Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
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70 Kristin Killie<br />
Opinions concerning <strong>the</strong> meaning or function of <strong>the</strong> progressive are also<br />
divided. Terms used to characterize <strong>the</strong> Old English progressive include <strong>the</strong> following:<br />
durative, frame time/simultaneity, terminate, bounded, intensive, emphatic,<br />
futurity, repetition, characterizing, qualifying, descriptive, expression of<br />
emotions, etc. (see Denison 1993 & Núñez-Pertejo 2004 for accounts). 2 A surprisingly<br />
similar set of terms has been used to describe <strong>the</strong> English progressive<br />
in more recent periods, even including Present-day English (cf. <strong>the</strong> overviews<br />
and discussions in Núñez-Pertejo 2004); yet, it is clear that <strong>the</strong> progressive has<br />
gone through some major changes. To date <strong>the</strong>re are only a few principled accounts<br />
of what path <strong>the</strong> progressive has developed along and why. In <strong>the</strong> present<br />
paper I test one of <strong>the</strong>se hypo<strong>the</strong>ses, viz. <strong>the</strong> claim of Bertinetto et al. (2000)<br />
that <strong>the</strong> English progressive has undergone ‘PROG imperfective drift’, originating<br />
as a locative construction, to develop into a durative progressive and subsequently<br />
also into a focalized progressive. I argue that <strong>the</strong> English progressive<br />
has clearly become more focalized through time. However, if <strong>the</strong>re was ever<br />
a stage at which durative uses predominated, this stage goes so far back that<br />
it cannot be traced even in <strong>the</strong> earliest written records. As for <strong>the</strong> origin of<br />
<strong>the</strong> English progressive, <strong>the</strong> earliest data do not lend support to <strong>the</strong> ‘locative<br />
hypo<strong>the</strong>sis’.<br />
The organization of <strong>the</strong> paper is as follows. In Section 2 I explain <strong>the</strong> concept<br />
of PROG imperfective drift in some more detail. In Section 3 I discuss some<br />
methodological issues, while Section 4 contains <strong>the</strong> data and analysis. Section 5<br />
provides a summary and discussion.<br />
2. Background: locative, durative and focalized progressives<br />
and PROG imperfective drift<br />
As mentioned above, Bertinetto et al. claim that <strong>the</strong> English progressive has<br />
developed <strong>from</strong> being a locative, to becoming a durative and <strong>the</strong>n increasingly a<br />
focalized construction. To understand this hypo<strong>the</strong>sis, we need to understand how<br />
Bertinetto et al. define terms such as ‘locative’, ‘durative’ and ‘focalized’. I <strong>the</strong>refore<br />
start by explaining <strong>the</strong> relevant terms.<br />
According to Bertinetto et al. (2000: 539), ‘locative’ implies that <strong>the</strong> meaning<br />
of <strong>the</strong> progressive was originally that of “being (i.e., finding oneself/itself) in a<br />
state”. The locative element may be of various types:<br />
2. Scholars that list a number of functions for <strong>the</strong> progressive seem to agree that of those functions<br />
some are somehow basic, while o<strong>the</strong>rs are derived or secondary; however, <strong>the</strong>re is no consensus<br />
as to which functions are basic and which derived.