英语进行体的核心意义

学士学位论文论文题目：THE CORE MEANING OF THE
ENGLISH PROGRESSIVE ASPECT
英语进行体的核心意义
姓名：袁桐
学号：0401318
院系：外国语学院
专业：英语
指导教师：方立
二〇〇八年六月
The Core Meaning of the English Progressive Aspect
by
Yuan T ong
Supervised
by
Fang Li
Submitted to the English Department
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Arts
at
Beijing Language and Culture University
June 2008
摘要
进行体可以表达的含义很多，例如当前事件，动作的重复，将来，以及礼貌用语。

为什么同一种形式可以表达这么多种不同的含义呢？这背后有什么原因吗？本篇论文试图解答这些问题并帮助英语学习者更好、更清楚地了解进行体在不同语境下呈现出的不同语义和用法。

本篇论文的主体由三个部分组成。

第一部分将进行体与一般现在时、一般过去时进行比较，归纳出进行体的三个主要特征。

进行体的核心意义“动作或事件处于进行过程中”便可以从持续性，有限持续性，和不一定完整性这三个进行体的特征中提炼出来。

第二部分讨论了进行体许多含义之中的三个：动作的重复，将来，以及礼貌用语，并发现这些都是整个语句的含义而并非只是进行体的意义。

进行体的核心意义大体和第一部分中推测出的意义保持一致，只是在不同语境中语义稍有不同。

此处在每个扩展意义中都被保留下来的含义在本文中被称为进行体的核心意义。

第三部分通过分析进行体与不同种类动词能否搭配的问题，再一次对进行体的核心意义做出证实。

关键词：进行体；核心意义；过程；扩展意义；动词类型
The progressive aspect conveys many meanings, such as current happenings, repetition, futurity, and politeness. Why should the same form express so many different meanings? Is there any reason for that? This thesis attempts to answer these questions and help the students of English have a better and clearer understanding of the various meanings and usages that the progressive aspect takes on in different contexts.
The thesis consists of three parts in its main body. The first part summarizes the three main features of the progressive aspect after a comparison with the simple present or past form. From the features of duration, limited duration, and not necessarily complete, the core meaning of the progressive aspect “in the process of an action or event” is extracted. The second part discusses three of the progressive aspect’s various meanings: repetition, futurity, and politeness, and discovers that they are the meanings of the whole sentence rather than the meaning of the progressive aspect alone. The core meaning of the progressive aspect generally remains the same although it may be interpreted slightly differently in different contexts. The third part confirms the core meaning of the progressive aspect again through the analysis of compatibility and incompatibility of the progressive aspect with different groups of verbs.
Key words: the progressive aspect; core meaning; process; extended meaning;
verb type
Abstract in Chinese (i)
Abstract in English (ii)
Intro ductio n (1)
1.Main semantic features of the progressive aspect (2)
1.1 Duratio n (2)
1.2 Limited d uratio n (3)
1.3 N o t necessarily co mp lete (3)
1.4S ummary (4)
2.Exte nde d mea nings (5)
2.1 Repetition (5)
2.2F uturity (7)
2.3 Po litness (9)
2.4 Summary (10)
3.Verbs and the progressive aspect (11)
3.1 Inroduction to the four time schemata (11)
3.2 Compatibility and incompatibility (13)
3.2.1C o mp atib ilit y—activ it y (13)
3.2.2C o mp atib ility—acco mp lish men t (14)
3.2.3Inco mp at ib ilit y—ach ie ve me nt (15)
3.2.4I n co mp at ib il it y—st ate (16)
3.3 Summary (18)
Conclusion (18)
References (21)
Introduction
The progressive aspect conveys many meanings. For example, it means duration in I was reading all morning, and repetition in Someone is knocking at the door. It indicates futurity in They are leaving tomorrow, and politeness in I am wondering if you can lend me some money.These meanings of the progressive aspect are so different that they make one wonder why the native speakers of English have chosen the same form to express these different things. Are there any reasons for this or is it just the economical principle that is working here?
It is not a simple matter to understand what a sentence means. Although the meaning of a sentence is compositional, i.e., the meaning of a sentence can be derived from the meanings from its components, it is not a simple addition of one meaning to another. In fact, each part of the sentence may have its influence on the others. As in the case where the progressive aspect is used, its core meaning may interact with the meanings of the other parts of the sentence, resulting in many “extended meanings”like repetition, futurity, and politeness.
Many former studies are focused on listing the various usages of the progressive aspect (Leech, 1971; Palmer, 1974; Zandvoort, 1957), on whether certain groups of verbs are compatible with this grammatical category (V endler, 1967; Leech, 1971), and on the historical development of the progressive (Ziegeler, 2006). This thesis, however, aims to help the Chinese students of English clarify the complicated usages of the progressive aspect by offering the most basic and fundamental meaning of this grammatical category, with the help of which one is able to have a better and clearer understanding of the various derived meanings and usages that the progressive aspect takes on in different contexts.
The first part of the thesis will explore the main features of the progressive aspect by comparing them with those of the simple form and try to formulate a hypothesis about the meaning of the progressive aspect.In the second part, efforts are made to extract the common points from the various extended meanings of the progressive aspect in the hope of confirming the hypothesis proposed in the first part.
The third part looks into the meaning and features of the progressive aspect from a different angle. It tries to ascertain and clarify the meaning of the progressive aspect by displaying what it is and what it is not.
1 Main features of the progressive aspect
The main features of an entity are usually seen through comparison and contrast with those of other entities. For this reason, this thesis explores the features of the progressive aspect by comparing them with those of the simple form. The three features discussed in this thesis are: duration, limited duration, and not necessarily complete.
1.1Duration
What is the difference between “The house falls down” and “The house is falling down”? (Leech, 1971, p. 15) The first sentence suggests a sudden movement, while the second a more gradual one. Duration is sensed of the second sentence under this context. Rather than just telling the fact that the house falls down as in the first sentence, the second sentence also implies that the falling down of the house happens gradually part by part and takes more than just an instant. Maybe the house in question is a large one and it takes time for it to fall down completely.
More commonly seen examples could be:
“Where’s Joan? She is cooking the dinner.”(Leech, 1971, p. 15) This shows that the action of cooking is an on-going activity. It started before the time of the utterance, is still in process, and will go on for some time. The progressive indicates duration.
It should be noted that the progressive form of a verb can be associated with a durational time phrase or a momentary time phrase. Consider, for example, the following sentences:
“I was reading all morning. (Palmer, 1974, p. 55) When they arrived, I was reading.”
Both the main verbs in these sentences take their progressive aspect forms. However, the time indicated in the first sentence is a period: all morning, while the
time in the second sentence is a moment. The reason why these two sentences can both be described by the progressive aspect is that the time in both sentences implies a period. The first one is self-evident. The second one actually indicates that I started reading before their arrival and the action of reading has lasted for a period until being interrupted by the moment of their arrival. The period is from their arrival forward to an uncertain moment, but this does form a period. What we can see—their arrival— is just a dot in a line. Thus, we can also understand the sentence as the arrival took place during my reading.
1.2Limited duration
To take a step further, one notices that the duration expressed by the progressive aspect is a limited one, which means that the period it takes the action to happen does not last permanently. Compare the following two sentences:
“I live in Wimbledon.
I am living in Wimbledon.”(Leech, 1971, p. 16)
……
Conclusion
This thesis is concerned mainly with the core meaning of the English progressive aspect. It argues that the meaning of the progressive aspect “in the process of…”inferred from the comparison between the simple form and the progressive aspect seems to be the core meaning of this grammatical category from which all its extended meanings are derived.
The meanings of repetition and futurity are both derived from the interaction between the core meaning of the progressive aspect and the meanings of the constituents of the sentence, be it the main verb or an adverbial. The meaning of politeness is the result of the dynamic combination of the core meaning of the progressive aspect and the speech situation and communicative intention of the speaker. However, whatever extended meanings the phrases involving the progressive aspect have taken on themselves from their different contexts, the basic meaning of
the progressive remains unchanged and serves as the starting point of the derivation of other meanings.
This thesis has also discussed the verb types proposed by V endler 1967.This is because not all verbs can take the progressive form. From the compatibility and incompatibility of meanings, the core meaning of the progressive aspect can be seen more clearly. Moreover, this thesis has also discussed some examples in which state verbs take the progressive form. When this happens, the verbs take on meanings that are not their typical and mostly used ones and this is usually intended by the speaker to achieve certain rhetorical or dramatic effects. Consider, again, the being foolish on purpose example. The verb be belongs to the group of state verbs and is normally incompatible with the progressive aspect. However, its appearance in this example can be justified because the author wants to stress the temporariness of this state and gives it a temporary feature rather than a permanent quality.
In every usage of the progressive aspect, there is a temporally limited process a verb needs to go through. This process is directional. It involves a final endpoint, which could be implied or realized, arbitrary or predestined. The length of period the process lasts is unknown but it must be limited for sure. Therefore, to sum up, we can say that the core meaning of the progressive aspect is: in the process of (an action or event).
The progressive aspect cannot work alone; it always depends on its context to carry out its meaning. The context could be either the other constituents of the sentence or the speech situation and the communicative intentions of the speaker. Therefore, when using the progressive aspect, one should make coordination between the core meaning of the progressive aspect and its context.
It is the hope of this thesis that the Chinese students of English equipped with the knowledge of the core meaning of the progressive aspect can understand the progressive aspect’s various meanings in its various usages more easily and become more competent in using this grammatical category to express their ideas and feelings freely and accurately.
References
Hatcher, A. G.. (1951). The Use of the Progressive Form in English: A New Approach.
Language, 27, 254-280
Leech, G.. N. (1971). Meaning and the English Verb. Singapore: Singapore Offset Printing (Pte) Ltd.
Palmer. F. R. (1974). The English Verb. London: Longman Group Limited. Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Shi, D. Q. [施栋琴]，(2001)，英汉进行体结构与起始阶段进行动作的表达，《外语教学与研究》(3), 164-171。

Smith, C. S. (1983). A Theory of Aspectual Choice. Language, 59, 479-501
V endler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in Philosophy. United Kingdom: Cornell University Press Ltd.
Zandvoort, R. W. (1957). A Handbook of English Grammar.Great Britain: Western Printing Services Ltd Bristol
Zhang, Z. B. [章振邦], (2003), 《新编英语语法教程》。

上海：上海外语教育出版社。

Ziegeler, D. (2006). Interfaces with English Aspect: Diachronic and empirical studies.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company。