Progressive Aspect Research Articles

An Analysis of Stative Verbs Used with the Progressive Aspect in Corpus-informed Textbooks

This study was designed to investigate whether contemporary corpus-informed grammar textbooks written for English language learners and teachers presented the progressive use of stative verbs and if yes, which stative verbs were presented to occur with the progressive aspect and for which functions they took this aspect. A corpus of six electronic copies of corpus-informed textbooks was compiled and analyzed via AntConc. 3.2.4 text analysis program to identify types and functions of stative verbs and calculate their occurrences. Overall, textbooks differed in their treatment of the progressive use of stative verbs and inclusion of the variety and numbers of types and functions. One remarkable finding was that the stative verbs taking the progressive aspect in all textbooks were found to be associated with emotions (i.e. love) whereas those not allowing progressive use were related to cognition (i.e. know). Another remarkable finding was that the textbooks which presented the highest numbers of stative verb types provided the most diverse functions whereas the textbooks which included the least numbers of stative verbs provided one or no function. Findings are hoped to raise awareness among textbook writers in making use of both the communicative messages motivated by the progressive use of stative verbs and the frequency and saliency information based on the corpus of present-day English to help learners grasp the changes in the language use.

On the status of functional categories (heads and phrases)

AbstractIn this article I would like to revisit one aspect of the structure of the functional sequence of the clause in light of certain recent developments, in particularKayne’s (2016)proposal that all heads are necessarily silent. I will also discuss the possibility that (certain) silent heads may be endowed with single features that denote complex notions taking progressive aspect as a case in point.

Phonological variation of the present progressive aspect marker -tu- in Malawian Tonga: A prosodic analysis

This paper investigates principles which govern the various realisations of the present progressive aspect marker -tu- in Malawian Tonga. It is realised as zero when the morphological stem involved has two or more syllables. It is realised as -tu- when the stem involved is monomoraic. -tu- also surfaces before object markers. It is also realised as -t- or -tw- when it precedes vowel-initial verb stems. The main claim made in the paper is that -tu- is a lexical foot-head and a bona fide marker of the present progressive aspect. Since all foot-heads in Bantu languages are required to belong to the prosodic stem, its deletion when it falls before verb stems with two or more syllables ensures that there is no foot-head falling outside the prosodic stem. Preservation of -tu- before monomoraic verb stems and object markers is attributed to the fact that the foot-head -tu- in these forms is now part and parcel of the disyllabic prosodic stem. Finally, the realisation of -tu- as -t- or -tw- before vowel-initial verb stems ensures that prosodic stems have proper onset.

The Old Hittite and the Proto-Indo-European tense-aspect system

Abstract Building on Melchert’s observation that in Old Hittite narrative texts an aspectual system seems to be used that is different from the aspectual system found in the majority of Hittite texts (Melchert 1998), this article discusses the nature of the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European, especially on the basis of a comparison between the Sanskrit and Hittite verbal systems (following observations and analyses by Pooth 2009). It is argued that the tense-aspect system of the Old Hittite narrative texts as described by Melchert may go back directly to the system that can be reconstructed for early Proto-Indo-European, namely one in which there was no distinction in tense, but rather a distinction between progressive and non-progressive aspect.

The Co-occurrence of VRC and Progressive Aspect - Based on Aspectual Contour and Aspectual Construals

The Co-occurrence of VRC and Progressive Aspect - Based on Aspectual Contour and Aspectual Construals

Zooming in on Verbs in the Progressive: A Collostructional and Correspondence Analysis Approach

Quantitative corpus-linguistic approaches that are compatible with cognitive-constructional theories of language are on the increase in variationist English studies, but remain rare when it comes to study of the progressive aspect. The purpose of this study is therefore to road-test a two-step methodological approach in the investigation of over 6000 progressive constructions in five comparable corpora: the British, US, India, and Singapore components of the International Corpus of English (ICE), in addition to the recently released Corpus of Dutch English. Because the latter corpus followed the ICE design, it provides a valuable opportunity to investigate an as yet virtually unexplored population of non-native English users across seven different genres. First, successive covarying collexeme analyses were conducted of the variables verb and variety and then semantic domain and variety. The results confirmed several previous findings about, among other things, the strong association of progressive knowing with Indian English. Next, the results were fed into a correspondence analysis to explore, for the first time, the interactions between three variables in the use of progressive marking, semantic domain, variety and genre, revealing complex interplay between them. Ultimately, by contributing to the stock of methodological approaches used in variationist studies of the progressive aspect, the study provides a first step towards the development of detailed constructional profiles of the progressive across English varieties.

Gods and giants: Cudworth’s platonic metaphysics and his ancient theology

ABSTRACTThe Cambridge Platonists are modern thinkers and the context of seventeenth-century Cambridge science is an inalienable and decisive part of their thought. Cudworth’s interest in ancient theology, however, seems to conflict with the progressive aspect of his philosophy. The problem of the nature, however, of this ‘Platonism’ is unavoidable. Even in his complex and recondite ancient theology Cudworth is motivated by philosophical considerations, and his legacy among philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should not be overlooked. In particular we will draw on the scholarship of the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann in order to reassess the significance of Cudworth’s theory of religion for later philosophical developments.

Acceptability of Stative Verbs in Progressive Form within Linguistic Context

The controversy over the use of English stative verbs in progressive aspect has vexed the researchers throughout the ages. Traditional grammars see “progressive statives” as highly unacceptable in any context. However, Smiecinska (2002) goes in line with Kakietek (1997) who admits the acceptability of stative verbs in progressive form. The present study reports on a survey conducted among 68 EFL learners of intermediate, bachelor and master’s level studying at Govt. Postgraduate College Burewala, Punjab, Pakistan. The main object of the study was to explore the acceptability level of progressive statives. Secondly, this paper focused on examining the extent to which the context of stative verb plays its role in imposing the choice of progressive aspect. For the purpose of data collection, a questionnaire designed by Smiecinska (2002) was used with few changes in it after the pilot study was completed. The findings of the survey went along with those reported in previous studies. The majority of the participants considered the stative verbs in progressive form as acceptable with a wide margin. The results revealed that the higher the study level was, the more acceptability was. However, the study culminated in a perception that aloofness from the grammatical rules invites dependency on the context in choosing aspect for stative verb.

Learning in-progress

Abstract Though gesture is a growing area in second language research, its role in the teaching and learning of grammar remains on the margins. Drawing from Sociocultural Theory, the present case study addresses this gap by offering a microgenetic analysis of an ESL learner’s developing understanding of the progressive aspect. Our analysis is threefold. First, we observe how the learner’s gesture reveals her initial understanding of the progressive aspect. This is followed by study of the learner’s appropriation of the teacher’s gesture for the progressive aspect. Finally, we examine the crucial ways in which the learner’s gesture differs from the teacher’s, arguing that the learner merged her initial understanding and the teacher’s gesture, instead of merely copying the teacher. We contend that gesture should not be regarded as supplementary to speech but as an indispensable window into the learning process that may not be accessible through the verbal channel alone.

Ishiguro's Diptych: Art and Social Democracy in The Unconsoled and Never Let Me Go

In making aesthetic performance and aesthetic education central to his dialectical evaluation of social democracy, Kazuo Ishiguro especially addresses teachers of culture. The Unconsoled and Never Let Me Go explore the position of art in European social-democratic society since 1945. To read these works in that historicist spirit (despite their nonrealist genre) is to identify social referents of central importance to their meanings. The city of The Unconsoled is typical of post–Cold War Europe in its emphasis on “culture,” in a world where civic mutuality coexists with economic inequality. The novel considers the relationship between the pianist Ryder's art and his apparent indifference to “deep-seated, intractable” social problems. Never Let Me Go explores the contradictions of the welfare state from the vantage point of a later neoliberal Britain: from here, despite those contradictions, the experiment of giving “clones” an aesthetic education can be seen to have had a progressive aspect.

THE SUBJECTIVE USE OF POSTURAL VERBS IN AFRIKAANS (II): A CORPUS ANALYSIS OF CPV EN IN ZEFRIKAANS

A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the postural progressive in Afrikaans in particular became specialised with respect to subjective expression. The CPV [1] en construction is even used in contexts where its meaning cannot be interpreted as progressive (for example, stative or anterior situation types), and furthermore this construction collocates significantly strongly with negative communication verbs (verbs like skinder (''gossip''), kla (''complain'') and pla (''bother''). The subjective use of progressive constructions in Afrikaans has not received much attention to date. In two complementary articles (this article and The subjective use of postural verb in Afrikaans (I): evolution from progressive to modal ) the development and use of the CPV en as subjective or interpretative construction, are investigated. The purpose of this second article is to conduct a corpus investigation in a corpus that is appropriate for optimally examining the subjective use of the CPV en construction potential, namely a recent Afrikaans corpus characterised by non-standard, informal, spoken or language . The Watkykjy.co.za Corpus 1.0 (2015), as a corpus of “Zefrikaans” is examined for this purpose. Whereas the first article focused on the development of the postular construction to express subjective or modal meaning, the purpose of this article is to investigate the use of the subjective CPV en . From a grammaticalisation perspective, it is indicated that the different frequency relations are a first strong indication that CPV en has been further grammaticalised in Zefrikaans than in Standard Afrikaans, and that the modal and subjective use of the construction is therefore probably also applied more productively in Zefrikaans. Secondly, a collexeme analysis is done of the main verbs that collocate with CPV en and it is found that the Zefrikaans construction, similar to the manner in it is used in Standard Afrikaans, collocates significantly strongly with seven verb categories, namely with verbs i) social interaction; ii) creative activity; iii) perception; iv) cognitive activity; v) biology; vi) inactivity; and vii) negative communication. In the Zefrikaans collocation list, however, there are many words with a strong modal or interpretive undertone, that are non-standard or informal, or can even be regarded as vulgar, crude and inappropriate. The results of the corpus investigation confirmed that the CPV en construction mainly occurs in non-standard, informal, spoken or conversational Afrikaans . [1] The term CPV refers to cardinal postural verbs which (commonly) profiles the Agent as assuming one of the [three] cardinal postures when carrying out the (Lemmens 2005:1). In this article the four postural verbs sit 'sit' , staan 'stand' , le 'lie' and loop 'walk' are regarded as CPVs. In most typological literature on postural verbs, loop ('walk') is not regarded as a postural verb, as it rather is a dynamic activity verb. However, as indicated by Breed (2012), loop in Afrikaans has the same semantic features, lexical form and grammatical function as the grammaticalised CPV en progressive, and in this article it is therefore considered and discussed entirely as a cardinal postural construction.

THE SUBJECTIVE USE OF POSTURAL VERB IN AFRIKAANS (I): EVOLUTION FROM PROGRESSIVE TO MODAL

A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the postural progressive in Afrikaans in particular became specialised with respect to subjective expression. The CPV [1] en construction is even used in constructions that cannot be interpreted as progressive situations (for example, stative or anterior situation types), and furthermore this construction collocates significantly strongly with negative communication verbs (verbs like skinder 'gossip', kla 'complain' and pla 'bother'). The subjective use of progressive constructions in Afrikaans has not received much attention to date. In two complementary articles (this article and The subjective use of postural verbs in Afrikaans (II): a corpus analysis of CPV en in Zefrikaans) the development and use of the CPV en as a subjective or interpretative construction, are investigated. Based on a relevant literature review, the purpose of this article is to propose a development route for the evolution of the subjective CPV en construction; and also to highlight some typical characteristics of the subjective CPV en construction, on the basis of a pilot corpus study. The modal CPV en construction develops in five phases. During the first two phases, the postural verb is used to express the physical or spatial orientation of the subject. During the third and fourth phases, the postural verb develops into an aspectual auxiliary verb. It is only in the fourth phase that the progressive construction is used in modal contexts. In the last, fifth phase, the progressive meaning of the CPV en construction fades completely and it evolves into a pure modal construction. The subjective CPV en construction is characterised by two typical characteristics: firstly, the construction is mostly used in negative contexts (such as insult, blame, self-reproach or judgment) and secondly, it is mainly used in informal or spoken language. It does not appear frequently in a corpus of written Standard Afrikaans.[1] The term CPV refers to cardinal postural verbs "which (commonly) profiles the Agent as assuming one of the [three] cardinal postures when carrying out the activity" (Lemmens 2005:1). In this article the four postural verbs sit 'sit', staan 'stand', lê 'lie' and loop 'walk' are regarded as CPVs. In most typological literature on postural verbs, loop ('walk') is not regarded as a postural verb, as it rather is a dynamic activity verb. However, as indicated by Breed (2012), loop in Afrikaans has the same semantic features, lexical form and grammatical function as the grammaticalised CPV en progressive, and in this article it is therefore considered and discussed entirely as a cardinal postural construction.

Nominalizations and the structure of progressives in Chuj Mayan

This paper investigates the structure of progressives and nominalizations in Chuj, an understudied Mayan language of Guatemala. Like many other Mayan languages, Chuj shows aspect-based split ergativity: the otherwise ergative head-marking pattern in the language disappears in the progressive aspect. In other Mayan languages—for example Ch’ol (Coon 2010; 2013) and Yucatec (Bricker 1981)—the appearance of a non-ergative pattern in the progressive has been attributed to nominalization. In Chuj, however, there is no clear morphological reflex of nominalization, as is found in other languages in the family. Using data from negation, particle placement, and agreement, we argue that Chuj progressives nonetheless involve an aspectual matrix predicate and a nominalized embedded verb. This provides a clear structural explanation for the split pattern. Finally, we distinguish different types of nominalizations in Chuj: those which are nominalized directly from a root, and those which are nominalized above verbal projections.

An Exploratory Study of Translational Norms in Simultaneous Interpreting: Methodological Reflections

This paper discusses some possibilities that the theory of translational norms (Toury 1980) may offer in connection with research into simultaneous interpreting. After a brief discussion of the concept of translational norms, I explore how this concept may be useful in interpreting research in general. I then proceed to discuss and criticize the set-up of my own project on simultaneous interpreting and translation - especially how progressive aspect was originally used as a focus of analysis. I conclude by demonstrating how the theory of translational norms has been a useful methodological tool in the analysis of my data. One result is the discovery that certain translational norms seem to be peculiar to simultaneous interpreting - for instance norms regarding what one ought to do in connection with capacity saturation.

Grammatical Change in the Verb Phrase in Contemporary Philippine English

This paper presents the findings of a diachronic corpus-based study of selected categories of the verb phrase – the progressive aspect, the passive voice, the present perfect aspect, the modals and quasi-modals – in contemporary Philippine English and its colonial parent variety, American English. Frequencies were determined for the verb phrase categories in the Philippine and American components of the early 2010s Corpus of Global Web-based English. These are compared with the findings of earlier studies by Collins and associates of Philippine English, and by Leech and associates of American English, in the 1960s and 1990s. The trajectories of the grammatical variables over the half-century from the early 1960s to the early 2010s are traced, and the implications of the findings for the contentious issue of the evolutionary status of PhilE are explored.

Simple & progressive aspects of grammar and their usage in literature

As English teachers, we are constantly worried about the poor performance of our students in the subject. We also notice that most of them are more interested in reading novels than their grammar texts because such texts are 'very dry, and abstract'. A number of students also argue that they cannot see the relevance of what we teach to their chosen careers. How do we encourage them to learn more about the grammar of English and to use it for their communicative needs? How do we make our students enjoy reading texts on tenses so as to understand the differences between the simple and the progressive? An attempt is made in this study to integrate language into literature using excerpts from literature texts (precisely Things Fall Apart) as materials for the teaching of the simple and the progressive aspect. This is based on our conviction that if the essence of teaching grammar is to apply the knowledge to actual life situations, then Literature, which is said to be from life, could be a viable option in making our students to realize the usefulness of English Studies & National Development.Key words: - Communication, Lexis and structure, simple aspect, progressive aspect.

The innovative progressive aspect of Black South African English

Conflicting findings are reported for New Englishes and Learner Englishes: similarities are identified mainly on psycholinguistic grounds and differences on sociolinguistic grounds. This article offers an analysis of the progressive form in Black South African English, in which the interaction between gradual increases in proficiency and normative interventions by explicit feedback and editing of published texts is examined to establish the route towards conventionalisation of innovative features. The results indicate that one innovative feature, the extension of the progressive to longer time spans, becomes established as a feature of the variety, but other potential innovations gradually disappear under normative influence and with increased proficiency. Innovations are likely to be accepted if they are insufficiently salient to be targeted for normative correction and sufficiently present in the written and spoken input to become entrenched in the grammatical representations of learners as they turn into advanced users of the New English.

A Inaplicabilidade do Marco Civil da Internet pelos Tribunais Federais: Análise de Julgados Envolvendo Tutela do Princípio da Privacidade dos Usuários da Rede

O presente artigo buscou demonstrar a inaplicabilidade do arcabouço legal do Marco Civil da Internet (MCI) nas decisões dos Tribunais Federais do país no tocante às demandas, envolvendo a proteção do direito à privacidade dos usuários da rede. Apontou-se para a necessidade de interpretação ampla do direito à privacidade, evidenciando aspectos desse direito fundamental a partir de doutrinadores constitucionalistas. Adotou-se o entendimento de Pérez Luño de transposição da percepção que separa imagem, honra, intimidade e privacidade, tendo em vista a aceleração provocada pela inovação tecnológica e científica que permeia a sociedade informacional. Utilizou-se o método de abordagem dedutivo, efetuando revisão e análise bibliográfica com o intuito de refletir criticamente sobre o princípio da privacidade. Para tanto, empregou-se a ferramenta de pesquisa de jurisprudência nos sites dos Tribunais Regionais Federais, colocando a expressão Marco Civil da Internet. Constatou-se a reduzida utilização de parâmetros do MCI nas decisões dos Tribunais Federais, mas, de qualquer forma, não se pode desprezar o aspecto progressivo da legislação ao assegurar garantias para tutela do direito à privacidade na Internet.

On the verbalizing suffixes in Korean and their implications for syntax and semantics

Despite the apparently identical surface realization of their verbalizing element, the Sino-Korean verbs suffixed with -ha ‘do’ correspond to two quite distinct syntactic structures, with attendant consequences for case marking, clause typing, compatibility with progressive aspect, and adverb modification. The verbalizers associated with native Korean roots exhibit the same contrasts, with the only difference being their phonological realization. I argue that a fine-grained classification of v (Harley, 1995, 2002; Folli and Harley, 2005, 2007), combined with the major assumption of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz, 1993) that the spell-out of a functional morpheme is determined in reference to its syntactic context, captures the morphological, syntactic, and semantic behaviors of Korean verbalizers in a principled way.

Editorial practice and the progressive in Black South African English

ABSTRACTInnovative linguistic features occur in Outer and Expanding Circle varieties of English, leading to claims that new Englishes and learner Englishes form overlapping sets rather than discrete categories. However, less attention is given to the processes by which innovations acquire conventionalised status, in particular with regards to the role of editing of published written texts. We propose a model that incorporates both the proficiency of the writer and editorial intervention to account for the role of editing in the process of conventionalisation and legitimisation of innovative features, which is applied in a case study of the progressive aspect in Black South African English.