3.

BE + V-ING and Progressive aspect 23We wish to argue that the meaning of BE + -ING is fundamentally aspectual, and to be more precise, Progressive. By Progressive, we mean that the event is viewed as in progress at a given moment. In example (10), the event <Marywrite a book>4 is said to have started prior to the present moment (henceforth noted T0) and to be as yet uncompleted. (10) Mary is writing a book. 24In most cases, the Progressive meaning is not only sufficient to account for the use of the BE + -ING form but also to rule out the Simple Present. The only suitable means for the speaker to refer to an event5 occurring in the present situation is the BE + ING form. (11) is odd : (11) * Mary writes a book. 25and (12) expresses a habit, which, according to Vendler (1967: 108), is also a state, not an event. (12) Mary writes books. 26Of course, the aspectual function of the BE + ING form is not always as obvious, and some adjustment may be necessary. But we argue that the differences in the meaning of BE + -ING depend on two parameters; namely: the type of predicate involved and the nature of the reference point at which is the event is said to be in progress. 3.1 BE + -ING and states 27First of all, our claim is that BE + -ING only applies to events, not states. This may sound paradoxical in the light of sentences such as (13). (13) Stella tells him he is being stupid and goes out to the porch. (www.novelguide.com) 28But one must distinguish between a verb, or rather, a verb phrase, and what it refers to. Because of its lexical meaning, a VP like be stupid normally denotes a state but it can, in certain circumstances, refer to an event. So, the incompatibility that

has been noted by many linguists is not between BE + -ING and VPs like be stupid, but between BE + -ING and the reference to states, and it lies therefore not at the lexical level but at the level of conceptual representations. In (13), the VP be stupid has undergone a shift in meaning. The semantic conflict arising from its usual stative meaning and the use of BE + -ING is resolved by an alteration of the basic meaning of the VP. Instead of signifying the property6 of being stupid, it now refers to the characteristic behaviour of a stupid person. (13) means therefore: He is acting like a stupid person7. This kind of semantic shifts is systematic when a so-called stateverb is used in the Progressive form. The VP stops expressing a property to denote an activity which is either the result or the observable manifestation of this property. To show this a little more clearly, let us examine example (14). (14) Don't worry so much. Those kids are learnin', in spite of you." I feel suddenly disappointed. "I sense that you're not believing me. Okay. Forget the kids leave 'em alone." (http://www.missourireview.com) 29Believe belongs to the class of verbs of inert cognition (Leech 1987: 25). As such, it is passive in meaning (ibid.) and may therefore be seen as expressing a state (a state of mind, to be accurate). The Simple Present would naturally be possible, but in (14), the stress is not so much on the narrators disbelief as on the visible signs of his/her disbelief. The verb senseplays a prominent part in emphasising that the speaker can perceive the outward manifestation of the narrators doubts. 30The only remaining question is: Why does the BE + ING form admit only reference to events and not to states? This restriction in the use of the Progressive is closely linked to what Comrie (1976: 3) calls the internal temporal

constituency of events and states. However, we reject Palmers claim that the sense of duration is an integral part of the lexical meaning of the [stative] verb, and [that] there is for this reason no need for a Progressive form to indicate duration (Palmer 1974:73). Indeed we may wonder on what grounds Palmer makes the assumption that states are inherently durative when everything points to the contrary. 31Take an event like <write a letter>. It is durative because it requires several instants (an instant being defined as the minimal time-unit) before it has reached its completion and completeness. The distinction between those two concepts wants explaining. We shall speak of completion when an event or a state is over, completion being defined as the state of being complete and finished (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). The telic8 event <write a letter> is therefore completed when the end-point has been reached and the letter is written. An atelic9 event such as <write> is completed once the agent has put an end to it. A state is completed when it ceases to be true. The notion of completeness is slightly more difficult to explain. The dictionary (ibid.) provides us with the following definition: including all the parts that are necessary. In fact, an event must be conceived as a succession of different compulsory parts or phases, and it is complete if and only if the subject has gone through all of its phases. 32Let us take a simplified example. We shall assume that the event <write> is composed of three different phases which, of course, can and often do repeat themselves in the same order : (i) <put a pen on paper>, (ii) <draw letters>, (iii) <move hand to the right>. If the agent stops after having accomplished (i) and (ii), what s/he has done cannot be called writing, whereas if s/he stops after (iii), the activity may be described as writing and the event denoted by the verb is complete.

33To sum up, a telic event attains completion (i.e. is completed) and completeness (i.e. is complete) once it has reached its end-point. An atelic event is completed when it has been interrupted and is complete when all of its compulsory phases have occurred at least once. 34What about states? As noted earlier, they are completed when they cease to be true. But when are they complete? Following in the footsteps of A. Joly and D. OKelly (1990) and C. & F. Recanati (1999), we contend that a state is complete as soon as it becomes true, that is from its very first instant of validity. Indeed, as Lyons (1977: 483) puts it: a static situation (or state-of-affairs, or state) is one that is conceived as existing, rather than happening, and as being homogeneous, continuous and unchanging throughout its duration. Thus, a state is composed of just one homogeneous phase which repeats itself when the state is durative (but it need not be; and this is why we disagree over the term continuous used by Lyons). 35In order to show that a state is complete after just one instant of existence, let us take another simple example. Imagine that a man died just after learning that he had won the lottery. Of course, he was not rich for very long, but for this short moment, he undeniably possessed the full property of being rich. This short period of time was enough for the state <he-be rich> to be true and complete. 36It is easy then to understand why BE + -ING cannot be used with states. Presenting a situation as in progress at T implies that the situation is, as it were, divided into two parts. One part is said to have been accomplished, the second to be uncompleted. This is possible with events because they consist of several phases10. But a state being made up of just one block is, as a result, undividable and therefore incompatible with the Progressive meaning and the BE + -ING form.

3.2 BE + -ING and habituality 37However, it is sometimes argued that the Progressive can be used to refer to a habit in existence over a limited period (Leech 1987: 32), as in example (15): (15) ThisyearsheisteachingEnglish in Guangzhou, China, through the Princeton-in-Asia program. (www.princeton.edu) 38If, following Vendler (see above), we are right in assuming that habits are categorized as states, then either our analysis of BE + -ING is inadequate or (15) does not make reference to a habitual situation. 39In fact, the problem with Leechs description is that it is based on a very loose and intuitive notion of habituality. Yet, G. Kleiber (1987) has shown that it is possible and desirable to use the word habit in a narrow and technical sense so as to distinguish between habitual, iterative and frequentative sentences. 40First of all, only habits are genuine states (Ibid. 206). So if we contrast (15) with (15a), only the latter can be rewritten as (15b), as it feels wrong to describe the subject in (15) as an English teacher. (15a) SheteachesEnglish at Trinity Western University and Education at Simon Fraser University. (http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca) (15b) She is an English teacher. 41Secondly, according to G. Kleiber (1987: 200), for an event to be habitual, it must be: (i) iterated, (ii) regular and (iii) permanent (i.e. the period of time for which the habit holds should have sufficient extension for the repetition not to be considered as accidental). This, of course, deals a blow to the very notion of temporary habit implied by Leechs description (see above). Following G. Kleibers criteria, if a situation is iterated and regular but not permanent, the sentence is frequentative. And indeed, this seems to be the case in (15).

Unlike (15a), which meets all the criteria for habitual sentences, (15) is clearly temporary, as is made clear by the adverbial this year. Therefore, given that it does not express a habit, (15) does not contradict our hypothesis that BE + -ING cannot be used with states. 42Nevertheless, we would like to account for the frequentative meaning of (15) and for the function of the Progressive form in such contexts. We contend that the role of BE + -ING remains unchanged. In (15), the situation <She teach English> is said to have started prior to the moment of utterance. There is however a difference between (15) and (15c): (15c) Wheres John? Hes teaching. 43In (15c), the situation is actually in progress at T0. By contrast, in (15), the event is discontinuous and is therefore not necessarily taking place at speech-time. By discontinuous, we mean that the situation is not true at every moment of the interval. Discontinuity is of course a necessary condition for iterativity (cf. Kleiber 1987: 151), since to be iterated, an event must be interspersed with breaks; otherwise it is continuous. 44So the extension of the temporal interval is essential to determine whether the situation is discontinuous or not. In (15c), it is because the context implies that the time span is quite short that the situation can be interpreted as continuous. To be more precise, the length of the time interval should be considered in relation with the usual (or normal) duration of a single uninterrupted occurrence of situations of the type described by the VP. In example (15), the time-frame of one year is obviously too large for an event such as <He teach> to take place continuously we know indeed that an occurrence of teaching rarely exceeds a couple of hours at a stretch. The continuous interpretation of (15d) would be more likely insofar

as it is possible for a situation like <exports grow> to be continuous over a long period of time11. (15d) After adjusting for price changes, merchandise exportsaregrowingthisyear, after plunging in 2001 and showing no growth in 2002. (www.businessweek.com) 45Yet if discontinuity is a necessary condition for the frequentative meaning to emerge, it is not a sufficient one. The aspectual properties of the event have also to be taken into account. If, in (15), we substitute a telic verb for the atelic predicate <teach English>, the discontinuous sense persists but the frequentative meaning vanishes. Consider (15e): (15e) This year he is writing a book about China. 46Because the time interval is longer than the normal duration of a writing session, the situation is likely to be seen as discontinuous12. Yet (15e) is not frequentative, as it does not refer to the same thing happening over and over again during the time span. The difference between (15) and (15e) comes from the fact that telic events are heterogeneous, while activities (atelic) are homogeneous (cf. Recanati 1999: 178)13. This means that a telic situation is made up of qualitatively different phases, whereas atelic situations consist of qualitatively identical phases. Consider the following representation of a discontinuous situation in progress at the moment of speaking.

47It is obvious that if phases a, b, c and d are qualitatively different, we do not feel as if the same event is iterated. By contrast, if a, b, c and d are qualitatively identical (as is the case with activities), then we do have the impression that the

same event is happening over and over again, hence the frequentative meaning in (15). 48In (15), BE + -ING thus indicates that the situation is in progress at T0, but, owing to the extension of the time-frame (and to the meaning of the VP), the situation is viewed as discontinuous. Furthermore, because the event is atelic and composed of identical phases, saying that the same situation is alternatively interrupted and resumed or saying that we have several new occurrences of the event amounts to the same thing. 49But if the meaning of (15) is frequentative, what then differentiates it from (15f), which is also undeniably frequentative? (15f) This year she teaches English and Creative Writing. (http://fhs.gis.net) 50Indeed, because the interval is too short, (15f) cannot be described as habitual. It therefore meets only criteria (i) and (ii), and must be regarded as frequentative. Consequently, we assume that from a strictly referential point of view, (15) and (15f) have the same underlying semantic representation. The two utterances only differ in the ways they construct the frequentative sense. As we have seen, in (15), it stems from the combination of the features [+ discontinuous], [+atelic] and [+progressive]. In (15f), because <teach English and Creative writing> is not the kind of situation that can be true and complete at speech-time (unlike an event such as score, it is not instantaneous), it is interpreted, owing to the Simple Present14, as a situation iterated over the whole interval. And because the time-frame is too restricted for the iteration to be considered permanent, the sentence is frequentative and not habitual. 3.3 BE + -ING and genericity 51Having accounted for the incompatibility of the Progressive with states, let us now return to our analysis of the BE + -ING

form as an aspectual marker. The use of the Progressive exemplified by (16) differs from (10) in that the reference point at which the event is said to be happening is not T0 but an indeterminate point we shall note Tx. (16) This dog really needs help. He appears to have a bad case of mange. Half of his hair is gone and wheneverIseehim, heis scratching himself ferociously. (www.nola.com) (16) may indeed be paraphrased as : (16) Whatever Tx such as <I - see him> is true at Tx , <he scratch himself ferociously> is in progress at Tx. 52This shows that the meaning of BE + -ING remains unchanged. The overall meaning of the utterance is modified because the reference point is now generic, and consequently, the event is not taking place in the present situation but in every situation of the type described in the subordinate clause. 53If this claim is correct, the problem raised by utterances like (2) is easily solved. (2) The house is a bit big for you now, isnt it? He said. Dont start on me, for the love of God. Tess is always nagging me to sell up and move into a flat. (David Lodge, Paradise News) 54The function of the adverb always is similar to that of the subordinate clause in (16). It refers to an indeterminate reference point Tx at which the event <Tess-nag me to...> is said to be in process. However, here, Tx is not restricted to a definite situation-type. (2) may indeed be paraphrased as : (2) Whatever Tx, <Tess nag me to...> is in progress at Tx. 55The gloss implies that the event is constantly in progress, at any moment. This is of course an exaggeration and it may explain, in a very simple way, why these utterances are often felt to be highly subjective and to express the speakers attitude towards the event. We may also add that, along with the intonation, the choice of the verb plays a prominent part in

signalling the speakers disapproval. This is probably why the emotional involvement of the speaker is less strongly felt in (17) as, the VP spend time together does not carry any negative connotation, unlike the verb nag. (17) He and I are always spending time together but we are not romantically inclined, she said (BNC) 3.4 BE + -ING and future time reference 56Let us now turn to example (5). As we said earlier, (5) is more difficult to account for in terms of Progressive aspect, since the event <come back> has not started at T0 . (5) George is coming back on Monday (quoted by Adamczewski 1996: 30) 57But once more, the internal temporal structure of the event has to be taken into consideration. <come back> belongs to the same class of events as <leave>. Vendler (1967: 102) calls them achievements15. At first sight, they look like instantaneous events. As a matter of fact, a verb like leave refers to the transitional point between two states : <be here> and <not be here>. Yet, the analysis of achievements as instantaneous events is counter-intuitive. What is actually denoted by leave is just the last stage of an implicit event. This observation has led C. and F. Recanati (1999) to consider that a verb like leave refers to a durative event whose terminative point is focalized. Example (5) can therefore be analysed as expressing Progressive meaning. But what is in progress at T0 is not the focalized point explicitly denoted by the VP, but the implicit process that leads to it. 58We must be careful to distinguish this use of BE + ING from the one illustrated by (18), which also has future time reference. (18) It wont be long until we are knocking on the door to get back to the Premier League. (Web Concordancer, The Times, January 1995)

59Here, the event <knock on the door> is viewed as in progress at an instant T located in the future by the embedding clause. So, the difference in meaning is not due to BE + -ING itself but to the location of the reference point in the future. 3.5 BE + -ING and re-interpretation 60Up to this point, we have managed to account for all the uses of the BE + ING form in aspectual terms by making allowance for two variables: the lexical meaning of the VP and the reference point. Yet, a problem occurs when it comes to analysing examples like (1) and (19-20). (1) So when you vote for a candidate, you are voting also to endorse the whole system. (www.progress.org/archive/fold128.htm) (19) When a girl of twenty-four marries a man close to eighty, it is obvious that she is marrying him for money. (Quoted by Adamczewski 1978: 71) (20) When she says she took the money, she is lying with the idea of shielding Captain Paton. (Quoted by Adamczewski 1978: 110) 61This use has been alternatively described as anaphoric (Adamczewski 1978), re-interpretative (Girard 1998) or implicative (Boisson 2004), in the sense that the proposition in the main clause refers back to, re-interprets, or is implied by the proposition in the subordinate clause. As we pointed out earlier about (1), this use of the BE + ING form does not seem to be a matter of aspect. Moreover, in all these examples, the Progressive Present can be substituted with the Simple Present with little change of meaning. See (9) above, and consider (19) and (20a). (19) When a girl of twenty-four marries a man close to eighty, it is obvious that she marries him for money. (20a) When she says she took the money, she lies with the idea of shielding Captain Paton.

62The acceptability of (19) and (20a) could be discussed further but it would be unjustified to rule them out as ungrammatical. It could be, therefore, that the opposition between the Progressive Present and the Simple Present is neutralised in this context. 63Yet, two objections can be made. First, the Progressive is intuitively felt to be more subjective. Secondly, this reinterpretive use seems to transcend other semantic distinctions, since data suggest that it may be combined with some of the uses we discussed earlier. Take (21), for instance. (21) I hope I am transgressing no professional etiquette in questioning you on the subject. (quoted by Adamczewski 1978: 146) 64Though syntactically different from previous utterances, (21) is a perfect example of re-interpretation. The speaker hopes that <I question you> does not equate with <I transgress [some] professional etiquette>. But at the same time, the meaning of BE + -ING is undeniably Progressive, and the Simple Present is not permitted. (21) is indeed ungrammatical unless it refers to a habit: (21) *I hope I transgress no professional etiquette in questioning you on the subject. 65Therefore, what makes it particularly awkward to differentiate the Simple Present from the Progressive Present in (1) and (19-20) is the fact that these sentences are either generic or habitual and that no reference point is mentioned or recoverable. Indeed, the role of the subordinate clause is not to provide the main clause with a reference point at which the event can be said to be in progress. Compare (20) and (20b). (20) When she says she took the money, she is lying with the idea of shielding Captain Paton. (20b) When she says she took the money, she smiles.

66When she says she took the money could be understood as an answer to the question: When does she smile? , but not to: when does she lie? or: when is she lying? The reason is that in (20) both clauses refer to the same event, so it would be absurd to argue that <she lie> is in progress at the instant at which she says she took the money. This does not mean, however, that the subordinate clause in (1) and (19-20) has no temporal function. It does indeed locate the event of the main clause in time. To be precise, the subordinate clause refers to a situation-type in which the second event is true. We could even argue that the event <she lie> is said to be in progress at any indeterminate instant within the situation-type whenever the latter is actualised. So far, so good. But does this really help us to distinguish (20) (she is lying) from (20a) (she lies)? In a way, it does. When the reference point is neither explicit nor recoverable, the difference between the two verb-forms becomes blurred, while when the reference point is explicit or recoverable (as in (21) where it is identical to T0), the two forms are no longer interchangeable. If you replace the verb say in (20) with another verb unrelated to the act of saying, then the two VPs no longer denote the same event, the subordinate clause serves as a reference point, the Progressive meaning becomes patent, and the Simple Present is not permitted. This appears clearly in (20c): (20c) When she smiles, (you can tell) she is lying. 67Nevertheless, the fact that, in (20), there is indeed an indefinite point at which the event is in progress should not be neglected. Given that the Simple Present (as in she lies) refers to the event as a whole without taking its internal structure into account, what matters is its completion. But with the BE + ING form, whether the reference point be explicit or not, we are viewing the event from the inside, and we are therefore concerned not with its completion but with its completeness.

This means that with the Progressive form, the focus is not on the occurrence of the event but on its internal structure, that is on its characteristics16, on the properties that make the happening an instance of the action denoted by the VP. Such focus on the properties of the event rather than on its actual occurrence is in harmony with the sense of re-interpretation, since re-intepretation has to do with the search for a better word to describe a given situation. However, this explains why the two verb-forms may be used almost indifferently in this context because, in the same way as BE + -ING, despite the focus on the characteristics of the event, also refers to its occurrence, the Simple Present, though it emphasises the occurrence of the event, necessarily refers to its characteristics. 68As we have seen, the last three examples are more difficult to explain in terms of aspectuality. Yet, we have tried to show that this use is not unrelated to the Progressive meaning. Should we conclude then that Adamczewskis hypothesis must be discarded completely? We do not think so. First, because we believe that the emphasis on the characteristics of the event is not the only reason why BE + -ING is used in the so-called anaphoric utterances. Besides, we claim that the Progressive meaning is a complex semantic construct resulting from an abstract mental process similar to the one described by Adamczewski. Furthermore, we suspect that, in the case of reinterpretation, BE + -ING is used because of this underlying cognitive process more than for its aspectual function (though the latter, as we have argued, is not totally erased).