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

The English progressive 83
Such a distribution is, of course, unfortunate if we wish to discover general trends
in the use of a construction. As almost all the progressives in the abovementioned
texts either involve a verb meaning “live, remain” or “yearn” (fourteen examples),
or some other completely stative verb or predicate, it seemed possible that the high
incidence of stative progressives could be due to idiosyncratic usage, or in other
words, that the Middle English totals could be skewed by these idiosyncratic uses.
For this reason I decided to study the use of the progressive in some other Middle
English texts as well. I studied six additional texts, viz. The English conquest of Ireland;
The buke of John Mandeuill; The Alphabet of Tales; An English Chronicle; The
Lyf of the noble and Crysten prynce, Charles the Grete; and The right plesaunt and
goodly historie of the foure sonnes of Aymon (see References for publication details).
The relevant data are provided in Table 3. (The reason why there is no separate column
for narrative progressives is that the category is almost non-existent in these
texts; there are only three examples of such uses, and they have therefore been put
into the ‘other’ category.)
Table 3. The use of the progressive in six Middle English texts
Durative Focalized Stative Other Total
English Conquest 2 9 2 – 13
Mandeville 1 2 32 2 37
Alphabet – 13 1 3 17
English Chronicle – 3 4 – 7
Lyf Noble – – 3 1 4
Right plesaunt 1 20 1 3 25
Total 4 (4%) 47 (46%) 43 (42%) 9 (9%) 103
Although the figures in Table 3 are not large, they nevertheless throw interesting
light on the use of the progressive in Middle English. Most importantly, the
data tell us that the use of the progressive was very variable at this stage, not only
in terms of number, but also in terms of the way the construction was used. We
have seen that in The history of the holy rood tree, The earliest complete English prose
psalter, and Vices and Virtues, the progressive was first and foremost used with
stative predicates, probably as an emphatic marker. If we look at Table 3, we find
that the same goes for Mandeville’s travels. 12 By contrast, focalized progressives
predominate in The English Conquest of Ireland, The Alphabet of Tales and The
Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon. Such variation
12. Of the thirty-seven progressives in this text, be dwelland occurs eighteen times and be
liffand once; hence, half of the recorded examples involve “live, remain” verbs.