Cover not available

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 47:3 (2023) ► pp.526–570

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Progressives in present and past

ORCiD logo with link | Stockholm University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Stockholm University.

Published online: 21 November 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.20009.vaf
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between progressive patterns and present and past time reference. First, it looks at the shared distribution of more than 90 progressives in two parallel corpora and discusses the characteristics of these contexts. It is shown that while progressives are used for dramatic and topical events in the present, they are typically used as backgrounding, supportive material in the past. Second, it is shown that progressives generally have more occurrences in contexts with present time reference than past, this is especially true for progressives with many uses, i.e. more grammaticalized progressives. And third, a number of progressives temporally restricted are presented. Two historical explanations for these restrictions are provided, both of which result from the higher frequency of present uses over past.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1The two corpora
      • 2.1.1The Parallel Bible Corpus
      • 2.1.2The TED corpus
    • 2.2The two samples
      • 2.2.1Identification of progressive grams in the PBC
      • 2.2.2Methodological issues regarding automatic extraction
      • 2.2.3Identification of progressive grams in the TED corpus
  • 3.Shared distribution of progressive grams
    • 3.1Contexts with present time reference
    • 3.2Contexts with past time reference
    • 3.3Features increasing the likelihood of the use of a progressive
  • 4.Temporal asymmetries
    • 4.1Temporal preference
      • 4.1.1Grams with no temporal preference
      • 4.1.2Grams with a majority of present uses
      • 4.1.3Grams with a majority of past uses
    • 4.2Temporal restrictions
      • 4.2.1Restriction to present time reference
      • 4.2.2Restriction to past time reference
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (55)
References
Abylkasymova, Mairam & Gulaim Jumabaeva. 1997. Kyrgyz language manual. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: Peace Corps.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anthonissen, Lynn, Tanja Mortelmans & Astrid De Wit. 2016. Aspect meets modality: A semantic analysis of the German am-progressive. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 28(1). 1–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asyik, Abdul Gani. 1987. A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences (Complementation). Ann Arbor: UMI PhD dissertation.
Austin, Peter K. 2012. Tense, aspect, mood and evidentiality in Sasak, eastern Indonesia. In Peter K. Austin & Stuart McGill (eds.), Language documentation and description, vol. 111, 41–56. London: SOAS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berg, René van den & Robert L. Busenitz. 2012. A grammar of Balantak: A language of Eastern Sulawesi. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 2000. The progressive in Romance, as compared with English. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 20), 559–664. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Denis Delfitto. 2000. Aspect vs. actionality: Why they should be kept apart. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 20), 203–226. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Karen Ebert & Casper de Groot. 2000. The progressive in Europe. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 20), 517–558. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blansitt, Edward L. Jr. 1975. Progressive aspect. Working papers on Language Universals 181. 1–34.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blensenius, Kristian. 2015. Progressive constructions in Swedish. Gothenburg: Gothenburg University PhD dissertation.
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar. Tense aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Childs, G. Tucker. 1995. A grammar of Kisi: A Southern Atlantic language (Mouton Grammar Library 16). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. How telicity creates time. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 21(1). 45–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Perfects in typological perspective. In Robert Samuel David Crellin & Thomas Jügel (eds.), Perfects in Indo-European languages and beyond, 635–667. Amsterdam; John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. Perfects across languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 8(1). 279–297. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen & Bernhard Wälchli. 2016. Perfects and iamitives: Two gram types in one grammatical space. Letras de Hoje 51(3). 325–348. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dambriunas, Leonardas, Antanas Klimas & William R. Schmalstieg. 1980. Introduction to modern Lithuanian. 3rd edn. New York: Franciscan Fathers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Wit, Astrid & Frank Brisard. 2014. A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive. Journal of Linguistics 50(1). 49–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Wit, Astrid, Adeline Patard & Frank Brisard. 2013. A contrastive analysis of the present progressive in French and English. Studies in Language 37(4). 846–879. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Wit, Astrid, P. Petré & F. Brisard. 2020. Standing out with the progressive. Journal of Linguistics 561. 479–512. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diatta, Christian Sina. 1998. Parlons jola: Langue et culture (Collection Parlons). Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia. 2015. A grammar of Syer (Western Karaboro, Senufo) (Gur Monographs 12). Cologne: Köppe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eades, Yusuf. 1998. Relativization. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Sasak (Working Papers in Sasak 1), 119–129. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Lombok and Sumbawa Research Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edmonson, Barbara Wedemeyer. 1988. A descriptive grammar of Huastec (Potosino Dialect). Ann Arbor: UMI PhD dissertation.
Einarsson, Stefán. 1949. Icelandic: Grammar, texts, glossary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gregores, Emma & Jorge A. Suárez. 1967. A description of colloquial Guaraní (Janua Linguarum: Series Practica 27). The Hague: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hatcher, Anna. 1951. The use of the progressive form in English: A new approach. Language 27(3). 254–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hervé, Guérin. nd. The Uzbek tense/aspect/modality system. [URL]
Hopkins, Bradley L. 1995. Contribution a une etude de la syntaxe Diola-Fogny (Cahiers de Recherche Linguistique 4). Dakar: Société Internationale de Linguistique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Discourse and syntax (Syntax and Semantics 12), 231–241. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A. & Olga Lyashevskaya. 2011. Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, tense, and mood in Russian. Cognitive Linguistics 22(4). 719–762. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johanson, L. 2000. Viewpoint operators in European languages. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 20), 27–188. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kagaya, Ryohei. 1987. A classified vocabulary of the Lenje language (Bantu Vocabulary Series 4). Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiefer, Ferenc. 1994. Aspect and syntactic structure. In Ferenc Kiefer & Katalin É. Kiss (eds.), Syntax and semantics (The Syntactic Structure of Hungarian 27), 415–464. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiso, Andrea. 2012. Tense and aspect in Chichewa, Citumbuka and Cisena: A description and comparison of the tense-aspect systems in three southeastern Bantu languages. Stockholm: Stockholm University PhD dissertation.
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish (Descriptive Grammars Series 1). London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ljung, Magnus. 1980. Reflections on the English progressive. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Boris V. 1953. Talyšskij jazyk. Moskva: Izdat. Akad. Nauk SSSR.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moreno, Martino Mario. 1939. Grammatica teorico-pratica della lingua galla, con esercizi. Milano: Casa Editrice A. Mondadori Collezione Diretta da Carlo Conti Rossini. Accademio D’Italia, Roma.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Östling, Robert. 2015. Bayesian models for multilingual word alignment. Stockholm: Stockholm University PhD dissertation.
Sapir, David J. 1965. A grammar of Diola-Fogny: A language spoken in the Basse-Casamance region of Senegal (West African Language Monograph Series 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schönig, Claus. 1998. Azerbaijanian. In Lars Johanson & Éva Ágnes Csató (eds.), The Turkic languages, 248–260. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sneddon, James Neil. 2006. Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian (Pacific Linguistics 581). Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sneddon, James Neil, Alexander Adelaar, Dwi Noverini Djenar & Michael C. Ewing. 2010. Indonesian reference Grammar. 2nd edn. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stilo, Donald L. 2008. Two sets of mobile verbal person agreement markers in the Northern Talyshi language. In Simin. Karimi, Donald L. Stilo & Vida. Samiian (eds.), Aspects of Iranian linguistics, 363–390. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Laurence C. 1987. A Vietnamese reference grammar. (Mon Khmer Studies 13–14). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vafaeian, Ghazaleh. 2018. Progressives in use and contact: A descriptive, areal and typological study with special focus on selected Iranian languages. Stockholm: Stockholm University PhD dissertation.
Vries, Lourens de. 2007. Some remarks on the use of Bible translations as parallel texts in linguistic research. Language Typology and Universals 60(2). 148–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wälchli, Bernhard. 2019. The feminine anaphoric gender gram, incipient gender marking, maturity, and extracting anaphoric gender markers from parallel texts. In Francesca Di Garbo, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.), Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity. Vol. II1: World-wide comparative studies (Studies in Diversity Linguistics II), 61–131. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Windfuhr, Gernot & John R. Perry. 2009. Persian and Tajik. In Gernot Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian languages, 416–545. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue