (83%) 6 (4%)

20 (11%) 168 (94%) 1 (1%)

27 (10%) 253 (92%) 4 (1%)

58 (12%) 447 (90%) 9 (2%)

86 (13%) 592 (89%) 9 (1%)

115 (15%) 675 (86%) 10 (1%)

328 (12%) 2347 (88%) 47 (2%)

Subjective type 2

3 (14%)

12 (12%)

12 (8%)

4 (2%)

7 (3%)

11 (2%)

16 (2%)

8 (1%)

73 (3%)

Subjective type 3

2 (10%) 7 (33%) 21

2 (2%) 20 (20%) 100

7 (5%) 25 (17%) 143

5 (3%) 10 (6%) 178

10 (4%) 21 (8%) 274

29 (6%) 49 (9%) 496

50 (7%) 75 (11%) 667

90 (11%) 108 (14%) 783

195 (7%) 315 (12%) 2662

TOTAL SUBJECTIVE TOTAL

An interesting pattern is visible in the diachronic distribution: until the second half of the 18th century, the aspectual functions become more and more predominant. The absolute numbers of the aspectual uses show a continuous rise throughout the four centuries. Regarding the relative frequencies, one can note that in the more recent development, particularly in the 20th century, the relative proportion of subjective uses increases again. Mair and Hundt’s (1995a) as well as Smith’s (2002) suggestion that the recent rise of the progressive (between 1961 and 1991) is due to an increasing use of the progressive with subjective meanings thus finds support in the present study. The findings based on ARCHER indicate furthermore that this trend has been going on for some time, at least since the latter part of the 19th century.184 The subjective functions do not, however, all have the same share in this development, as one can plainly see from table 39. While subjective uses of type 1 and type 2 show roughly similar absolute numbers throughout the time span considered, with between one and 16 uses per type and per half-century, the 184

Bailey (1996: 227) states that the functions of the progressive only emerge in the 19th century: “only in the nineteenth century did they [progressive forms] begin to be exploited for the “nice logical distinctions” and “emotional value” recognized by Jespersen” (he refers to Jespersen 1931: 213). Although the 19th century is an important period for the development (the interpretative function emerges, the obligatorification of the aspectual progressive probably takes place in this time), Bailey’s description cannot be regarded as correct. The functions of the progressive are already apparent in the 17th century data (and foreshadowed before then) and the aspectual use of the construction seems to become firmly ingrained in the language as early as the 18th century.

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

229

subjective use type 3, the interpretative progressive, almost doubles its occurrences in each half-century from the 19th century onwards.185 One needs to emphasize again that the differentiation between the different types of subjective uses is crucial to a discussion of its diachronic development. As we have seen, the interpretative function appears to be of much younger date than the two other types. The question as to whether its emergence can be regarded as a process of subjectification will be discussed in 8.2. 7.6

Distribution of functions across genres

Wright (1994: 481) assumes that subjective progressives are truly at home only in conversational use in the earlier part of the modern period. She finds plenty of evidence for subjective progressives in the study of 17th and early 18th century comedy but assumes that it is “much later” that this use gets extended “to the narrative techniques used in the novel” and in other written genres. She argues that “because it is emphatically conversational, it is at least unlikely that it can seamlessly cross the barriers erected by the conventions which go with much letter-writing, and certainly by those guiding the development of written narrative genres”. (Wright 1994: 481) Fitzmaurice (2004a) in her later study of late 17th and early 18th century use of the progressive checks her earlier hypothesis (Wright 1994) in a cross-genre (letters, essays, fiction, drama) comparison. She finds her earlier assumptions confirmed, stating that the subjective progressive occurs particularly in those genres where the overall frequency of the progressive is high and particularly in such registers that “are arguably less literary than private and […] less literate than speechbased” (Fitzmaurice 2004a: 135). Smitterberg (2004: 180) comes to a similar conclusion concerning 19th century use: he notes that drama has “by far the highest proportion of progressives that meet three of four of the criteria”.186 On this basis, 30% of the progressive constructions in drama are classified as ‘notsolely-aspectual’ by him, while this is the case of only 8% of the progressives in debates, fiction, and trial proceedings and only 4% of the progressives in science (Smitterberg 2004: 180, cf. also Smitterberg 2005: 222, table 74). Smitterberg (2004: 176) concludes that subjective progressives occur particularly often in those genres where the progressive shows overall high frequencies. The genre differences observable in ARCHER are all in all somewhat less pronounced, as the table below shows. Since the absolute numbers get very low 185

186

One may, of course, also state that it doubled its occurrences between 17501800 and 1800-1849, but here the absolute numbers are still too low to make such a description appear appropriate. The criteria referred to are discussed in 7.3.1.

The Progressive in Modern English

230

when broken down into genres, the total of subjective progressives is given first in table 40, and the numbers in brackets indicate the distribution across types 1 to 3: Table 40: Distribution of subjective progressives across genres in ARCHER-2 Drama

Fiction

Letters

Journal

News

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

TOTAL*

4

11

10

4

1

23

38

27

118

(0/4/0)

(2/9/0)

(2/4/4)

(0/1/3)

(0/1/0)

(6/3/14) (4/9/25) (0/4/23)

3

4

3

2

13

14

(2/0/1)

(1/2/1)

(2/1/0)

(0/0/2)

(1/5/7)

(1/4/9)

--

1

6

1

1

5

7

10

31

(1/0/0)

(2/3/1)

(0/1/0)

(0/0/1)

(2/2/1)

(1/3/3)

(0/3/7)

(15%)

--

--

--

Medical

--

--

4

2

1

4

1

9

21

(0/4/0)

(1/1/0)

(0/1/0)

(0/1/3)

(1/0/0)

(3/0/6)

(7%)

--

--

--

1

--

1

5

7

(0/0/1)

(0/0/5)

(2%)

2

--

1

2

(0/0/1)

(0/0/2)

--

--

1

3

3

1

24

34

(0/1/0)

(3/0/0)

(0/1/2)

(0/0/1)

(0/1/23)

(29%)

--

--

--

1

1

5

(0/0/1)

(0/0/1)

(7%)

--

--

--

1

--

(0/0/1) Total

7

97 (10%)

1

(2/0/0) Science

32

(3/4/19) (7/0/25)

(0/1/0)

(0/0/1) Religious

26

(22%)

20

25

10

21

1 (1%)

49

75

108

315 (12%)

* (percent among all progressives in the genre)

Drama (with 22%) and religious sermons (with 29%) emerge as those genres which particularly favor the use of subjective progressives, followed by private letters with 15%, which, compared to the overall 12% of subjective progressives among all progressives (cf. table 39) is still slightly elevated. The result on letters is in accordance with Sairio’s (2009: 186) findings. Fiction shows a close-toaverage proportion with 10% of all uses being subjective, while journal entries, scientific writing, news, and medical writing seem to disfavor such uses; the progressives used in these genres are aspectual to a greater-than-average extent. However, these results are in need of some qualification. Firstly, as can be gathered from table 1 (cf. 2.3), the proportion of the different genres in ARCHER is unfortunately not balanced; religious sermons and private letters contain, for

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

231

instance, only roughly half as many words as science and news, which in turn contain only about half as many words as fiction and drama. The results for these small subcorpora must therefore be taken with a grain of salt. The results for religious sermons cannot be taken as representative of a general trend at all, since it is in fact one particular text which is responsible for the high number of subjective progressives. Out of the 24 uses in this genre in the half-century 19501999, 15 (all interpretative uses) occur in a sermon by Lloyd-Jones, often in immediate sequence. Thus, idiosyncratic preference plays a huge role here, as well as the fact that the text by Lloyd-Jones appears to be much more strongly speech-based than the texts in this genre in general. The following extract (containing five interpretative progressives) from this text may illustrate this: (217) in winding up his first argument in chapter 6 he had said, ‘For sin shall not have dominion over you’, and his reason for saying that is, ‘for (because) you are not under the law, but under grace’. He seems to glory in that fact. He seems to be striking another blow at the Law. He has already knocked it down, as it were, in chapter 5, verse 20; he is now trampling on it. At once his opponents take up the cudgels and say, ‘Surely these are very wrong and very dangerous statements to make; surely if you are going to abrogate the Law and do away with it altogether, you are doing away with every guarantee of righteous and holy conduct and behaviour. Sanctification is impossible without the Law. If you treat the Law in that way and dismiss it, and rejoice in doing so, are you not encouraging lawlessness, and are you not almost inciting people to live a sinful life?’ (archerii\1950-99.bre\1959lloy.h9) There does appear to be a general rise in the use of the interpretative progressive in religious sermons overall, as the remaining nine instances, spread over three different texts, suggest. However, it is much less considerable than the pure numbers would seem to signify. In general, we can say that the present study shows a somewhat less pronounced difference between genres. This may go back to the different methods for the classification of subjective uses. It may also reflect the different scopes of the studies, since Smitterberg’s (2004, 2005) work deals only with 19th century usage. Based on the 19th century data from ARCHER, the genre differences would, however, also appear to be less extreme than in Smitterberg’s results. In the 19th century data from ARCHER, subjective progressives overall make up for 9% of the progressives. This is spread out across the genres in the 19th century as follows: Drama, with 17% (24 out of 140), is followed by religion with 16%. Regarding the results on the genre religion, one has to note, however, that the absolute numbers are extremely small: religious sermons have 6 subjective uses out of 37. Fiction (27 out of 303) and letters (6 out of 64) come next: they both contain 9% of subjective uses and reflect thus the overall average proportion of subjective uses, to which journals with 8% (5 out of 74) also come close. Medical text and news only have one subjective instance among 68

232

The Progressive in Modern English

instances each, i.e. below 1%, and scientific texts do not contain a single instance in the 19th century. The cross-genre differences in the 19th century part of the ARCHER data are smaller overall than in Smitterberg’s study of 19th century English based on CONCE, although results on the general generic preferences remain the same. It can be assumed that the criteria used by Smitterberg (2005) are bound to overlook subjective progressives in those genres which are less ‘speech-based’ (such as fiction), while retrieving a greater number of progressives in more speech-based genres (such as drama). The numbers presented by Smitterberg (2004, 2005: 222, table 74) refer to all progressives fulfilling a minimum of three of the four formal criteria concerning tense and clause, subject, and situation type. In genres where the use of first- and second-person subjects, present tense, and main clause is common overall (such as drama and letters), more progressives will be extracted for a close reading using this method than in genres such as fiction or scientific writing, where in general first- and second-person subjects, main clause occurrence, and present tense use are less common. Subjective progressives occurring in these latter genres will therefore often fail to be captured using the method applied by Wright (1994), Fitzmaurice (2004a, b), and Smitterberg (2004, 2005). Two examples of typical ‘conversational’ use of subjective progressives (in (218) and (219)) and two occurrences of subjective progressives in more typical ‘written’ style (in (220) and (221)) are presented below: (218) Never mind what I say, Robert! I am always saying what I shouldn’t say. (archer\1850-99.bre\1895wild.d6) (219) About Ruthie. Don’t think I’m getting all grandmotherly if I remind you that Calcium is awfully good for teeth - It certainly worked with you. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1952rhys.x9) (220) I thought of how many were always complaining and complaining, myself whiles among the rest, of the hardships, the miseries, and the misfortunes of their lot; putting all down to the score of fate, and never once thinking of the plantations of sorrow reared up from the seeds of our own sinfulness… (archer\1800-49.bre\1828moir.f5) (221) the Insect stood upon the inwards bulbous Part, and beat upon the outward Coat, as if it had been working it off as it went (archer\170049.bre\1724fair.s2) In conversational use, we can note that speakers often use subjective progressives to evaluate or interpret their own or their interlocutors activities, often referring to communicative activities, as in (218) where the speaker (for the sake of politeness) puts down his own communicative habits in order to convince the

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

233

addressee not to take his words personally, and also in (219), where the speaker wishes to prevent a certain undesired interpretation of the communicative activities she engages in, similar to the ‘valentine’ example presented in (215). These uses, which refer to the actual communicative situation, indeed occur often with first- or second-person subjects, in the present tense, and in a main clause. However, the subjective uses of the progressive also occur in other genres, where such linguistic contexts are not typical. In (220) we find evidence of a use of the subjective progressive + ALWAYS in a narrative passage where none of the linguistic contexts claimed to be typical of subjective progressives can be seen. The example shows that in the 18th century, it was evidently already acceptable to use a subjective progressive in literary styles, contrary to what is assumed by Wright (1994: 481). This is not really surprising, since such uses are also evidenced in OE and ME; only the specialization to negative context is a recent development with regard to type 1. The more recent type 3, the interpretative progressive, is also already found in formal specialist writing, namely in science, in the 18th century, where it is used to convey a more subjective description of something described in more basic physical terms in the preceding clauses, as can be gathered from example (221). While the use of the subjective progressives of type 1 and type 2 generally occurs in emotionally loaded contexts (cf. the examples in sections 7.3.2, 7.3.3), the interpretative use of the progressive can occur in less involved styles as well, since it merely marks the proposition as giving a subjective interpretation, not necessarily a value judgment, as example (221) demonstrates. One can see in table 40 above that the genres which are generally marked by a detached, rather than involved style, i.e. news, scientific, and medical writing, show no type of subjective uses but the interpretative use.187 Concerning the genre letters, we have noted in 5.3 that women use more progressives in their letters than men. Now that we saw that letters show an average of 15% of subjective progressives, we may conclude that a more involved, personal letter-writing style may be responsible for this tendency. Differences in subject-matter could also play a role. Arnaud (1998) has shown that in the letters of women the occurrence of verbs of emotion is higher than in the letters of men. This finding nicely corresponds with the idea that women may use subjective progressives more frequently than men. If men and women used a 187

One should, of course, note that genre conventions are subject to historical changes, and in fact some of the subjective uses in earlier scientific texts, such as in example (221), would probably not occur in 19th or 20th century writing, as they reflect a somewhat more involved, more personal style (cf. Biber & Finegan 1989: 512f.). Nevertheless, certain generalizations can be made, since even though genres exhibit diachronic variation, the general tendencies differentiating the genres (e.g. that scientific and medical texts can be said to be more formal, less involved and more objective when compared to journals or personal letters) can be assumed to remain broadly similar across the time span investigated here, as the studies by Biber and Finegan (1989, 1992, 1997) show.

234

The Progressive in Modern English

roughly equal amount of aspectual progressives, but the women used the subjective progressive much more commonly, then this could be sufficient to produce a significant difference. ARCHER is not a suitable basis for testing this hypothesis, since the genre letters only includes 86,774 words, but it may be an interesting avenue for further research. The findings on the relative proportion of the subjective progressives in the different genres presented in table 40 also allows us to make some remarks on the frequency of aspectual progressives in the different genres in comparison with the overall genre distribution presented in table 5. Smitterberg’s view that subjective progressives occur more commonly in those genres where the progressive in general shows higher frequencies is not fully confirmed by the present investigation. Certainly, there are genres which have a high number of progressives overall and a high number of subjective progressives. These are drama and letters, and to some extent religious sermons. Sermons only show a high number of subjective uses in the last half-century, which is also the time span in which they show a high number of progressive uses overall. We have seen, however, that idiosyncratic preferences of one writer bias the result. Then, there are genres which fit Smitterberg’s description in that they have both low progressive frequencies overall and low frequencies of subjective progressives, namely scientific and medical texts. But we also find genres for which the use of the aspectual progressive is apparently more characteristic than the use of the subjective progressive. These are journals, news, and fiction. Journals and news show roughly average progressive frequencies on the whole but below-average subjective uses. Out of the 294 progressives in journal, 273 are aspectual; among the 305 progressives in news, we find 298 aspectual uses. In fiction, the use of the subjective progressive is more common than in these last two genres, but the difference between subjective and aspectual use is similar. Here the use of progressives overall is notably above average from the first half of the 19th century on (in the second half of the 19th century, it is even twice as high), but the frequency of subjective progressives is somewhat below the average frequency of subjective uses. Out of the 1,019 occurrences in fiction, 920 are aspectual. This means that the aspectual progressive is particularly prominent in journals, news, and fiction. I have checked whether specific types of the aspectual use are responsible for the greater frequency of aspectual progressives in these genres. Table 41 below presents the results. The totals on which the percentages are based refer exclusively to the aspectual uses of the progressive:

The functions of the progressive in Modern English

235

Table 41: Subtypes of imperfective/progressive aspect in three genres in ARCHER-2 News

Journal

Fiction

Time-frame (proportion among all aspectual uses)

28 (9%)

40 (15%)

146 (16%)

All uses of the function in the corpus (proportion among all aspectual uses) 295 (13%)

‘Aktuelles Präsens’ (proportion among all aspectual uses) All aspectual uses

59 (20%)

36 (13%)

68 (7%)

308 (13%)

305 = 100%

273 = 100%

922 = 100%

2354 = 100%

In news, one can discern an over-average occurrence of ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ uses, which are responsible for 20% of all aspectual occurrences in this genre, while overall the use for ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ only represents 13% of all aspectual progressives. This is not surprising − one can consider it a communicative aim of the genre to provide information on things that are ongoing at the very moment. It is somewhat surprising that such a clear preference cannot also be detected in journal writing, but here the percentage of ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ uses represents almost exactly the average proportion of this use. This fact may have to do with a tendency to speak about past events, not just presently ongoing affairs, in one’s journal entries. ‘Aktuelles Präsens’, as expected, occurs rather infrequently in fiction, since the tense used there normally, outside of dialogue, is the past. The time-frame use is not favored by news but occurs with slightly higherthan-average frequency in journals and in fiction. However, compared to the overall average frequency of this use in the corpus with 13% (cf. table 22), this does not constitute a very considerable difference. We have seen in 5.3 that the aspectual uses which cannot be classified as representing either time-frame or ‘Aktuelles Präsens’ (as a subtype of time-frame) may often be used, particularly in the past tense, for stylistic effects such as backgrounding. One may assume that in fiction, this means is regularly employed to achieve a foreground-background structure of the narrative. As journal writing is also characterized, at least in part, by a narrative structure, the same argument may hold for this latter genre. This hypothesis cannot be fully checked in a corpus-based approach but would lend itself more to being tested in a discourse analysis study, where the whole make-up of a text is taken into consideration. Such a study might provide interesting results on the particular textual function of the progressive, which can only be broadly sketched here. A result of the present investigation is that it may be particularly fruitful to check journal writing and

236

The Progressive in Modern English

fiction writing for common principles governing the textual functions to which the aspectual progressive is put.

8.

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

8.1

Evidence for grammaticalization of the progressive

The present section will once more begin with an evaluation of previous studies: first, those claims about evidence for grammaticalization from previous studies which, on the basis of the present results, are not regarded as valid will be presented; then those claims from other scholars will be presented which are supported by the present results. To these findings, further evidence from the present investigation will be added. In previous work, it has been assumed that the increasing grammaticalization of the progressive would lead to a more and more balanced spread to all genres and to all linguistic contexts. Concerning genre, we saw in 5.2 that Smitterberg (2005) assumes that obligatorification of the aspectual progressive (one component of the grammaticalization process) should be manifest in decreased genre diversity in the frequency of the progressive. However, we saw that the progressive is still preferred in non-expository, more speech-based genres in the 20th century, when it has certainly already acquired obligatory status in some contexts (e.g. ‘Aktuelles Präsens’). This can be related to the functions of the construction, both the aspectual as well as the subjective ones. Concerning the aspectual function, one can presume that these genres have a stronger need for depicting situations in progress. Concerning the subjective functions, the more speech-based genres can be expected to make use of linguistic means of conveying emphasis, speaker attitude, and subjective interpretation more often. One should also notice that aspectual progressives in PDE occur in a variety of contexts in which they are not obligatory (cf. Nehls 1974: 104-117). Incontrovertible evidence for the obligatorification of the construction in certain contexts can therefore not be gained from a study like Smitterberg’s (2005) or the present one which analyze the use of the progressive only. In order to achieve clear results on the obligatorification process, one would need to conduct a study of all, simple and progressive, verb forms in a given corpus, preferably in a tagged one to make the task feasible. But a study which only takes into account the progressive can nevertheless produce some suggestions as to when obligatorification took place. These suggestions will, however, have to be based on other factors than genre distribution, e.g. on the increase in frequency, which we shall discuss in the present section. From the 19th century uses of the simple form adduced in 7.1.1, it can be gathered that obligatorification is a relatively late development. The difference between genres, which I assume to be related both to subject-matter and to stylistic conventions, may also caution against results that have been gained on the basis of research on a single genre. Thus, Strang’s (1982) conclusions about the progressive, based exclusively on the use of the

238

The Progressive in Modern English

construction in fiction, cannot be fully accepted. We have seen that Strang (1982: 446) suggests that the progressive is first strongly associated with subordinate clause use and then becomes more independent in the 19th century. Such an increasing independence and spread to new contexts could have been indicative of increasing grammaticalization, but on the grounds of the evidence from ARCHER, Strang’s description cannot be regarded as adequate for the general development of the progressive construction, which in the 17th century part of ARCHER already occurs in main clauses 45% of the time. Smith (2004) has taken balanced distribution across linguistic contexts as a condition for the grammaticalized status of a construction. The fact that the progressive in her corpus (consisting only of private letters) is not evenly distributed across subject types is classified by her as a “lack of stability” (Smith 2004: 172), which is presented as counterevidence to the signs of grammaticalization (Smith 2004: 182). She sees further evidence of this ‘lack of stability’ in the variable use of the progressive with adverbials and with different semantic verb types (Smith 2004: 177-181). As has been pointed out in the discussion of these different linguistic contexts in chapter 6, it is not justified to expect that a grammaticalized marker will necessarily occur in an even distribution across these factors. The subject-matter of the different letters in Smith’s (2004) corpus would surely explain why certain writers use e.g. more first and second person subjects and more figurative verbs in their letters than others. Differences in subject-matter can also be assumed to explain the variation in progressive frequencies between different authors, which Smith (2004: 184) also views as “instability” and a sign “that grammaticalization was not uniform within a dialect or register” (Smith 2004: 184). One of the benefits of a long-term diachronic study is that it becomes easier to distinguish patterns of variation which cannot be considered evidence of grammaticalization from those which can. We are thus able to see that a more balanced spread across linguistic contexts is evidently not a necessary consequence of a grammaticalization process. The evidence from ARCHER shows for example that the progressive remains much more common in present and past contexts than in combinations with modals or perfect and much more common in the use with activities and accomplishments than with statives. These preferences can be explained by the semantics of the construction. Concerning the spread across the verbal paradigm, it can be expected that a construction used in the majority of cases to refer to situations that are dynamically progressing at TT will occur most commonly in reference to situations which are ongoing either presently or at some particular past reference point. The combination of progressive with perfect, future auxiliary or modal can be used with specific effects arising from the combination, as we have seen, but one cannot expect that such uses would ever constitute a considerable share of the total occurrences of the form. Concerning situation type, as Michaelis (2004) has pointed out, the (aspectual) progressive requires the conceptualization of a situation as an activity. Clearly this is easiest when a situation neutrally belongs to the situation type activity. It is also quite unproblematic with accomplishments (which contain an

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

239

activity component anyway) but more difficult with statives or non-durative situation types, i.e. semelfactives and achievements. The more detailed descriptions concerning the distribution of progressives across particular linguistic contexts have been presented in 6. What should be highlighted here is that while the innovation of new combinatory possibilities, which we saw in the emergence of the passive progressive (6.2) or in the evolution of multiple combinations (6.3), ought to be recognized as a sign of grammaticalization, since it shows the increasing extension across the paradigm, one must not expect that the increasing grammaticalization will lead to an increasingly balanced distribution across linguistic contexts. The existence of preferred linguistic contexts is not per se a sign of a lack of grammatical status but indicative rather of the particular semantics of a construction. Changes in the use of the construction which can truly be understood as evidence of grammaticalization have also been addressed in previous research. Smith (2004: 184) advances an interesting argument against the full grammaticalization of the 18th century progressive: she finds that in many instances the auxiliary verb and the participle are separated, and interruption can even occur with long and multiple adverbial phrases. As an example, she offers: (222) ...who was at that time ingloriously sitting over a tea-table. (Letter from Lady Mary Montagu, example from Smith 2004: 183) This type of use would indeed seem to be very marked if it occurred in PDE, where it appears to be generally acceptable to have only one element between the form of be and the present participle. In the ARCHER data, the use of more than one element between be and the present participle is overall very rare, but it does occur mostly in the early data, as the following table shows: Table 42: Progressives with two elements separating be and v-ing in ARCHER-2 Progressives with two elements separating be and v-ing

17/1

17/2

18/1

18/2

19/1

19/2

20/1

20/2

--

1

6

1

5

5

1

--

This kind of use is absent from the last half-century, in spite of the high number of progressives. Earlier examples, although not ungrammatical, have an archaic ring to them, as can be seen in example (223). Example (224) is the most recent occurrence found in ARCHER: (223) But this cannot happen to the boiled water; when the refrigerating causes have cooled it to 32, the next effect they produce, is to occasion in it the beginning of congelation, while the water is afterwards gradually

240

The Progressive in Modern English assuming the form of ice, we know, by experience, that the temperature of it must remain at 32. (archer\1750-99.bre\1775blac.s3)

(224) What will be the outcome, Heaven knows. Perhaps, as Trotsky has said, the issue is even now being decided in the Ural Mountains. (archerii\190049.bre\1919dai1.n8) One may note that in the earlier example in (223) the separation between the form of be and the lexical verb seems much more remarkable, due to the greater length of the intervening elements. The use in (224) would seem more acceptable to present-day ears. In fact, one can notice that in the 20th century, the occurrence of the adverb between be and the present participle is more acceptable when the adverb is short, e.g. the use of just, still, now is much more common than those of other, longer adverbs. This can be taken as an indication of the increasing grammaticalization of the form, because grammaticalization will lead to an increasing amalgamation of components of a construction (cf. 2.1). While the absolute numbers indicated in table 42 are low throughout the time span, the complete absence of such uses from the second half of the 20th century data may indicate a general change. Since grammaticalization of the progressive in ModE is viewed as the grammaticalization of its aspectual function, the crucial evidence for grammaticalization should be sought in the changes apparent in its semantic development. A significant change apparently took place before the time span considered here. Núñez Pertejo (2004a) and Elsness (1994) have provided evidence of the use of the progressive construction with stative situation type which would no longer be acceptable today. As Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 166) has pointed out, this shows that a change in the functions of the construction has taken place, from the use of the expression for either limited or unlimited duration to the use for stative situations of limited duration in PDE. Núñez Pertejo (2004a: 166) goes on to point out that “[i]t thus seems that the early Modern English progressive was still close in this respect to Old English usage”. This use with reference to states of unlimited duration is apparently more characteristic of periods earlier than the 17th century, but it is still reflected to some extent in the ARCHER data, in that a greater proportion of progressives used with reference to statives refer to situations of unlimited duration in the half-centuries before 1750 than in those after 1750 (cf. table 24). One might say that the absolute numbers are very low, so that this may not be very strong evidence. However, the results concerning the semantics of the progressive point in a similar direction, as they also indicate that the 17th century was indeed still reminiscent of OE and ME use. We find that the subjective meanings of the progressive are still responsible for a considerable proportion of the occurrences, which is also true of the use of the form in OE and ME. In the whole 17th century, 27 out of 121 instances (i.e. 22%) belong to the subjective type. The 18th century witnesses a considerable decrease in the relative frequencies of the subjective uses: while they still amount to 17% in the first half

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

241

of the century, they furnish only 6% of all progressives in the second half of the century. One can therefore agree with Rissanen (1999: 216) who states that “[i]n the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the use of the progressive is still unsettled”. The semantic analysis of the uses in ARCHER indicates that the 18th century witnesses the break-through of the aspectual use of the construction. Regarding the absolute numbers, one can see that the subjective uses of the progressive do not show a considerable change in their frequencies between the early 17th and the early 19th century, while the aspectual instances continue to rise throughout the time span 1600-1999. This indicates that the use of the construction as a marker of progressive aspect can be seen as a long-term grammaticalization process, in which the use gets more and more established and more and more extended. Arnaud’s (1998: 141) view that “the progressive had been a part of the grammatical system of English since the middle of the previous [i.e. the 18th] century” can be confirmed on the basis of the present results: we can see a clear rise in the aspectual progressive from the early 17th to the second half of the 18th century. It is in this latter half-century that the aspectual progressive represents the greatest relative proportion of progressives per half-century. A development which can be seen in relation to this is that it seems to be in the second half of the 18th century that the progressive becomes increasingly associated with situations of limited rather than unlimited duration when used with statives, as the comparison of the different uses classified as ‘general imperfective’ indicates (cf. table 24). The grammaticalization process was, however, clearly not yet completed at that time, since, as we saw in examples (130) and (131), simple forms are still used in the 19th century in contexts where PDE speakers would need a progressive form. Obligatorification is considered as one of the final steps in a grammaticalization process. Considering the evidence from ARCHER, one may assume that the continuous rise of the aspectual progressive visible in the data reflects a gradually growing preference for the form in particular contexts, which eventually leads to obligatorification in some of them. If we consider the normalized frequencies (not all half-centuries contain an equal number of words) and the resultant percentage of growth, the following picture emerges: Table 43: The rise of aspectual progressives in ARCHER-2 Aspectual uses 17/1 Absolute 14 numbers Normalized M- 22 frequencies Relative rise TOTAL 21

17/2 80

18/1 118

18/2 168

19/1 253

19/2 447

20/1 592

20/2 TOTAL 675 2347

49

69

97

128

219

310

339

172

+9% 783

2662

+123% +41% +41% +32% +79% +42% 100 143 178 274 496 667

242

The Progressive in Modern English

Leaving aside the first half-century, where the absolute numbers are too low to be sure that the result is representative, the greatest relative growth is situated in the second half of the 19th century. Such a rise in frequency can be interpreted as a possible sign of grammaticalization leading to obligatorification in this time span. There are other factors which support this assumption. The relative frequency of the aspectual progressive in present tense contexts rises in this time span, from 34% in the first half of the 19th century to 41% in the second half of the 19th century, reaching 47% in 1900-1949. In the last time span, 1950-1999, it remains at a similar proportion of 45%. Since it is the present tense which is the clearest context for an obligatory use of the progressive in PDE, this may be taken as a sign of obligatorification occurring between the later half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. A further indication can be seen in the fact that it is in this time span that the passive progressive becomes acceptable in all registers and that the use of the progressive with full verbs be and have is established. While all these developments begin in the late 18th and early 19th century, they become fully integrated in the language only in the latter half of the 19th century. This encourages the view that this time is a crucial period in the grammaticalization process. As the construction reaches a fully grammaticalized status as an aspectual marker, becoming obligatory in some contexts, there is a need for a complete paradigm of combinatory possibility with other markers, such as with passive voice. One might note that the development of more complex combinations such as modal + perfect + passive + progressive is supposedly situated later, arising only in the 20th century. But we saw that evidently, these combinations are not needed very often. There is not a single example of this complex combination in ARCHER, nor is there one in the 20th century corpora of the ‘BROWN-family’.188 It can thus not be taken as a sign of a less-than-fully grammaticalized status of the progressive that in the late 19th century, this kind of combination is not yet found but should rather be interpreted as evidence that it is deemed useful by speakers only in an extremely limited number of contexts. Another development in the 19th century which reinforces the view that it was the century which witnessed the general spread and obligatorification of the form is the increasing extension to inanimate, non-agentive subjects in the course of the century. The further increase of the progressive in the 20th century, which is somewhat less pronounced, can be explained differently. It does not appear to be due to a continuing grammaticalization process. No conclusive evidence was found for the assumption that the present-day progressive is gradually evolving into a marker of general imperfective aspect. The continuing rise in frequency in the 20th century seems rather to go back to two factors: firstly, one can ascribe it to a growing use of the construction in contexts where it has long been established. In those contexts where the aspectual progressive is not obligatory but can be interchanged with the simple form, it seems to be chosen increasingly often. Secondly, the overall rise can be attributed to the increase in frequency of a 188

One may note that even threefold combinations are rare (cf. 6.3).

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

243

particular type of subjective use of the progressive, namely the interpretative progressive. This latter factor is in particular responsible for the rise in the latter half of the 20th century. This development will be discussed in relation to the question of whether subjectification accompanied the grammaticalization of the progressive, which we shall now turn to. 8.2

Evidence for subjectification of the progressive

We saw that subjective meanings have been present (and probably even prevalent) in OE and ME. On the whole, subjective use of the progressive loses importance relative to the aspectual use of the form from the beginning of the time span considered here up to the latter half of the 18th century. Starting at a remarkable proportion of all uses (33% in the first half of the 17th century, 20% in the second half of the 17th century), the relative proportion of these uses decreases, plummeting to 6% in the period 1750-1800 (cf. table 19). So far this statement represents just another way of describing the development referred to in the preceding sub-chapter: as the aspectual uses make up an increasingly greater number of uses in this time span, the subjective uses, constituting the other main category, lose relative importance. This may at first seem like a change concerning the aspectual use and not so much the subjective use of the construction, so that we should look at the changes in absolute frequencies. Since the number of words contained in the first two half-centuries of ARCHER is somewhat smaller than that of the other half-centuries, normalized frequencies are helpful: Table 44: Changing frequencies of subjective uses of the progressive in ARCHER-2 Subjective uses Absolute number of occurrences Normalized M-frequency Percentage among all progressives in the half-century Relative rise/ decrease TOTAL

17/1 7

17/2 20

18/1 25

18/2 10

19/1 21

19/2 49

20/1 75

20/2 108

17/1 315

11

12

15

6

11

24

39

54

23

33%

20%

17%

6%

8%

9%

11%

14%

12%

+ 9% + 25% -60% +83% +118% +63% +38% 21

100

143

178

274

496

667

783

2662

We can see that the second half of the 18th century shows a remarkably lower use of the subjective progressive than the preceding half centuries in which, as the normalized frequencies indicate, the subjective progressive was used to a similar extent. In the first half of the 19th century, the subjective progressive again exhibits a similar kind of frequency as in the centuries before 1750. What can one

244

The Progressive in Modern English

conclude from this? In the preceding sub-chapter, we supposed that the halfcentury 1750-1800 witnesses an important step in the grammaticalization of the progressive, in that the grammatical function of the construction as a marker of progressive aspect becomes established. This may be expected to go hand in hand with a decrease in the use of subjective uses; as the construction becomes more often associated with a grammatical meaning, speakers may feel that it cannot unambiguously mark a proposition as subjective (emphasized, accompanied by a certain speaker attitude). As the grammatical use of the form becomes more established, this may, to some extent, change again, since then the contexts where the grammatical use of the form would be called for would be more clearly defined and thus easier to distinguish from contexts where one is free to choose or not to choose the form. In the latter contexts, its use may again become more often invested with subjective meaning. We can see that after the half-century 1800-1849, subjective uses exhibit a continuous rise in relative importance, reaching absolute frequencies considerably higher than the frequencies in the 17th century. The relative importance of subjective uses among the total of progressive occurrences, by contrast, does not recover the high percentages characteristic of the 17th century. One can take this as an indication that the 17th century use of the progressive still bore a good deal of resemblance to the use of the construction in older periods. As has been shown by Killie (2008), the OE progressive was used in a majority of cases for emphasis, while this use grew somewhat less important in ME times. The 17th century distribution, in which subjective meanings account for 22% of all progressives in the century, may thus still reflect older patterns of use. The first development observable in the data therefore cannot be characterized as subjectification. On the contrary, what we observe is ‘objectification’ or ‘de-subjectification’: the progressive appears to become increasingly associated with the aspectual function and less associated with subjective functions such as emphasis. As we have seen in 3.1.1.1, aspect is also occasionally associated with a certain subjective element, since with regard to some situations speakers can choose which grammatical viewpoint they apply. However, the use of a specific aspectual marker is also often necessary due to the properties of the situation in the reference world. So the expression of aspect can be characterized as more objective than meanings such as emphasis and speaker attitude. In this sense, the progressive seems to undergo objectification. This runs contrary to the assumptions which are generally presented in the literature, which we dealt with in 2.2. The traditional view, which hypothesizes that grammaticalization and subjectification tend to go hand in hand (Traugott 1995), is discouraged by the present results. Traugott’s (forthc.) more recent view, according to which it is the first stages of grammaticalization (primary grammaticalization) in particular which are accompanied by subjectification, does not allow one to make any prediction concerning the process we are looking at here, since the primary grammaticalization of the progressive construction has to be situated in (or maybe even before) the OE period. One may, however,

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

245

introduce another hypothesis to explain the development apparent from the present investigation, namely that secondary grammaticalization, or the grammaticalization of the functions of a form/construction, can be expected to be typically accompanied by objectification.189 The one seems a logical consequence of the other: when grammatical functions of a form become established, the speaker loses a number of opportunities where the form could be invested with subjective meanings. This goes back to the fact that in order for a form to be recruited for the expression of subjective meaning, the speaker has to be free to decide whether or not to use the marker in question, “free in the sense that the choice does not have an influence on the propositional content” (Hübler 1998: 15). Now if the use of a particular marker is felt to be appropriate (or even obligatory) in a particular grammatical context, regardless of speaker involvement, attitude, or desire for emphasis, then such subjective meanings can no longer be associated with this marker in such a context. This looks like a valid explanation for the relative decrease in the use of subjective progressives in the period 1600 to 1800. After this period, however, we assume that grammaticalization of the progressive continues, and yet subjective meanings are also on the rise. So can we actually see subjectification in the latest stages of this long grammaticalization process? It seems so, but this trend is of a more specific nature than the one just discussed. While the 17th and 18th centuries witnessed an increasing importance of the aspectual use of the form, which reflected a general change in the perception of the progressive construction, the rise in the subjective uses that one sees in the 19th and 20th centuries only affects a very specific meaning of the progressive. It is the interpretative function, as we have seen, that is responsible for the overall increase in subjective uses. The fact that interpretative uses of the progressive arise in the language at all can be related to the growing establishment of the aspectual function, since they can be assumed to have emerged in the language triggered by the common use of the aspectual progressive to mark simultaneity. In other words, the established function of the progressive to mark simultaneity could easily have led to the use of the construction to mark referential identity (of a situation in the real world and the speaker’s subjective view of it). The assumption of reanalysis having occurred in a particular context of the aspectual progressive would also be in accordance with the apparent time line of the development. We can assume that the progressive aspectual function of the form gets fully established only in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, so that it is plausible that a development which was triggered by a common use of the progressive form as a marker of 189

This hypothesis is examined in more detail in Kranich (forthc.), where the semantic changes accompanying grammaticalization processes in various languages are studied. The focus is also on the grammaticalization of progressive markers (in English, the Romance and the Celtic languages). Evidence from other grammaticalization processes in the field of TMA markers is also considered. The results can be regarded as tentative confirmation of the ‘objectification hypothesis’.

246

The Progressive in Modern English

aspect would increase in frequency only rather late. To sum up, one can say that a specific new, speaker-based function emerged which was built on the aspectual use rather than in competition with it. Although it can be assumed that in certain contexts, the interpretative function arose out of the use of the aspectual progressive, the interpretative progressive today can also freely occur in contexts where an aspectual use of the form would be inappropriate, as the following two instances illustrate: (225) What was lacking, he said, was a statement of intention by the TUC ‘something going beyond what you think might happen’. Of course it had to be a realistic statement. We were not asking for any reference to ‘norms’ or rigid commitment to an incomes policy. But what we needed was an indication that, if the Labour Government fulfilled its side of the compact, the TUC for its part would try to make the economic policy work. (archerii\1950-99.bre\1974cast.j9) (226) I’ve tried to glean the right atmosphere out of the prison letters of Ian and Jake printed in “Time Out” (20-26 August) and some of the Angry Brigade notes. But already it has a different quality from any of the other exchanges. I fear it’s theatrical; on the other hand I’m deliberately seeing them as melodramatic personages who talk and cry mostly of love and brotherhood while plotting to place a bomb in a school. I’m sure it’s right to show such soft-minded sentimentality at the heart of violence… (archerii\1950-99.bre\1971wesk.j9) These two examples provide evidence that if the progressive were not used for the sake of marking the interpretative function, the use of a progressive would be inappropriate in these contexts. In example (225), the progressive predicate refers to a situation that took place in its totality at a specific point in the past. The situation is not presented as unbounded or dynamically in progress. In (226) the progressive refers to a habitual situation. The journalist generally sees these people, whom he has been dealing with for a while, as melodramatic. The progressive is chosen to mark the function of the utterance as providing the speaker’s interpretation of a speech act (225) and of his own activities (226), respectively. The emergence of the interpretative function can thus be seen as a development which shows a growing establishment of a specific subjective use. Concerning the two other types of subjective use, one must say that their occurrence is all in all of a rather low frequency, so that it is difficult to arrive at firm conclusions. However, it appears from the data that subjective progressives of type 1 and type 2 remain of the same relatively low frequencies which they exhibit in the earlier periods, and since the other uses increase, their relative importance becomes smaller and smaller (cf. table 39). With regard to type 2, the subjective progressive without ALWAYS, one can say that it is neither on the rise, nor can it be seen to have acquired a more specific function over time.

Evidence for grammaticalization and subjectification

247

Concerning type 1, one can note that the use of the combination progressive + ALWAYS becomes more subjective, as the use of the combination with objective reference becomes less common. This development is intimately intertwined with the specific grammaticalization process: as the progressive becomes established as marker of progressive aspect, i.e. of situations that are both unbounded and dynamic, it is less and less often combinable in an objective sense with alwaystype adverbials. As Ljung (1980) has pointed out, there are few situations which are, objectively speaking, dynamically progressing at all times. The subjective progressive + ALWAYS seems furthermore to be undergoing specialization, apparently on its way to becoming particularly a marker of negative speaker attitude. This specialization should not, however, be understood as subjectification, i.e. increasing association with speaker-based meanings, since positive evaluation and negative evaluation, as well as the mere expression of emphasis, should all be considered speaker-based. So, we find two trends in the use of the progressive in recent times that show an increasing subjectification: the interpretative use, as a new subjective function, which gains ground in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the development through which the combination progressive + ALWAYS becomes increasingly associated with subjective meaning. Concerning the general development of the progressive, however, one cannot really say that it becomes more and more speaker-based in this time span, because the overall use of the construction remains predominantly aspectual and not subjective. The question whether subjectification accompanies grammaticalization in general, or at least attends certain stages of it, will not be answered conclusively here, as this is not the main aim of the present work. But one can gather certain important points from the present investigation. The first trend discussed in this sub-chapter, that the progressive became less commonly used with subjective meanings as its aspectual function became more established, can be presumed to reflect a general trend: it may be suggested that the emergence of grammatical meaning can generally be expected to lead to the decrease of potential contexts in which a specific form/construction can be invested with subjective meaning. The second trend discussed here, consisting of subjectification as visible in the emergence of the interpretative function and the growing use of progressive + ALWAYS to denote subjective meanings, can be deemed to be a specific development which accompanied this particular grammaticalization process. The emergence of the interpretative function is probably best understood as a fully language-specific development. The emergence of subjective meaning associated with progressive + ALWAYS, on the other hand, may be understood as progressive-specific, since similar uses are evidenced e.g. in present-day Spanish and Italian, where the estar + gerund and stare + gerund progressive constructions respectively, when combined with an always-type adverbial, also generally have subjective meaning, typically one of disapproval (cf. Bertinetto 2000: 569, Yllera 1999: 3404f.). The explanation referred to in the discussion of the English progressive may also be considered valid for progressive + ALWAYS constructions in other languages: the typical reason for a speaker to depict an

248

The Progressive in Modern English

event as being continuously ongoing when, objectively speaking, it is not, seems to be that s/he finds the occurrence of the event annoying. The claim that subjectification typically accompanies grammaticalization was originally meant to refer to a universal tendency (Traugott 1982, 1990, 1995).190 This seems very doubtful on the basis of the present investigation and also on the basis of general logical grounds, since the acquisition of more clearcut grammatical functions may be expected to be generally accompanied by a decrease rather than by a rise of subjective meanings.

190

Traugott’s (forthc.) view that it is primary grammaticalization, i.e. the very early stages of a grammaticalization process which is accompanied by subjectification is not discussed here, since the earliest stages of the progressive are not dealt with in detail in the present work. The results from Killie (2008), according to which the progressive is most often used with subjective meanings in OE, encourages the assumption that constructions which only just emerged as grammaticalized constructions from independent lexemes indeed show a tendency to be used at first mostly with speaker-based meanings. This would seem plausible, because at such an early stage, they do not yet have any grammatical functions, so that speakers are free to decide when to use them. A desire for emphasis may in such cases be considered a typical motivation for using a semantically still underdefined construction which is lengthier and thus has more weight than a simple verb form (cf. also Ronan 2003: 142, who introduces this idea in order to explain the emphatic use of the progressive construction in Old Irish, cf. also Kranich forthc.).

9.

Conclusion

9.1

Results on the development of the English progressive

The present work has aimed at investigating the development of the English progressive in a long-term diachronic study, covering its whole ‘life span’, from its origins to its present-day use, with a focus on the modern development based on the analysis of ARCHER-2 (1600-1999). The meaning of the present-day progressive was discussed first in order to lay the foundation for the study. Diverse, often controversial approaches exist concerning this topic: the core function of the progressive is widely understood as aspectual, but some studies put stronger emphasis on the importance of certain properties of the situation which is referred to (such as duration, or the covert or overt nature of the situation), while others again focus on more speaker- based meanings such as the expression of subjective attitudes, hedging, or the use of the progressive as a marker of the interpretative function. All of these approaches highlight relevant aspects of the functions of the form, but no single approach accounts for all uses of the progressive. So the conclusion was reached that no single core meaning of the progressive can be made out but that the construction is used in PDE on the one hand with aspectual meaning and on the other with subjective functions. Certain issues, such as the question whether the progressive should be seen as a marker of progressive or of general imperfective aspect in PDE, could not be resolved through evaluation of the arguments presented in the literature. These open questions were postponed until the analysis of the ARCHER data, but before the ModE development was discussed in detail, the evolution of the progressive before the period focused had to be briefly considered. The discussion of the origin of the English progressive arrived at the conclusion that the progressive is a native development, which can have arisen through the reanalysis of three types of ambiguous constructions (be + adjectival participle, be + appositive participle, be + agent noun). In all likelihood, the existence of these three patterns combined to impel the emergence of the construction be (AUX) + present participle. Evidence has been presented that allows the assumption that this first step in the grammaticalization of the progressive form, the primary grammaticalization by which the combination reached the status of a periphrastic construction, had already taken place within the OE period. As we saw, the function of this construction was, however, not yet clearly grammatical. In OE and ME, it is only for the sake of a uniform denomination that we speak of the ‘progressive’, since the construction was in general not yet used to express progressive aspect. Rather, two main factors governed its use: it emphasized either the durative and/or imperfective nature of the situation or the ‘remarkableness’ of the situation.

250

The Progressive in Modern English

Thus, there is a note of truth in Rydén’s (1997) proposal of a ‘double core function’. It exaggerates the similarity of the use in different periods by calling this function ‘panchronic’:191 as we have seen, the importance of the two components shifts considerably as the aspectual function grammaticalizes. We can agree, however, that there are two facets of meaning of the progressive and that these have been there, in different forms and with different relative importance, since the beginnings of the form. This is not hard to explain. If we take it as fact that the progressive emerged through the reanalysis of the three different patterns repeated above, we can see how the use to stress the durative nature of a situation may have been the first typical meaning of the construction, since the present participle is inherently durative and agent nouns also generally refer to an enduring characteristic of the subject so that when they are reinterpreted as verbal, they will refer to a lasting state-of-affairs. Furthermore, adjectival and appositive present participles as well as agent nouns refer to characteristics of situations or subjects that still hold at TT. When reinterpreted as part of a verbal construction, it is to be expected that this verbal construction will be used predominantly for situations viewed without their final boundaries and could, in this way, become associated with the expression of imperfective aspect. The more subjective use of the construction is also not difficult to account for: its use when it first grammaticalized was not fixed in any way, so the construction was easy to recruit when some sort of emphasis was wished for. As the lengthier form (compared to a simple verb form), it would have been felt to be ideal for giving weight to an expression. It is only within the modern period that these two rather vague motivations for using the construction crystallize as fixed functions in the long process of secondary grammaticalization which the present work has concentrated on. Several accompanying processes can be made out. We can see that the progressive increases in frequency throughout the time span under consideration. An increase in frequency can be taken as an indication of grammaticalization, 191

One should also point out that ‘action-focused’ (Rydén’s term for the aspectual meaning) is not an adequate description for the progressive in earlier periods at all, since there it is often used with reference to stative situations. ‘Attitude-focused’ (Rydén’s term for the subjective meanings) may also be more applicable to the PDE use than to older stages of the language, since in OE, one can notice that the construction serves less as an expression of the speaker’s subjective attitude, and more as a stylistic device to mark the most important, most dramatic moments in a narrative. One may call this kind of use more subjective as well, in the sense that it is not firmly grounded in the properties of a situation in the external world, and more in the individual conceptualization of the speaker. However, the choice of which moments in a narrative to highlight is more conventionalized than the purely speaker-based decision that generally motivates use of the subjective progressive in PDE e.g. in (35b) Paul’s always sleeping at our apartment, where the progressive is only chosen to express the negative attitude of the speaker.

Conclusion

251

since as the grammatical meaning becomes more and more established, use of the construction is judged to be appropriate in an ever greater number of contexts, later even becoming obligatory in some of them. The results highlight, however, that one should not expect that a construction in the process of secondary grammaticalization will exhibit a more and more balanced extension across genres or linguistic contexts. Such an expectation ignores the crucial role that the semantics of the specific construction plays. We can see that the progressive does not become more and more evenly distributed across the different genres contained in ARCHER but that its use remains favored in drama, private letters, and fiction, while other genres (news, religious sermons, and journals) show a roughly average frequency, and a third group (medical and scientific texts) exhibits very low frequencies throughout the period under consideration. The two main facets of meaning of the form − reference to progressive aspect and speakerbased functions − can be expected to be needed less often in neutral descriptions of general facts, as in specialist expository writing (such as scientific and medical texts), where neither dynamic processes nor the speaker’s attitude play an important role. Brunner’s (1962: 378) view that the meaning of the progressive may be responsible for its varying frequencies across text types thus finds confirmation in the present results. Considering the extension of the progressive across different linguistic contexts in the modern period, we saw that the increase in frequency of the progressive is not, as hypothesized e.g. by Strang (1982: 452), due mainly to its increasing extension across all linguistic contexts. An exception can be seen in the spread of the progressive to the formally marked passive.192 This constitutes a newly emerging combinatory possibility which can be seen as a result of further grammaticalization. However, this spread to the passive does not account for a great proportion of the overall increase. Concerning the extension across the verbal paradigm, we can note that although combinatory possibilities have increased, longer combinations remain rare, and all in all, the progressive continues to be used mostly in the present or past tense, without a perfect or a modal. Main clause use, stressed in Strang’s (1982) study as a rarity in 18th century novels, emerges from a more balanced corpus like ARCHER as a frequently-used option throughout the time span under consideration, showing a noticeable increase since the 19th century. Regarding subject types, we found that inanimate and non-agentive subjects were possible from the earliest data contained in ARCHER onwards, and although in the 19th century their frequency rises, we must note that animate and/or agentive subjects remain favored in the 20th century, even exhibiting a relative rise once more after 1900. A certain rise in the use of the progressive with stative situation types was noted in the 20th century, but the impact of this development on the general rise in frequency is rather small. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis of the stative 192

The specification that the innovation lies in the formally marked passive progressive is necessary because in earlier periods the formally active progressive could be used with passive meaning (the so-called ‘passival’).

252

The Progressive in Modern English

instances does not allow one to see this as an extension to new contexts: the type of stative verbs used with the progressive seem to remain the same, i.e. they generally refer to states of limited duration (e.g. wear, wait). Overall the main increase occurs in those contexts where the progressive has been established since the beginning of the period studied, i.e. since the 17th century: in active, present and past tense contexts, with agentive and animate subjects, and a predicate referring to an activity or accomplishment type of situation. The semantic analysis showed which factors are really responsible for the rise of the progressive. We saw that the aspectual function became more established and caused the increase in the 17th and 18th centuries but that the later increase in the 19th and 20th centuries is in fact due to a larger extent to the establishment of a further subjective function of the progressive, namely the interpretative function. The functional development of the construction can be summed up as follows: the EModE use of the construction can be assumed to still be similar to OE and ME use, in that the construction is preferably used on the one hand for imperfective and durative situations and on the other for emphasis. The data from the first half of the 17th century suggests that the progressive was still used for stative situations of unlimited duration and that subjective uses represented a greater share of all occurrences. This changes in the time between 1650 and 1800, when the aspectual use becomes more and more predominant. We can assume that this is the period in which the grammatical function crystallizes, i.e. a crucial period for the secondary grammaticalization of the form. In the late 18th and the 19th centuries, the more clearly grammatical status of the construction leads to its extension across the verbal paradigm: it becomes combinable with the explicit expression of passive voice, and it occurs with full verbs have and be. Evidence for subjectification can be found in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the interpretative function becomes more ingrained in the language, while the combination of progressive + ALWAYS seems to become increasingly restricted to subjective meanings, showing signs of becoming specifically associated with the expression of negative speaker attitude in recent times. Since the progressive as a marker of aspect is mostly used with predicates denoting situations of limited duration, the combination with an always-type adverbial can be understood as marking that the construction is probably not used in its aspectual meaning. The specialization to expressions of negative attitude would appear to go back to a general human tendency to exaggerate the duration or frequency of situations which are perceived as irritating rather than pleasant. The use of the progressive as a marker of subjective interpretation, on the other hand, can be assumed to originate from the aspectual use in so far as the latter is commonly used to mark a situation as simultaneous to another situation, i.e. as co-extensive in time. When a speaker introduces a subjective interpretation via a comparison − the typical context of early instances of the interpretative progressive being subordinate clauses introduced by as if or similar conjunctions − the same construction can be used to mark co-referentiality (i.e. that the interpretation offered in the as ifclause makes reference to the same situation described more neutrally in the simple form in the main clause). The rise in frequency of the progressive which

Conclusion

253

goes on continuously throughout the time span thus turned out to be due to two distinct developments: the establishment of the aspectual function (taking place between 1650 and 1900) and the spread of a new subjective function, namely the interpretative progressive (starting in the 19th and gaining momentum in the 20th century). The aspectual function, however, clearly remains the predominant one, and the use of aspectual progressives continues to rise in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th century, this probably has to do with the obligatorification of the progressive in certain contexts. The further, less pronounced increase in aspectual uses in the 20th century, by contrast, can be connected to an increasingly frequent selection of the progressive in those contexts where its use is optional. The semantic analysis of the construction allows us to understand more fully its distribution across linguistic contexts: if a construction is typically used as progressive aspect marker, i.e. to mark a situation as dynamically in progress at TT, it can be expected to be most often needed in reference to either present or past contexts, with no further modification by a perfect, a future marker, or a modal. In present contexts, a progressive marks the situation as in progress at a time span encompassing TU; in the past, the situation is marked as ongoing at some definite moment before the TU. Combinations of progressive with perfect, modal or future auxiliaries produce more specific meanings, which can be assumed to be less often required. The preferred situation types are also easily explained: the progressive is generally restricted to dynamic situations and used with states in general only when these have the property of being temporary. Because the progressive makes reference only to a part of the situation expressed by the predicate, it is clear that the situation type ought to be durative, so that speakers can view the situation without its endpoints. The typical use with specific subject types is also derivable from the meaning of the construction: as dynamic situations require some input of energy, it is to be expected that the subjects are mostly agents or animate, since they have to supply this energy. The corpus analysis also enabled us to discuss more conclusively the question of whether situations that can be referred to using a progressive have typical properties. The progressive in its aspectual use was found to be generally used with situations that are dynamic, durative, carried out by agents and overt. Limited duration turned out to be particularly relevant for the less typical use of the progressive with stative predicates. This trend can also be linked to its general use for dynamic situations: as dynamic situations require an input of energy, they are mostly (but not always) of limited duration, because the energy is typically not endlessly supplied. In order for stative predicates to be permitted in this normally dynamic construction, they must generally at least fulfill the criterion of limited duration. Subjective uses of the progressive show somewhat different characteristics. They seem to allow stative predicates a little more easily (though here, the absolute numbers are too small for firm conclusions), while their association with agentive and animate subjects is even more remarkable than in the case of the aspectual use of the progressive. Whereas the progressive overall

254

The Progressive in Modern English

can be said to be commonly used for overt situations, the interpretative progressive shows a very strong association with covert situations. These characteristics are not surprising: interpretations will most often involve predications that are not immediately verifiable. The general trend for animate and agentive subjects is also easily explained, since it is mostly animate, agentive beings whose actions speakers will express a certain attitude towards, wish to emphasize, interpret, or comment upon. The rise of the interpretative progressive can thus explain the visible increase in the association of the progressive with animate and agentive subjects from the 19th to the 20th century. 9.2

Results concerning methodology and general theoretical assumptions

Some more general results were also gained from the present work. One result concerns the quest for valid criteria for the semantic classification of progressives in a given corpus. Formal linguistic factors have been proposed for this purpose, since supposedly, subjective progressives exhibit a markedly different distribution across linguistic contexts from aspectual progressives. This assumption was shown to be fallacious. Based on the manual textual analysis of the progressives in ARCHER, it was shown that some of these proposed factors, such as first and second person subject and present tense occurrence, do indeed occur somewhat more often when the meaning of the progressive is subjective, but the relation is by no means strong enough to make a classification of instances using formal criteria appear acceptable. The method used in the present study has the disadvantage of being time-consuming, because the context of each individual example had to be taken into account for the classification, but it can be presumed to produce more reliable results. Subjective decisions can, of course, be less fully excluded than if formal properties such as subject type and clause type are taken as guides, but through the use of the criterion that other subjective markers must be present in the co-text for an instance to be classified as subjective it is hoped that the subjective element of the classification process was minimized. Weighing the pros and cons, the method chosen in the present work can certainly be deemed a more reliable way of classifying examples than using inappropriate formal criteria. An even more general result of the present work is that it should not be assumed that grammaticalization and subjectification always go hand in hand. Rather, it could be suggested that at a crucial stage of the grammaticalization of the functions of an element or a construction, the subjective uses the latter may have been put to previously can be assumed to lose in importance. This can easily be related to other typical characteristics of secondary grammaticalization such as an increasing stabilization of grammatical meaning, further semantic bleaching and, last but not least, obligatorification.

Conclusion 9.3

255

Suggestions for further research

The general hypothesis that secondary grammaticalization may be accompanied by ‘objectification’ (or ‘de-subjectification’) would be in need of further studies of diverse grammaticalization pathways in different languages (from as many different language families as possible). Since one can expect that, as in the case of the progressive, more grammatical and more subjective meanings can be expressed by a single marker, studies of large-scale diachronic corpora combining quantitative and qualitative analysis would be called for in order to see which uses occur when and in what proportions. Furthermore, particular details in the development of the English progressive would also profit from further investigation. The overview of the historical development of the progressive has shown the necessity for detailed work on the ME progressive based on a representative corpus. Smith (2007) and Killie (2008) have provided some valuable insights, but research on a more extensive data basis is needed in order to make e.g. the dialectal distribution of the construction clearly apparent. A study of the EModE part of the development on a broader data basis is also warranted. So far, the Helsinki Corpus has been studied (Elsness 1994, Núñez Pertejo 2004a), but it is too small for detailed analysis. ARCHER-2 also contains a less than satisfying amount of data for the 17th century. Since we can furthermore see that open questions remain concerning the impact of sociolinguistic variables such as gender and class, it would be fruitful to study the progressive using CEEC. Finally, we can see that the use of the progressive still shows some variation in the 20th century. The interpretative use continues to increase in frequency, and the use of the subjective progressive + ALWAYS appears to get specialized to negative contexts. These developments would be fruitfully investigated further using late 20th century corpora such as the ‘BROWN-family’.

References Main Source of data: ARCHER-2, A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 2. 19901993/2002. Compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University, University of Southern California, University of Freiburg, University of Helsinki, Uppsala University and University of Heidelberg. References Aristar, A. and H. Dry. (1982), ‘The Origin of Backgrounding Tenses in English’, in: K. Tuite, R. Schneider and R. Chametzky (eds.) Papers from the Eighteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. April 15-16, 1982. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1-13. Arnaud, R. (1973), La Forme Progressive en Anglais du XIXe siècle. Lille: Service de Reproduction de Thèses Université Lille III. Arnaud, R. (1983), ‘On the Progress of the Progressive in the Private Correspondence of Famous British People (1800-1880)’, in: S. Jacobson (ed.) Papers from the Second Scandinavian Symposium on Syntactic Variation. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 83-94. Arnaud, R. (1998), ‘The Development of the Progressive in 19th Century English: A Quantative Survey’, Language Variation and Change 10, 123-152. Arnaud, R. (2002), Letter-Writers of the Romantic Age and the Modernization of English (A Quantitative Historical Survey of the Progressive). Accessed at http://web.univpau.fr/saes/pb/bibliographies/A/arnaud/romanticletterwriters. pdf during 2007. Asher, N. (1992), ‘A Default, Truth Conditional Semantics for the Progressive’, Linguistics and Philosophy 15, 463-508. Bache, C. (1997), The Study of Aspect, Tense and Action. Towards a Theory of the Semantics of Grammatical Categories. 2nd revised ed. Frankfurt/Main: Lang. Bäcklund, U. (1986), ‘Towards ‘Perfective’ Co-time. A Study of the Progressive in English’, Cahiers de Lexicologie 49, 95-129.

References

257

Bailey, R. (1996), Nineteenth-Century English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bégin, C. (1996), ‘Characterizing the Type of Outcome Evoked by the Perfect Simple and the Perfect Progressive in English’. Révue Québecoise de Linguistique 24, 39-52. Bertinetto, P. M., K. H. Ebert and C. de Groot (2000), ‘The Progressive in Europe’, in: Ö. Dahl (ed.) Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 517-558. Biber, D. (1988), Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D. (2004), ‘Modal Use across Registers and Time’, in: A. Curzan and K. Emmons (eds.) Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Berlin: De Gruyter, 189-216. Biber, D. and E. Finegan (1989), ‘Drift and the Evolution of English Style: A History of Three Genres’, Language 65, 487-517. Biber, D. and E. Finegan (1992), ‘The Linguistic Evolution of Five Written and Speech-based English Genres from the 17th to the 20th Centuries’, in: M. Rissanen, O. Ihalainen, T. Nevalainen and I. Taavitsainen (eds.) History of Englishes. New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter, 688-704. Biber, D., E. Finegan and D. Atkinson (1994), ‘ARCHER and its Challenges: Compiling and Exploring a Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers’, in: U. Fries, G. Tottie and P. Schneider (eds.) Creating and Using English Language Corpora. Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, Zürich 1993. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1-13. Biber, D. and E. Finegan (1997), ‘Diachronic Relations Among Speech-Based and Written Registers in English’, in: T. Nevalainen and L. Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.) To Explain the Present. Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 253-275. Biber, D., S. Conrad and R. Reppen (1998), Corpus Linguistics. Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan (1999), Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Pearson Education.

258

The Progressive in Modern English

Binnick, R. (1991), Time and the Verb. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bodelsen, C.A. (1936-1937/1974), ‘The Expanded Tenses in Modern English. An Attempt at an Explanation’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974), Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 144-162. Braunmüller, K. (1999), Die Skandinavischen Sprachen im Überblick. 2nd ed. Tübingen: Francke. Brinton, L. (1987), ‘The Aspectual Nature of States and Habits’, Folia Linguistica XXI, 195-214. Brinton, L. (1988), The Development of English Aspectual Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, L. and E. C. Traugott (2005), Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broccias, C. (2008), ‘Imperfectivity and Transience: The Two Sides of the Progressive Aspect in Simultaneity as- and while-clauses’, Journal of English Linguistics 36, 155-178. Brunner, K. (1955), ‘Expanded Verbal Forms in Early Modern English’, English Studies 36, 218-221. Brunner, K. (1962), Die Englische Sprache. Vol. II. 2nd ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Buyssens, E. (1968), Les Deux Aspectifs de la Conjugaison Anglaise au XXe Siècle. Étude de l’Expression de l’Aspect. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles. Bybee, J. (2003), ‘Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization. The Role of Frequency’, in: B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 602-623. Bybee, J. and Ö. Dahl (1989), ‘The Creation of Tense and Aspect Systems in the Language of the World’, Studies in Language 13, 51-103. Bybee, J., R. Perkins and W. Pagliuca (1994), The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

References

259

Calver, E. (1946/1974), ‘The Uses of the Present Tense Forms in English’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974), Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 163-176. Campbell, A. (1967), ‘Review of Nickel (1966)’, Review of English Studies 18, 443-444. Campbell, L. (ed.) (2001), Grammaticalization: A Critical Assessment. Oxford: Pergamon. Charleston, B. M. (1955), ‘A Reconsideration of the Problem of Time, Tense, and Aspect in Modern English’, English Studies 36, 263-278. Charleston, B. M. (1960), Studies on the Emotional and Affective Means of Expression in Modern English. Bern: Francke. Chilton, P. (2007), ‘Geometrical Concepts at the Interface of Formal and Cognitive Models’, Pragmatics & Cognition 15, 91-114. Chung, S. and A. Timberlake (1987), ‘Tense, Aspect and Mood’, in: T. Shopen (ed.) Language Typology and Syntactic Description – Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins, P. (2008), ‘The Progressive Aspect in World Englishes: A Corpus-based Study’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 28, 225-249. Comrie, B. (1976), Aspect. An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comrie, B. (1995), ‘Tense and Aspect’, in: J. Jacobs, A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld and T. Vennemann (eds.) Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Vol. 9.2. Syntax. Ein Internationales Handbuch Zeitgenössischer Forschung. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1244-51. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1995), ‘On the Foregrounded Progressive in American Conversational Narrative: a New Development?’, in: W. Riehle, and H. Keiper (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 229-245. Curme, G. O. (1932), ‘Some Characteristic Features of Aspect in English’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 31, 251-255. Dagut, M. B. (1977), ‘A Semantic Analysis of the ‘Simple’/‘Progressive’ Dichotomy of the English Verb’, Linguistics 202, 47-61.

260

The Progressive in Modern English

Dahl, Ö. (1985/Reprinted 1987), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell. Dahl, Ö. (2000), ‘The Tense-Aspect Systems of European Languages in a Typological Perspective’, in: Ö. Dahl (ed.) Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 3-25. Dal, I. (1952), ‘Zur Entstehung des Englischen Participium Praesentis auf -ing’, Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap 16, 5-116. De Groot, C. (2007), ‘The king is on huntunge: On the Relation between Progressive and Absentive in Old and Early Modern English’, in: M. Hannay and G. J. Steen (eds.) Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar. In honour of Lachlan Mackenzie. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 175-190. Denison, D. (1985), ‘Some Observations on being teaching’, Studia Neophilologica 57, 157-159. Denison, D. (1993), English Historical Syntax. London: Longman. Denison, D. (1998), ‘Syntax’, in: S. Romaine (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. IV. 1776-1997. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 92-329. Dennis, L. (1948), ‘The Progressive Tense: Frequency of its Use in English’, PMLA 55, 855-865. Diewald, G. (2004), ‘Einleitung: Entwicklungen und Fragen in der Grammatikalisierungsforschung’, Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32, 137-151. Diewald, G. (2007), ‘On Some Problem Areas in Grammaticalization Theory – and a Suggestion How to Tackle them’, Plenary talk delivered at the Workshop What’s new in grammaticalization?, Freie Universität Berlin 11-12 May 2007. Dowty, D. R. (1977), ‘Toward a Semantic Analysis of Verb Aspect and the English ‘Imperfective’ Progressive’, Linguistics and Philosophy 1, 45-77. Durst-Andersen, P. (2000), ‘The English Progressive as Picture Description’, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 32, 45-103. Ebert, K. (2000), ‘Progressive Markers in Germanic languages’, in: Ö. Dahl (ed.) Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter 605-653.

References

261

Edgren, E. (1985), ‘The Progressive in English: Another New Approach’, Studia Linguistica 39, 67-83. Edmondson, W. and J. House (1981), Let’s Talk and Talk About It. A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg. Ehlich, K. (1997), ‘Alltagserzählung’, in: K. Weimar, H. Fricke, K. Grubmüller and J.-D. Müller (eds.) Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Vol. I (A-G). Berlin: De Gruyter, 49-53. Elsness, J. (1994), ‘On the Progression of the Progressive in Early Modern English’, ICAME Journal 18, 5-25. Evert, S. (2006), ‘How Random is a Corpus? The Library Metaphor’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54, 177-190. Faarlund, J. T. (2004), The Syntax of Old Norse. With a Survey of the Inflectional Morphology and a Complete Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fanego, T. (1996), ‘The Gerund in Early Modern English: Evidence from the Helsinki Corpus’, Folia Linguistica Historica 17, 97-152. Filppula, M. (2003), ‘More on the English Progressive and the Celtic Connection’, in: H. L. C. Tristram (ed.) The Celtic Englishes III. Heidelberg: Winter, 150-168. Fischer, O. (1992), ‘Syntax’, in: N. Blake (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II. 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 207- 408. Fischer, O. (2007), Morphosyntactic Change. Functional and Formal Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fischer, O. and W. van der Wurff (2006), ‘Syntax’, in: R. Hogg and D. Denison (eds.) A History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitzmaurice, S. (1998), ‘Grammaticalisation, Textuality and Subjectivity. The Progressive and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in: D. Stein and R. Sornicola (eds.) The Virtues of Language. History in Language, Linguistics and Texts. Papers in Memory of Thomas Frank. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 21-49.

262

The Progressive in Modern English

Fitzmaurice, S. (2004a), ‘The Meanings and Uses of the Progressive Construction in an Early Eighteenth-Century English Network’, in: A. Curzan and K. Emmons (eds.) Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Berlin: De Gruyter, 131-173. Fitzmaurice, S. (2004b), ‘A Brief Response’, in: A. Curzan and K. Emmons (eds.) Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Berlin: De Gruyter, 183-188. Fortson, B. W. IV. (2003), ‘An Approach to Semantic Change’, in: B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 648-666. Frajzyngier, Z., M. Bond, L. Heintzelman, D. Keller, S. Ogihara and E. Shay (2008), ‘Towards and Understanding of the Progressive Form in English. The Imperative as a Heuristic Tool’, in: W. Abraham and E. Leiss (eds.) ModalityAspect Interfaces. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 81-96. Freckmann, N. (1995), ‘The Progressive and Adverbial Collocations: Corpus Evidence’, in: W. Riehle, and H. Keiper, (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 255-267. Gabbay, D. and J. Moravcsik (1980), ‘Verbs, Events and the Flow of Time’, in: C. Rohrer (ed.) Time, Tense, and Quantifiers: Proceedings of the Stuttgart Conference on the Logic of Tense and Quantification. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 59-83. Girard, G. (2002), ‘Aspect, Choix Sémiques, Valeur de Vérité’, in: V. Lagae, A. Carlier and C. Benninger (eds.) Temps et Aspect: De la Grammaire au Lexique. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 79-96. Givón, T. (2001), Syntax: An Introduction. Vol. 1. Grammar, Comparative and General. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Glasbey, S. (1996). ‘The Progressive: A Channel-Theoretic Analysis’, Journal of Semantics 13, 331-361. Goedsche, C. R. 1932. ‘The Terminate Aspect of the Expanded Form: Its Development and Its Relation to the Gerund’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 31, 469-477. Goldsmith, J. and E. Woisetschlaeger (1982), ‘The Logic of the English Progressive’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 79-89.

References

263

Goosens, L. (1994), ‘The English Progressive Tenses and the Layered Representation of Functional Grammar’, in: C. Vet and C. Vetters (eds.) Tense and Aspect in Discourse. Berlin: De Gruyter, 161-177. Görlach, M. (1994), Einführung ins Frühneuenglische. 2nd ed. Heidelberg: Winter. Görlach, M. (1999), English in Nineteenth-Century England. An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gougenheim, G. (1929), Étude sur les Périphrases Verbales de la Langue Française. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Goyvaerts, D. L. (1968), ‘Towards a Theory of the Expanded Form’, La Linguistique 2, 118-124. Gülich, E. (1980), ‘Konventionelle Muster und Kommunikative Funktion von Alltagserzählungen’, in: Ehlich, Konrad (ed.) Erzählen im Alltag. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 335-384. Halliday, M. A. K. (1980), ‘On Being Teaching’, in: S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (eds.) Studies in English Linguistics: For Randolph Quirk. London: Longman, 61-64. Hancil, S. (2003), ‘A Study of the Expanded Form in Private Letters from the Fifteenth Century Onwards’, Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies 14, 7-20. Hatcher, A. G. (1951/1974), ‘The Use of the Progressive Form in English. A New Approach’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974), Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 177-216. Heine, B. (1994), ‘Grammaticalization as an Explanatory Parameter’, in: W. Pagliuca (ed.) Perspectives on Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Heine, B. (2003), ‘Grammaticalization’, in: B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 575-601. Heine, B. and M. Reh (1984), Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: H. Buske. Heine, B. and T. Kuteva (2002), World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

264

The Progressive in Modern English

Heine, B. and T. Kuteva (2005), Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Higginbotham, J. (2004), ‘The English Progressive’, in: J. Guéron and J. Lecarme (eds.) The Syntax of Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 329-358. Hirtle, W. H. (1967), The Simple and Progressive Forms. An Analytical Approach. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval. Hirtle, W. H. and C. Bégin (1990), ‘TO BE in the Progressive: A New Use.’ Canadian Journal of Linguistics 35, 1-11. Hofland, K. and S. Johansson (1982), Word Frequencies in British and American English. Bergen: The Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities. Holt, J. (1943), ‘Études d’Aspect’, Acta Jutlandica 15, 1-84. Hopper, P. J. (1979), ‘Some Observations on the Typology of Focus and Aspect in Narrative Language’, Studies in Language 3, 37-64. Hopper, P. J. (1991), ‘On Some Principles of Grammaticization’, in: E. C. Traugott and R. B. Dasher (eds.) Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17-35. Hopper, P. J. and E. C. Traugott (2003), Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hübler, A. (1998), The Expressivity of Grammar. Grammatical Devices Expressing Emotion across Time. Berlin: De Gruyter. Huddleston, R. D. and G. K. Pullum (2002), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hundt, M. (2004a), ‘The Passival and the Progressive Passive: A Case Study of Layering in the English Aspect and Voice Systems’, in: H. Lindquist and C. Mair (eds.) Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 79-120. Hundt, M. (2004b), ‘Animacy, Agentivity, and the Spread of the Progressive in Modern English’, English Language and Linguistics 8, 47-69. Hundt, M. and C. Mair (1999), ‘‘Agile’ and ‘Uptight’ Genres: The Corpus-based Approach to Language Change in Progress’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4, 221-242.

References

265

Jäger, G. and A. Rosenbach (2008), ‘Priming and Unidirectional Language Change’, Theoretical Linguistics 34, 85-113. Jensen, F. (1990), Old French and Comparative Gallo-Romance Syntax. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Jespersen, O. (1931), A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part IV. Syntax (Third volume: Time and Tense). Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung. Johnson, M. R. (1981), ‘A Unified Temporal Theory of Tense and Aspect’, in: P. J. Tedeschi and A. Zaenen (eds.) Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 14. Tense and Aspect. London: Academic Press, 145-175. Jones, M. A. (1996), Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joos, M. (1964), The English Verb. Form and Meaning. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Jørgensen, E. (1990), ‘Verbs of Physical Perception Used in Progressive Tenses’, English Studies 71, 439-444. Jørgensen, E. (1991), ‘The Progressive Tenses and the So-called ‘NonConclusive’ Verbs’, English Studies 72, 173-182. Kenny, A. (1963), Action, Emotion, and Will. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kilgarriff, A. (2005), ‘Language is Never, Ever, Ever, Random’, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1, 263-275. Killie, K. (2004), ‘Subjectivity and the English Progressive’, English Language and Linguistics 8, 25-46. Killie, K. (2008), ‘From Locative to Durative to Focalized? The English Progressive and ‘PROG Imperfective Drift’’, in: M. Gotti, M. Dossena and R. Dury (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 2006. Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21-25 August 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 69-88. Klein, W. (1994), Time in Language. London: Routledge.

266

The Progressive in Modern English

König, E. (1980), ‘On the Context-Dependence of the Progressive in English’, in: C. Rohrer (ed.) Time, Tense, and Quantifiers: Proceedings of the Stuttgart Conference on the Logic of Tense and Quantification. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 269-291. König, E. (1995), ‘On Analyzing the Tense-Aspect System of English: a State-ofthe-art Report’, in: W. Riehle, and H. Keiper (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 153-169. Kortmann, B. (1991), ‘The Triad ‘Tense-Aspect-Aktionsart’. Problems and Possible Solutions’, in: C. Vetters and W. Vandeweghe (eds.) Perspectives on Aspect and Aktionsart. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 9-30. Kranich, S. (2003), French Influence on English Syntax. An Investigation into the Possibility of French Influence on the Development of the English Gerund. MA thesis, Freie Universität Berlin. Kranich, S. (2006), ‘The Origin of English Gerundial Constructions - a Case of French Influence?’, in: A. J. Johnston, F. von Mengden and S. Thim (eds.) Language and Text. Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology. Heidelberg: Winter, 179-195. Kranich, S. (2007), ‘Subjectification and the English Progressive. The History of ALWAYS + Progressive Constructions’, York Papers in Linguistics (Series 2) 8, 120-137. Kranich, S. (2008a), ‘Subjective Progressives in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century English. Secondary Grammaticalization as a Process of Objectification’, in: M. Gotti, M. Dossena and R. Dury (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 2006. Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21-25 August 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 241-256. Kranich, S. (2008b), ‘Grammaticalization, Subjectification and the Layering of Meanings. How to Deal with the Semantics of the Present-Day English Progressive’. Paper Presented at the New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4, University of Leuven, 16-19 July 2008. Kranich, S. (2008c), The Progressive in Modern English. A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes. Doctoral thesis, Freie Universität Berlin.

References

267

Kranich, S. (2009), ‘Interpretative Progressives in Late Modern English’, in: I. Tieken- Boon van Ostade and W. Van der Wurff (eds.) Current Issues in Late Modern English. Bern: Lang, 331-357. Kranich, S. (forthc.), ‘Grammaticalization, Subjectification and Objectification’, in K. Stathi, E. Gehweiler and E. König (eds.) Grammaticalization: Current Views and Issues. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Krug, M. (2003), Emerging Modals: Grammaticalization. Berlin: De Gruyter.

a

Corpus-based

Study

of

Landman, F. (1992), ‘The Progressive’, Natural Language Semantics 1, 1-32. Langacker, R. W. (1999), ‘Losing Control: Grammaticization, Subjectification, and Transparency’, in: A. Blank and P. Koch (eds.) Historical Semantics and Cognition. Berlin: De Gruyter, 147–175. Langacker, R. W. (2000), ‘Subjectification and Grammaticization’, in: R. W. Langacker (ed.) Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin: De Gruyter, 297– 315. Langacker, R. W. (2006), ‘Subjectification, Grammaticization and Conceptual Archetypes’, in: A. Athanasiadou, C. Canatzis and B. Cornillie (eds.) Subjectification. Various Paths to Subjectivity. Berlin: De Gruyter, 17-40. Lass, R. (1997), Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leech, G. N. (1987), Meaning and the English Verb. 2nd ed. London: Longman. Leech, G., M. Hundt, C. Mair and N. Smith (2009), Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehmann, C. (2002), Thoughts on Grammaticalization. 2nd revised ed. Erfurt: Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität. Lehmann, C. (2004), ‘Theory and Method in Grammaticalization’, Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32, 152-187. Leisi, E. (1960/1974), ‘Die Progressive Form im Englischen’, in: A. Schopf, (ed.) (1974) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 235-247. Ljung, M. (1980), Reflections on the English Progressive. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

268

The Progressive in Modern English

Lucko, P. (1995), ‘Between Aspect, Actionality and Modality: The Functions of the Expanded Form’, in: W. Riehle and H. Keiper (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 171-182. Mair, C. (2004), ‘Corpus Linguistics and Grammaticalisation Theory. Statistics, Frequencies and Beyond’, in: H. Lindquist and C. Mair (eds.) Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 121150. Mair, C. (2006), Twentieth-Century English: History, Standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Variation

and

Mair, C. and M. Hundt (1995a), ‘Why Is the Progressive Becoming More Frequent in English? A Corpus-Based Investigation of Language Change in Progress’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 43, 111-122. Mair, C. and M. Hundt (1995b), ‘Why Is the Progressive Becoming More Frequent in English? A Corpus-Based Investigation of Language Change in Progress’, in: W. Riehle, and H. Keiper (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 229-245. Meillet, A. (1912), ‘L’Évolution des Formes Grammaticales’, Scientia 12, no. 26, 6. Reprinted in A. Meillet (1958) Linguistique Historique et Linguistique Générale. Paris: Champion, 130-148. von Mengden, F. (2007), ‘A Modular View on Grammatical Change’, Paper Delivered at the Workshop What’s New in Grammaticalization?, Freie Universität Berlin, 11-12 May 2007. Michaelis, L. A. (2004), ‘Type Shifting in Construction Grammar: An Integrated Approach to Aspectual Coercion’, Cognitive Linguistics 15, 1-67. Mindt, D. (2000), An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb System. Berlin: Cornelsen. Mitchell, B. (1976) ‘Some Problems Involving Old English Periphrases with BEON/WESAN and the Present Participle’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77: 478-91. Mitchell, B. (1985), Old English Syntax. Vol. I. Concord, the Parts of Speech, and the Sentence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mittendorf, I. and E. Poppe (2000), ‘Celtic Contacts of the English Progressive?’, in: H. L. C. Tristram (ed.) The Celtic Englishes II. Heidelberg: Winter, 117145.

References

269

Mittwoch, A. (1988), ‘Aspects of English Aspect: On the Interaction of Perfect, Progressive and Durational Phrases’, Linguistics and Philosophy 11, 203-254. Mortelmans, T. (2004), ‘Grammatikalisierung und Subjektivierung: Traugott und Langacker revisited’, Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32, 188-209. Mossé, F. (1938), Histoire de la Forme Périphrastique être + participe présent en Germanique. Vols. I-II. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck. Mossé, F. (1957/1974), ‘Réflexions sur la Genèse de la ‘Forme Progressive’’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 377-397. Mustanoja, T. (1960), Néophilologique.

A

Middle

English

Syntax.

Helsinki:

Société

Mufwene, S. (1984), Stativity and the Progressive. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Nehls, D. (1974), Synchron-diachrone Untersuchungen zur Expanded Form im Englischen. München: Max Hueber Verlag. Nehls, D. (1988), ‘On the Development of the Grammatical Category of Verbal Aspect in English’, in: J. Klegraf and D. Nehls (eds.) Essays on the English Language and Applied Linguistics. On the Occasion of Gerhard Nickel’s 60th Birthday. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag, 173-198. Nesselhauf, N. (2007), ‘The Spread of the English Progressive and its ‘Future’ Use’, English Language and Linguistics 11, 191-207. Nevalainen, T. and H. Raumolin-Brunberg (2003), Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education. Newmeyer, F. J. (1998), Language Form and Language Function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nickel, G. (1966), Die Expanded Form im Altenglischen. Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag. Núñez Pertejo, P. (2004a), The Progressive in the History of English. München: LINCOM. Núñez Pertejo, P. (2004b), ‘Some Developments in the Semantics of the English Progressive from Old English to Early Modern English’, Revista Alcantina de Estudios Ingleses 17, 211-226.

270

The Progressive in Modern English

Núñez Pertejo, P. (2007a), ‘Aspects of the Use of the Progressive in the 18th Century’, in J. Pérez-Guerra, D. González-Álvarez, J. L. Bueno-Alonso and E. Rama-Martínez (eds.) ‘Of Varying Language and Opposing Creed’: New Insights into Late Modern English. Bern: Lang, 359-382. Núñez Pertejo, P. (2007b), ‘Some Observations on the Semantics of the Progressive in the Eighteenth Century: Aspectual and Non-aspectual Functions’ in: M. Losada Friend, P. R. Vaz, S. Hernández Santano and J. Casanova (eds.) Proceedings of the 30th International AEDEAN Conference. Huelva: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Huelva. [on CD-Rom] Nurmi, A. (1996), ‘Periphrastic DO and BE + ING: Interconnected Developments?’, in: T. Nevalainen and H. Raumolin-Brumberg (eds.) Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 151-165. OED = The Oxford English Dictionary online. 3rd, quarterly revised online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (http://www.oed.com) Onions, C. T. (1904), An Advanced English Syntax. London: Sonnenschein. Palmer, F. R. (1988), The English Verb. 2nd ed. London & New York: Longman. Poppe, E. (2002a), ‘The ‘Expanded Form’ in Insular Celtic and English. Some Historical and Comparative Considerations, with Special Emphasis on Middle Irish’, in: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and H. Pitkänen (eds.) The Celtic Roots of English. Joensuu: University of Joensuu, 237-270. Poppe, E. (2002b), ‘Zu den ‚erweiterten Formen‘ des Englischen und der Inselkeltischen Sprachen’, Sprachwissenschaft 27, 249-281. Portner, P. (1998), ‘The Progressive in Modal Semantics’, Language 74, 760787. Poutsma, H. A. (1926), A Grammar of Late Modern English. For the Use of Continental, Especially Dutch Students. Part II. The Parts of Speech. Section II. The Verb and the Particles. Groningen: P. Noordhoff. Pratt, L. and D. Denison (2000), ‘The Language of the Southey-Coleridge Circle’, Language Sciences 22, 401-22. Pürschel, H. (1981), ‘Der Gebrauch der Progressiven Form im Gesprochenen Englisch’, in: J. Esser and A. Hübler (eds.) Forms and Functions. Tübingen: Narr, 83-92.

References

271

Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Raith, J. (1951), Untersuchungen zum Englischen Grundsätzliches: Altenglisch. München: Hüber.

Aspekt.

Part

1.

Raith, J. (1968/1974), ‘Aktionsart und Aspekt’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 61-73. Raybould, E. (1957), ‘On Jane Austen’s Use of Expanded Verbal Forms. One More Method of Approach to the Problems Presented by these Forms’, Festschrift Brunner, Wiener Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie, 175-90. Reichenbach, H. (1947), Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: CollierMacmillan and London: Macmillan. Rissanen, M. (1999), ‘Syntax’, in: R. Lass (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. III. 1476-1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 187-331. Rohlfs, G. (1969), Grammatica Storica della Lingua Italiana e dei suoi Dialetti. Torino: Einaudi. Römer, U. (2005), ‘Shifting Foci in Language Description and Instruction: Towards a Lexical Grammar of Progressives’, Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 30, 127-142. Ronan, P. (2003), ‘Periphrastic Progressives in Old Irish’, in: H. L. C. Tristram (ed.) The Celtic Englishes II. Heidelberg: Winter, 129-149. Rydén, M. (1997), ‘On the Panchronic Core Meaning of the English Progressive’, in: T. Nevalainen and L. Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.) To Explain the Present. Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 419-429. Sairio, A. (2006), ‘Progressives in the Letters of Elizabeth Montagu and her Circle in 1738-1778’ in: C. Dalton-Puffer, D. Kastovsky, N. Ritt and H. Schendl (eds.) Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms. Bern: Lang, 167-189. Sairio, A. (2009), Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network. Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth-Century Epistolary English. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.

272

The Progressive in Modern English

Sasse, H.-J. (1991), ‘Aspect and Aktionsart. A Reconciliation’, in: C. Vetters and W. Vandeweghe (eds.) Perspectives on Aspect and Aktionsart. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 31-45. Scheffer, J. (1975), The Progressive in English. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995), Cognitive Space and Linguistic Case: Semantic and Syntactic Categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schopf, A. (1974), ‘Einleitung’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1-30. Schousboe, S. (2000), ‘The Endless Progressive’, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 32, 105-119. Sinclair, J. (1998), ‘The Lexical Item’, in: E. Weigand (ed.) Contrastive Lexical Semantics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1-24. Smith, C. S. (1983), ‘A Theory of Aspectual Choice’, Language 59, 479-501. Smith, C. S. (1997), The Parameter of Aspect. 2nd Ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Smith, C. (2004), ‘Use of Progressive Aspect in 18th-Century English: A Study of Personal Letters’, in: I. Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño and B. Crespo Garcia (eds.) New Trends in English Historical Linguistics. An Atlantic View. Coruña: Universidade de Coruña, 151-186. Smith, K. A. (2007), ‘The Development of the English Progressive’, Journal of Germanic Linguistics 19, 205-241. Smith, N. (2002), ‘Ever Moving On? The Progressive in Recent British English’, in: P. Peters, P. Collins and A. Smith (eds.) New Frontiers of Corpus Research. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 317-30. Smitterberg, E. (2000a), ‘The Progressive Form and Genre Variation during the Nineteenth Century’, in: R. Bermúdez-Otero, D. Denison, R. M. Hogg and C.B. McCully (eds.) Generative Theory and Corpus Studies. A Dialogue from 10 ICEHL. Berlin: De Gruyter, 283-297. Smitterberg, E. (2000b), ‘Pragmatic Functions of the Progressive Form in the 19th Century’, Paper delivered at the 11th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, September 2000, Santiago de Compostela.

References

273

Smitterberg, E. (2004), ‘Investigating the Expressive Progressive: On Susan M. Fitzmaurice’s ‘The Meanings and Uses of the Progressive Construction in an Early Eighteenth-Century English Network’’, in: A. Curzan and K. Emmons (eds.) Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Berlin: De Gruyter, 175-182. Smitterberg, E. (2005), The Progressive in 19th-Century English. A Process of Integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Smitterberg, E. (2008), ‘The Progressive and Phrasal Verbs. Evidence of Colloquialization in Nineteenth-Century English?’, in: T. Nevalainen, I. Taavitsainen, P. Pahta and M. Korhonen (eds.) The Dynamics of Linguistic Variation. Corpus Evidence on English Past and Present. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 269-289. Smitterberg, E, S. Reich and A. Hahn (2000). ‘The Present Progressive in Political and Academic Language in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Corpusbased Investigation’, ICAME Journal 24, 99-118. Stanzel, F. K. (1957), ‘Die Erzählsituation und die Umschriebenen Zeitformen’, Festschrift Brunner, Wiener Beitäge zur Englischen Philologie, 220-31. Stempel, W.-D. (1987), ‘Die Alltagserzählung als Kunst-Stück’, in: W. Erzgräber and P. Goetsch (eds.) Mündliches Erzählen im Alltag, Fingiertes Mündliches Erzählen in der Literatur. Tübingen: Narr, 122-135. Storms, G. (1964), ‘The Subjective and the Objective Form in Mdn English’, English Studies. Supplement Presented to R.W. Zandvoort on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, 57-63. Strang, B. (1982), ‘Some Aspects of the History of the be + ing Construction’, in: J. Anderson, (ed.) Language Form and Linguistic Variation. Papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 427-474. Tabor, W. and E. C. Traugott. (1998), ‘Structural Scope Expansion and Grammaticalization’, in: A. Giacalone-Ramat and P. J. Hopper (eds.), The Limits of Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 229-272. þráinsson, H. (2005), Setningar. Handbók um Setningafræði. Reykjavík: Almenna Bókafélagið. Traugott, E. C. (1972), A History of English Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

274

The Progressive in Modern English

Traugott, E. C. (1982), ‘From Propositional to Textual and Expressive Meanings: Some Semantic-Pragmatic Aspects of Grammaticalization’, in: W. P. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel (eds.) Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 245-271. Traugott, E. C. (1989), ‘On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change’, Language 65, 31-55. Traugott, E. C. (1990) ‘From Less to More Situated in Language: The Unidirectionality of Semantic Change’, in: S. Adamson, V. Law, N. Vincent and S. Wright (eds.) Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 496-517. Traugott, E. C. (1992), ‘Syntax’, in: R. Hogg (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. I. The Beginnings to 1066. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 168-289. Traugott, E. C. (1995), ‘Subjectification in Grammaticalisation’, in: D. Stein and S. Wright (eds.) Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 31-54. Traugott, E. C. (2003), ‘Constructions in Grammaticalization’, in: B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 624-647. Traugott, E. C. (forthc.), ‘From Ideational to Interpersonal. A Reassessment’, in: H. Cuyckens, K. Davidse and L. Vandelanotte (eds.) Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization. Berlin: De Gruyter. Traugott, E. C. and E. König (1991), ‘The Semantics-Pragmatics of Grammaticalization Revisited’, in: E. C. Traugott and B. Heine (eds.) Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol. I. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 189-216. Tristram, H. L. C. (1995), ‘Aspect in Contact’, in: W. Riehle, and H. Keiper (eds.) Anglistentag 1994 Graz: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 269-294. Van der Gaaf, W. (1930/1974), ‘Some Notes on the History of the Progressive Form’, in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 356-376. Van Ek, J. A. (1969), ‘The ‘Progressive’ Reconsidered’, English Studies 50, 579585. Van Pottelberge, J. (2004), Der ‚am‘-Progressiv. Struktur und Parallele Entwicklung in den Kontinentalwestgermanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr.

References

275

Van Pottelberge, J. (2007), ‘Defining Grammatical Constructions as a Linguistic Sign: The Case of Periphrastic Progressives in the Germanic Languages’, Folia Linguistica 41, 99-134. Vendler, Z. (1957/1974), ‘Verbs and Time’. in: A. Schopf (ed.) (1974) Der Englische Aspekt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 217-234. Vezzosi, L. (1996), ‘La Costruzione Participio Presente + Verbo ‘essere’ in Anglosassone: Un Antesignano della Forma Progressiva o Qualcosa di Diverso?’, Studi e Saggi Linguistici 36, 157-210. Visser, F. T. (1973), An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Part III, 2nd Half. Syntactical Units with Two and More Verbs. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Vlach, F. (1981), ‘The Semantics of the Progressive’, in: P. J. Tedeschi and A. Zaenen (eds.) Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 14. Tense and Aspect. London: Academic Press, 271-291. Voß, W. (2004), Taschenbuch der Statistik. 2nd ed. Leipzig: Fachbuchverlag Leipzig. Warner, A. (1995), ‘Predicting the Progressive Passive: Parametric Change within a Lexicalist Framework’, Language 71, 533-557. Warner, A. (1997), ‘Extending the Paradigm: An Interpretation of the Historical Development of Auxiliary Sequences in English’, English Studies 78, 162-189. Weinrich, H. (1977), Tempus. Besprochene und Erzählte Welt. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Whitaker, S. F. (1983), ‘The Future Progressive – An Experiental Approach’, International Review of Applied Linguistics 21, 145-154. Williams, C. (2002), Non-Progressive and Progressive Aspect in English. Fasano di Puglia: Schena Editore. Wischer, I. (2003), ‘The Treatment of Aspect Distinctions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Grammars of English’, in: Dossena, Marina and Charles Jones (eds.) Insights into Late Modern English. Bern: Lang, 151-174. Wischer, I. (2004), ‘Tempus- und Grammatiken des 18. Jahrhunderts’, History of Lingustics in Texts Sprachwissenschaft in Texten und Publikationen, 195-213.

Aspektbeschreibungen in englischen in: G. Hassler and G. Volkmann (eds.) and Concepts. – Geschichte der Konzepten, Vol. I. Münster: Nodus

276

The Progressive in Modern English

Wischer, I. (2006), ‘Grammaticalisation and Language Contact in the History of English. The Evolution of the Progressive Form’, in: N. Ritt, H. Schendl, C. Dalton-Puffer and D. Kastovsky (eds.) Medieval English and its Heritage: Structure, Meaning and Mechanisms of Change. Papers given at the 13th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL), which took place at the University of Vienna from 24 -28 August 2004. Bern: Peter Lang, 165-187. Wright, S. (1994), ‘The Mystery of the Modal Progressive’, in: D. Kastovsky (ed.) Studies in Early Modern English. Berlin: De Gruyter, 59-77. Wulf, D. (2009), ‘Two new challenges for the modal account of the progressive’, Natural Language Semantics 17, 205-218. Xiao, Z. and A. McEnery (2005), ‘Situation Aspect: A Two-level Approach’, in: B. Hollebrandse, A. van Hout and C. Vet (eds.) Crosslinguistic Views on Tense, Aspect and Modality. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 185-200. Yllera, A. (1999), ‘Las Perífrasis Verbales de Gerundio y Participio’, in: I. Bosque and V. Demonte (eds.) Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 3400-3408. Žegarac, V. (1993), ‘Some Observations on the Pragmatics of the Progressive’, Lingua 90, 201-220. Ziegeler, D. (1999), ‘Agentivity and the History of the English Progressive’, Transactions of the Philological Society 97, 51-101. Ziegeler, D. (2006), Interfaces with English Aspect: Diachronic and Empirical Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Zimmermann, R. (1981), ‘Der Satztyp the book is printing in sprachgeschichtlicher Sicht’, in: H. Grabes (ed.) Anglistentag 1980 Gießen. Gießen: Hoffmann, 275-291.