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

74 Kristin Killie
locative meaning, being now exclusively durative. During stage (iv), the construction
acquires a focalized meaning, while finally, at stage (v), the progressive
meaning is lost, being replaced by a pure imperfectivity meaning. The latter
stage is only attested in a few languages (Comrie 1976: 100, 101; Bertinetto,
et al. 2000: 540 and Johanson 2000: 99–100), and will not be discussed any
further here. While some progressive constructions perform only one of the functions
shown in Fig. 1, others cover more than one stage. For example, the Italian
stare + gerund progressive is exclusively focalized, and thus belongs to stage (iv),
whereas the Estonian progressive is said to cover three stages, viz. (ii)–(iv). The
English and the Ibero-Romance languages have progressives which cover stages
(iii) and (iv). 6
The categorizations made by Bertinetto et al. are somewhat difficult to relate
to those made in other studies of the English progressive. For example, it is not
common to divide progressives into a durative and a focalized type. However, the
distinction may be important. While it may be argued that the development from
durative to focalized (as defined by Bertinetto et al.) is trivial, simply reflecting
a shift in preferences, style etc, this does not seem to be the case. That there are
grammatical issues involved is shown by the fact that the Italian stare progressive
can no longer be used as a durative device, while it was used as such in its Latin past
(Bertinetto 2000: 563). However, this does not necessarily mean that this distinction
is relevant for the English progressive.
Unfortunately, Bertinetto et al. do not try to explain what factor(s) may have
motivated the development from durative to focalized; neither do they try to account
for the other steps sketched in Fig. 1. However, Comrie (1976), who also claims
that progressives (including both durative and focalized ones, apparently) typically
develop out of locative constructions, argues that the process of metaphor is crucial
in this development (cf. also de Groot for an interesting account):
Some attention must now be given to possible reasons for this relation between
locative and progressive. The clue to the relation is perhaps in English expressions
like to be in the process of doing something or to be in progress, in which we
see that we can refer to some instance of a process by viewing the whole of the
6. Bybee et al. (1994: 142) also assume a development from locative to progressive to imperfective;
however, their trajectories do not include a durative stage. Comrie (1976: 103) claims that “of
the languages examined where habitual meaning is expressed by means of a locative, it is always
the case that progressive meaning is also expressed as a locative, indeed it is usually the case
that the same locative construction is used for both meanings. Thus one can establish a certain
implicational relation between locative expression of progressive and of habitual meaning: the
locative expression of progressive meaning is basic, and only if a language has this possibility can
it further extend the same form to habitual meaning, and this extension is rather an extension of
the earlier progressive to become the only imperfective form”.