Astrid De Wit

A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive

In this paper, we propose a unified account of the semantics of the English present progressive in the form of a semantic network, basing ourselves on the theoretical principles and analytical tools offered by the theory of Cognitive Grammar, as laid out by Langacker ( 1987 , 1991 ). The core meaning of the English present progressive, we claim, is to indicate epistemic contingency in the speakers immediate reality. It thus contrasts with the simple present, which is associated with situations that are construed as structurally belonging to reality. On the basis of a study of the Santa Barbara Corpus of spoken American English, an inventory has been made of the more specific uses of the present progressive, temporal as well as modal. It is shown that each of these uses can be derived from this basic meaning of contingency in immediate reality via a set of conceptual branching principles, in interaction with elements in the context.

Aspect Meets Modality: A Semantic Analysis of the German Am-Progressive

This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the semantics of the German am V-inf sein construction, or am -progressive. Like its English counterpart and many other progressive constructions in the worlds languages, the am -progressive is shown to convey not only a variety of aspecto-temporal meanings, but also a range of (inter)subjective qualifications, such as intensification, irritation, and evasiveness. These (inter)subjective connotations are argued to reflect the am -progressives core meaning of epistemic contingency, which we believe is instantiated in all of its uses. *

The relation between aspect and inversion in English

This article discusses the peculiar use of the simple present/past in full-verb inversion (i.e. locative inversion, directional inversion, quotative inversion, presentational there ), and the corresponding scarcity of progressive aspect in these contexts. While it is normally ungrammatical in English to use the simplex tenses to report events that are ongoing at reference time, inversion seems to defy this restriction. Building on a combination of insights from analyses of aspect and of full-verb inversion in English, this study presents a cognitive-functional explanation for this exceptional characteristic of inversion that has gone largely unnoticed in previous accounts. I argue that there exists a canonical relationship between the preposed ground and the postposed figure in full-verb inversion and that this meaning of canonicity ties in perfectly with the perfective value that I deem constitutive of the English simple tenses. In addition, some cases of directional inversion involve a ‘deictic effect’ (Drubig 1988 ): in these instances, the conceptualizers vantage point is anchored within the ground and the denoted (dis)appearance of the figure is construed as inevitable . On the basis of a large sample of corpus data and native-speaker elicitations, I demonstrate that the use of the progressive is disallowed in inverted contexts that involve a deictic effect, while its use is dispreferred but not excluded in other cases of inversion. This study thus brings together insights from the domains of information structure and aspect in English, and merges these into a comprehensive cognitive account.