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

78 Kristin Killie
ða wæs growende Aarones gyrd on blostmum & on leafum on
then was growing Aron’s twig into flowers and into leaves in
hnutbeames wisan
nut tree’s manner
“and he went into the cottage/house and the next morning into the tent, and
precisely then Aron’s twig was growing into flowers and leaves in the manner of
a nut tree” (The Old Testament; HCO3)
(9) Saga me for hwam stanas ne synt berende?
tell me wherefore stones not are carrying
“Tell me, why are you not carrying stones?” 9 (Solomon & Saturn; HCO4)
While (7) and (8) have focalization points which are overtly expressed by adverbials,
respectively mid þi þe and efne ða, the focalization point in (9) is an implicit
‘now’. The sentence in (7) is one of the few examples of the frame construction found
in the Old English data, while the sentence in (8) rather seems like the opposite: the
non-progressive form functions as the background to the progressive form.
The question, then, is to what extent durative and focalized progressives are
used in the various periods. The PROG imperfective drift hypothesis predicts that
durative progressives should represent the prototypical use in the early data,
while focalized progressives gradually take over this role. The data in Table 1
show the distribution of durative and focalized progressives in the Helsinki Corpus
(where OE, ME and EModE refer to the Old English, Middle English and Early
Modern English subperiods, respectively). The figures are given in absolute frequencies,
in percentages (in parentheses), and in frequencies per 10,000 words.
The figures in square brackets in the column for focalized progressives give the
number and percentage of frame constructions in each period.
Table 1. Functions of the progressive in the Helsinki Corpus
Durative Focalized Other/indet. Total
OE 37 (15%) 0.9 71 (28%) 1.7 144 (57%) 3.5 252/6.1
[5 = 2%]
ME 8 (9%) 0.1 17 (19%) 0.3 63 (72%) 1.0 88/1.4
[3 = 3%]
EModE 13 (7%) 0.2 111 (61%) 2.0 57 (32%) 1.0 181/3.3
[32 = 18%]
Total 58 199 264 521
9. This is an early example of the passival construction, i.e., a progressive with active form but
passive meaning (cf. Denison 1993: 389–393).