The meanings and uses of the progressive construction in an early eighteenth-century English network

Fitzmaurice, Susan M.

doi:10.1515/9783110897661.131

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…The subjective (or modal, non-aspectual, or attitudinal) uses of the progressive construction are noted throughout its history, since its earliest recorded uses in Old English (Fitzmaurice, 2004;Núñ ez-Pertejo, 2004;Smitterberg, 2004). It would therefore be historically inaccurate to regard the progressive in English as developing from a pure aspectual marker into a grammatical device that expresses further senses.…”

Section: Aspectual Contrasts In English and Setswanamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another elaboration of the meaning of the progressive is what Fitzmaurice (2004: 134) calls the use of the progressive to express speaker/writer stance or attitude, specifically the adoption of a non-neutral stance towards the proposition, usually a sense of disapproval or irritation (Fitzmaurice, 2004;Quirk et al, 1985: 199), although it may simply be mild disbelief (Williams, 2002: 28-9). In a similar vein, Quirk et al (1972: 92-3) and Biber et al (1999: 475) identify the extended senses of vividness of description, emotional colouring or emphasis for the progressive construction.…”

Section: Aspectual Contrasts In English and Setswanamentioning

confidence: 99%

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The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English

Rooy

2006

World Englishes

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The extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs has been identified as a characteristic feature of New Varieties of English across the world, including the English of black South Africans (BSAfE). This paper examines the use of the progressive aspect in BSAfE, by doing a comparative analysis of three corpora of argumentative student writing representing BSAfE (an outer circle variety), inner circle English and German Learner English as an example of expanding circle English. A comprehensive discussion of the meaning of the progressive aspect in English leads to the definition of a prototype, alongside various extensions and elaborations of the meaning of the construction. Nine attributes of the progressive are identified, which are used to analyse the data. On the basis of the co-occurrence of the attributes, 17 uses of the progressive construction are identified, most of which are consistent with grammatical descriptions of standardised inner circle varieties, but some not. When the three corpora are compared, the BSAfE data show very different ways of using the progressive construction that are not related to the core senses of the progressive aspect, but instead display a kind of continuous aspect without temporal immediacy. It is suggested that the progressive construction is used in a way consistent with the persistitive aspect of the Bantu languages, a type of imperfective that emphasises mainly the long duration and incompleteness of a stative or durative verb. The expanding circle data, on the other hand, appear very similar to the inner circle data, except for a tendency to put the progressive construction to a slightly more limited range of uses.

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Section: Aspectual Contrasts In English and Setswanamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aspectual Contrasts In English and Setswanamentioning

confidence: 99%

The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English

Rooy

2006

World Englishes

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“…Last but not least, Kranich (2010a,b) has argued for interpreting the historical development of the English progressive in Early and Late Modern English as a case of de-subjectification, counter to previous research that has presented it as a paradigm case of subjectification (especially Fitzmaurice (Wright) in Wright (1995), Fitzmaurice (2004b), and elsewhere). The main reason is that in the decisive period of grammaticalization of the English progressive to a common aspect marker in the second half of the 18th century subjective uses significantly decline in number.…”

Section: (9)mentioning

confidence: 97%

(Inter)subjectification and its limits in secondary grammaticalization

Narrog

2015

Language Sciences

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“…In examples (22a–b) be V ‐ing is used to ‘suggest that the speaker feels rather doubtful or uncertain (…) in order to make the sentence more tentative, hence more polite’ (Declerck : 163) and to put less ‘pressure on the listener’ (Declerck : 166). This nearly epistemic function of the progressive form has alternatively been called the ‘experiential’, ‘non‐factive’ progressive (Fitzmaurice ), the ‘emotional colouring’ function of the progressive (Onions : 113) and the ‘attitude‐focused’ (instead of aspectual, action‐focused), subjective (Killie ) or affective progressive (Rydén ). The expression of uncertainty and tentativeness of the speaker in be V ‐ing most probably has its origins in the power of the grammatical progressive to recount a situation as durative instead of eternally static, that is, as having limited duration.…”

Section: Differences Between Be V‐ing and Be In The Middle/midst/amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A random sample based on part of the data would therefore not have been representative. Rather than narrowing down on genre (a factor that is often cited in the literature for its effect on the different aspectual and grammatical uses of the progressive; Smitterberg ; Fitzmaurice ), I decided to limit the sample to be V ‐ing forms attested in 2010. As this still generated too many hits for the COCA to handle, the cut‐off point for my random sample was a frequency greater than ten tokens.…”

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confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Progressive Be V‐Ing With Be In The Middle, Midst, Process or Act Of V‐Ing: The Interaction Of Lexical And Grammatical Progressive Aspect

Rompaey

2014

Trans of the Philol Soc

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This article presents a semantic-pragmatic analysis and comparison of the be V-ing construction and the emergent progressive aspect markers (PAM) be in the middle, midst, process or act of V-ing. On the basis of data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, I first argue that the PAMs be in the middle, midst, process or act of V-ing show striking similarities with semi-auxiliary be V-ing. Both progressive constructions pattern with the same range of predicate classes, namely predominantly atelic actions and telic accomplishments. Not only is there overlap in their lexicalcollocational preferences, the emergent PAMs and be V-ing also impose the same grammatical reading on the sentence: they represent or "actualize" the situations expressed by the following V-ing as unbounded and durative, regardless of whether these aspectual properties are already inherent in the predicates or not. Second, I address the question in which respect the emergence of the be in NP of V-ing aspectualizer construction causes reorganization within the paradigm of progressive aspect. The difference between be V-ing and the PAMs lies in the expanded uses of the former and the specialization of the latter into expressions of continuousness, with the exception of be in the process of V-ing. This particular construction seems to have developed into an aspectual marker of imminence, meaning that it refers to the preparatory phase leading up to the action. In most instances of be in the middle, midst and act of V-ing, however, the PAMs indicate that a situation is taking place without interruption at the temporal zero point. Be V-ing does not really display this preference for continuousness, as it takes on as often other shades of progressivity, for instance implied iterativity or habituality, and non-aspectual functions such as prospectivity and subjective meanings. I claim that it is exactly this functional indeterminacy of the be V-ing form that probably triggered the development of the PAM as a construction reinforcing one specific feature of progressivity, namely pure continuousness.

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The meanings and uses of the progressive construction in an early eighteenth-century English network

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English

The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English

(Inter)subjectification and its limits in secondary grammaticalization

A Comparison of Progressive Be V‐Ing With Be In The Middle, Midst, Process or Act Of V‐Ing: The Interaction Of Lexical And Grammatical Progressive Aspect

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