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Grammaticalization by changing co-text frequencies, or why [BE Ving] became the ‘progressive’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2015

PETER PETRÉ
PETER PETRÉ*
Affiliation:
Center for Grammar, Cognition and Typology, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, B-2000 Antwerp, [email protected]
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Abstract

While the ‘progressive’ construction [BE Ving] (Hewas playing tenniswhen Jane came in) has been studied extensively both diachronically and synchronically, studies of its functional development tend not to extend further back than Early Modern English. This article draws attention to the functional changes [BE Ving] goes through already in Middle English, whose analysis sheds new light on the principles of early grammaticalization. To understand the observed changes, all uses of [BE Ving] are considered, not only those that have a clear verbal and aspectual function. During Middle English, important changes occurred in the frequencies of the various co-texts of [BE Ving]. They involve the increase in backgrounding adverbial clauses, which leads to the semanticization of ongoingness, a feature that was initially only associated with [BE Ving] by pragmatic implicature. The outcome is grammaticalization by co-text: co-textual changes paved the way for the acquisition of progressive semantics in [BE Ving] itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 31 - 54
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

1

The research reported on in this article has been made possible by a postdoctoral research grant from the FWO (Research Foundation Flanders, www.kuleuven.be/research/researchdatabase/project/3H11/3H110274.htm). I would like to thank Bernd Kortmann and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft version of this article.

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