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 COMPUTE...

Author: Svenja Kranich

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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


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).


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


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”).


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


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.


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).


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


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).


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.


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 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)


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.


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


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.


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


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.


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.


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).


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


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


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.


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


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).


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).


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.


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


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.


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?”.


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


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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.”


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)


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).


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).


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.


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


50

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


(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


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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)


(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


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.


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


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

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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”.


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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)


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,


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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


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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

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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,

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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

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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).


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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.

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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).


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).


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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.


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


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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

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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.


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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.


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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).

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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


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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.


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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.


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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

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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

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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).


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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

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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

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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 +


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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

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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

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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


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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


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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

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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.


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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).


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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

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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


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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)


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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.


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

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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).


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(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

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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).

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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

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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


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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:


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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.

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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).


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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.

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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).


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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

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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


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.

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(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).


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


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-


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


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


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).


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)


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.).


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


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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,


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.


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


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).


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


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).


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.

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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


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 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:


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.


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%)

(

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