Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

Subjective progressives in 7th and 8th century English 4
being used hyperbolically in these cases), but we must still always check that the
adverb does not refer to something objectively ongoing at all moments in time. 9
3. Type 2: Subjective progressive without ALWAYS
Type 2 proves much more difficult, since no such easily recognizable criterion can
be found. Formal criteria have been proposed for this type in Wright ( 994), 0
which Smitterberg (2005), although more critical, used with some modification
in his analysis. Killie (2004) has already drawn attention to the problem of using
such formal criteria. In her study of subjective uses of the progressive in EModE,
she chose to concentrate on combinations with always, as these are less prone to
ambiguity. However, in order to get a complete picture, it is necessary to include
also subjective progressives without ALWAYS, because it is intuitively clear that in
such examples as (2) the use of the progressive is motivated by a desire to express
a subjective attitude. But we clearly need an appropriate method of distinguishing
these uses from aspectual progressives.
The formal criteria used by Smitterberg in his study of the nineteenth century
uses of the progressive are the following:
. Tense: The progressive occurs in the present, no perfect or modal
auxiliaries.
2. Clause: The progressive occurs in a main rather than subordinate
clause.
3. Person: It is used with a first- or second-person subject.
4. Situation type: The progressive is part of a stative situation.
(cf. Smitterberg 2005: 22 )
Smitterberg (2005: 220) counted all progressives which fulfil at least three of these
four criteria as subjective. We would like to find whether this promises good results.
The first problem one may note is that one could think of aspectual rather than
subjective uses of the progressive where all of these formal criteria are still satisfied,
as e.g., in (4) (if one allows the interpretation of [moulder in their winter quarters]
. The semantics of progressive + ALWAYS combinations has been discussed in greater detail
elsewhere (Kranich 2007b).
10. Wright ( 994: 472) based her choice of formal criteria on Biber’s ( 988) and Biber and
Finegan’s ( 989) findings about features that generally tend to occur often in involved speechproduction.
(‘Involved’ refers here to the personal involvement of the speaker/writer in the subject
matter of the text, as opposed to ‘detached’.) One should, however, note that these features
were meant to characterize whole text types, and not as indication of the subjective or objective
meaning of a specific form.