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

Svenja Kranich
. Subjective and objective progressives in the seventeenth
and eighteenth century data of ARCHER-2
The data from ARCHER-2 from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 2 clearly
show a changing distribution of subjective and objective progressives, as shown in
Table :
Table 1. Objective and subjective uses of the progressive in the 7th and 8th century
data from ARCHER-2
Total
Objective Subjective (per
Progr. Obj. Subj. 100,000
Time Imp. Progr. + perf. total Type Type 2 Type 3 total words)
600– 649 6 – 7 2 3 2 7 24
70.8% 29.2% (37.0)
650– 699 3 75 4 82 6 2 2 20 02
80.4% 9.6% (62.7)
700– 749 – 2 0 22 5 2 2 9 4
86.5% 3.5% (82.5)
750– 799 5 5 67 4 3 8 75
95.4% 4.6% ( 0 .0)
It is evident from table that the objective functions are on a steady increase in
the time-span under consideration, while the subjective uses decrease in relative
frequency (even as the total frequency of all progressives is increasing). This can
clearly be linked to the grammaticalization process the progressive is undergoing
at that time.
1. The subperiod 600– 649 was still under construction when I had the opportunity to
access the corpus at the University of Heidelberg in June 2005. It includes only texts from two
different text types, namely drama and fiction, while the other half-centuries taken into account
here include eight different text types (apart from drama and fiction, these are news, journals,
medical texts, science, religious texts and private letters), and it also includes a smaller number
of words (64,92 words, while the other half centuries all have round about 70,000). Therefore,
the results concerning the first half century will have to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless,
I have included this time-span, since the numbers are still suggestive. Whether this halfcentury
is included or not does not change anything about the general trend that appears clearly
with or without its inclusion.