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

The English progressive 81
form is probably to draw attention to one specific verb phrase, making it stand
out from the surrounding verb phrases. Such uses may therefore be characterized
as emphatic. As shown in Table 2, narrative progressives are quite common in Old
English, while they represent a peripheral phenomenon in more recent periods.
Table 2 shows that the increase in the category ‘other’ in Middle English is
due to a rise in the proportion of ‘stative progressives’. Stative progressives, as their
name implies, do not involve dynamic situations at all, but refer to facts or unchanging
relations such as belonging, feelings, eternal truths, habits, etc. Also in this use,
the progressive most probably provides emphasis. Examples of stative progressives
are given in (12) and (13).
(12) & ymbutan þone weall is se mæsta dic, on þæm is iernende
and around that wall is the greatest ditch in which is running
se ungefoglecesta stream
the most enormous river
“and around that wall is the greatest ditch, in which the most enormous river
runs” (Alfred’s Orosius; HCO2)
(13) Arestotill sais þat þe bees are feghtande agaynes hym þat will
Aristotle says that the bees are fighting against him that will
drawe þaire hony fra thaym.
steal their honey from them
“Aristotle says that bees fight against those who try to steal their honey from them.”
(The bee and the stork; HCM4)
More than half of the Middle English progressives in the Helsinki Corpus are
of the stative type. This fact sets the Middle English period off from the other periods.
There is a corresponding difference between the verb types or meanings
found in the progressive in this subcorpus, and the verb types found in the other
subcorpora, in the sense that certain ‘stative meanings’ are particularly well represented
in the Middle English subcorpus. In particular, the most frequent verbs
are those with meanings such as “live, remain” (viz. wunien, eardien): seventeen
of the eighty-eight occurrences, viz. nineteen percent, involve these verbs. 11 The
next most frequent verb is also a highly stative verb, viz. ʓeornen “yearn, desire”.
This verb occurs six times in the data, constituting approximately seven percent
of the Middle English tokens. Thus, wunien, eardien and ʓeornen alone make up
one fourth of the Middle English uses. By comparison, only eight percent (twenty
tokens) of the Old English progressives involve “live, remain” verbs, while “yearn”
is not represented at all. Some examples of “yearn, desire” and “live, remain” progressives
from the Middle English corpus are given in (14)–(16).
11. Live is, of course, not infrequent in the progressive in Present-day English. However
progressive live does not normally refer to a permanent situation in Present-day English, as it
does in earlier English.