The Progress of the English Progressive
Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This paper addresses the diachronic development of the periphrastic construction,\nbeon/wesan + the participial ending -ende in Old English, into the progressive\nconstruction in Modern English. Even though there are two different hypotheses\nregarding the origins of the progressive – the beon/wesan + -ende construction and the\nlocative construction with the verb be + the preposition on + the nominal ending –ung–\nit is suggested that both forms somehow merged giving way to the present day\nconstruction be + -ing. Some of the examples of the construction in Old English\ncorrespond to the present day usage of the progressive but not others and this is why it\nis suggested that the usage of the beon + -ende construction was still undeveloped. In\nMiddle English, the ending –ende had different dialectal forms in different parts of\nBritain but finally the –ing form prevailed over the rest of the endings. New forms of\nthe progressive developed in this period, leading finally to the grammaticalization1\nof\nthe construction in Modern English where it stopped being a stylistic variant and began\nto have a verbal status. Some of the new progressive forms developed in Modern\nEnglish, such as the progressive passive, were forbidden by the grammarians.\nNevertheless, the use of the latter form increased among literary people who used the\nconstruction in private letters to friends and as they started gaining prestige, this form\nwas no longer forbidden. In this paper the semantic development of the construction\nwill also be treated, showing the differences and the shift in meaning between Old\nEnglish and Present Day English.
Author: Jaione Inda Zarranz
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2759926677