The Progressive Revisited

This volume consists of corpus-based analyses of progressive aspect constructions in Germanic and Romance. By adopting a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks, these studies provide valuable insights into the development, grammaticalization and use of various progressive structures across two subgroups of the Indo-European family. The progressive constructions under scrutiny range from widely studied and seemingly well understood constructions to relatively infrequent and obscure ones. Most chapters investigate a specific function of a particular progressive structure, or a change affecting it. Some chapters cast new light on the pragmatic, non-aspectual functions fulfilled by the progressive. All the chapters present a substantial amount of new empirical work. This collection thus provides a unique opportunity for linguists working on Romance languages to get an instant insight into similar phenomena in Germanic languages and vice versa. At the same time, the volume addresses contemporary theoretical and methodological issues in corpus, contact and historical linguistics, showing that research on the progressive remains today as relevant and inspiring as ever.