Talk:Continuous and progressive aspects

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[edit] Continuous vs. Progressive

This article speaks as though continuous and progressive aspects are the same. However, there is a distinction between the two. One language that makes this distinction in Cantonese. Take the following example... suppose you ask your friend to help you, but he's in the middle of doing something, he can respond two ways:

  1. 我(I) 做(do) 緊(PROG) 嘢(thing) 。(.) = I'm doing something. [progressive]
  2. 我(I) 做(do) 住(CONT) 嘢(thing) 。(.) = I'm doing something. [continuous]

Although both responses translate to the same English sentence, there is a difference in meaning. The first response indicates that the action is in progress, and that your friend cannot stop what he's doing to help you. The second response merely indicates the state of the action that is continuing, but does not imply that your friend cannot stop to help you.

This is the difference between progressive and continuous aspects. The progressive aspect is a dynamic description indicating the ongoing action of the verb while the continuous aspect is a static description of the state of the action. Most languages don't distinguish between continuous and progressive and thus treat them the same, however, there are languages, like Cantonese, that do. I propose we split this article into both continuous and progressive aspects. What do people think? —Umofomia 06:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

We should definitely add that information to this article — and edit this article to remove any implication that the continuous and the progressive are the same in all languages — but I don't think there should be two separate articles that give the exact same information for several languages and then differ in their discussion of Cantonese. (Or do you have something else in mind?) Ruakh 12:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, we'll keep them together. I'll add this information to the article when I get all the source information compiled together (this weekend most likely). Would you mind if I move the article to Progressive aspect and then state that continuous aspect is a subset of it (at least according to one source, a sentence in the progressive aspect can convey continuous aspect as well)? If we are to do the move though, we'll most likely need to find an admin to do so in order to maintain the page history. —Umofomia 09:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I look forward to your additions. :-)
Re: moving to Progressive aspect: I don't know enough about this to have an opinion one way or the other. If you think that's the more appropriate title, then by all means, go for it. (You don't even need an admin to do the move; the software will let you do it yourself, since Progressive aspect has no history before it became a redirect to Continuous aspect. And there's no Talk:Progressive aspect, so there's nothing to worry about there.)
Ruakh 12:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Re: moving to Progressive aspect, don't. Some consider progressive a subtype of continous, some consider both a subtype of durative and one a subtype of the other, some consider both a subtype of durative and the two of them not being subtypes of eachother. Better to keep them separate and link between them. -- Kaleissin 15:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... I did do a search on the web, and I have indeed found articles that give the conflicting subtype hierarchies (unfortunately none of them really explain the reasoning for putting one as the subtype of the other). Are you suggesting that we split continuous and progressive into separate articles? If not, then how do you propose we solve this? Here are the issues I see with either decision:
Split:
  • Many examples in languages can indicate both continuous or progressive aspects. We would then be introducing redundant material in both articles.
Keep together:
  • There is conflicting information about which aspect is a subtype of the other. To maintain NPOV, we don't want to favor one aspect over another in the title. In this case, should we perhaps name the article "Continuous and progressive aspects"?
Currently I am leaning towards keeping them together. That way we might also be able to explain the conflicting POVs in the article. What do you think? —Umofomia 17:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I haven't heard any objection for a while, so I'm going to do a page move to Continuous and progressive aspects, and then add the information about the two in the one article. —Umofomia 04:11, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I did the move and inserted preliminary text briefly describing the differences. I'll add the rest later (with references) when I get more time. —Umofomia 07:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
The rest has been added. —Umofomia 09:06, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "at" construction

While writing my additions for Chinese progressive, I couldn't help but notice that the sections for German and Jèrriais use the preposition "at" to indicate progressive aspect, similar to the way Chinese can as well (using 喺度 in Cantonese and 正在 in Mandarin). I wonder if there's some generalized reason for this. I don't know where to look for such information, but it seems like an interesting thing to look into. —Umofomia 08:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I cannot say for Chinese, but for German and Dutch (using 'aan' also translated as 'at'), 'at' is a bit of a lousy translation, but I think the best one can do. German 'an' and Dutch 'aan' have a variety of meanings, one being 'at' ('aan de tafel', 'at the table'), but also a number of others. There's not one translation into English. Jalwikip 20:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch progressive

I removed "The continuous is not used very often in Dutch" at the start of the section about the Dutch progressive. It is, in colloquial speech, extremely common, common enough for my 2 year old daughter to have mastered it perfectly. I've also expanded it a bit, as there are more methods than were listed. I also removed the Rick Harrison link, as it is dead, and added a link to a PDF describing the progressives in various Germanic languages Jalwikip 20:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed the later addition of "Using a strange position is found comedic: Hij loopt te koken (litt. He walks to cook).". It does not add any information on the formation of the progressive, it just comments on some unusual use, which I think is inappropriate here (not to mention that it is not used for 'comedic' effect, and only with the verb 'lopen' (not just any 'position'). Jalwikip (talk) 15:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of English progressive

The article currently claims that the English progressive originated in the Insular Celtic languages, linking to an external source which states that English is the only Germanic language with a progressive aspect. Yet in the same article we learn that:

  1. There is a progressive in some German dialects.
  2. There is a progressive in Dutch.

Sounds dubious to me. FilipeS 21:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

My understanding (which may be wrong) is that the progressives in German and Dutch are non-standard, relatively new, and formed differently from the English progressive, which is formed the same way that Celtic progressives were. That said, not all linguists agree that we took our progressive from Celtic languages; some think they're an English innovation. (I don't think any think English inherited it wholesale from Anglo-Saxon; that would be odd, as recorded Anglo-Saxon didn't have a progressive, and used a construct identical to Modern English's progressive with a slightly different sense.) —RuakhTALK 21:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

For what it is worth, this whole argument seems highly dubious to me (not that I have truly studied the etymology of these constructs). The progressive/continuous in Spanish and Portuguese is formed almost exactly the same as in English and used in much the same way (although the Spanish use is more restricted). This construct has been part of these languages for centuries. It seems unlikely that these similarities are a co-incidence. Do we then argue that the constructs went from English to Spanish and Portuguese? Preposterous. These constructs have been in all of these languages for centuries. English only had major world significance beginning in the 19th century and, even at that, would not have caused Spanish to adopt a whole new grammatical construct. One could argue that all picked up the construct from the Celts but that seems a stretch since the Celtic influence in Iberia has not been strong for millennia. The most plausible explanation seems to me (not that I have anything to back this up) that there was a progressive construct of this type in Latin slang that became popular in later Spanish/Portuguese and perhaps Norman French which then influenced English. Presumably that construct died out in the francophone world. The original construct may have in fact been Celtic in origin but, again, the languages seem too similar in this aspect for this Celtic influence to have been independent.

Just an opinion.

How serious are these theories of the etymologies?

--Mcorazao 19:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Taking a closer look at the text it mentions an English-like progressive aspect in the Jèrriais language which is a dialect of Norman French. This would seem to support my hypothesis (although obviously there are other plausible explanations as well). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcorazao (talk • contribs) 19:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the most likely theory is that it's fairly natural for a language to have a progressive construct, be it one like English's and Spanish's ("be" + participle) or one like Jersey-French's and dialectic German's ("be at" + infinitive), and it's something that can fairly easily develop natively or be borrowed from a neighboring language. Given that, it's easy to suppose that Insular Celtic, Breton, and Celtiberian groups all had progressives that were adapted fairly naturally into English, Jersey-French, and Spanish, respectively. (Dunno about dialectic German.) It's also easy to suppose a host of other possible permutations. This is why we have to rely on external sources. —RuakhTALK 19:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

If the progressive had originated from Celtic influence, it should have appeared early on in the Middle Ages, while traces of Celtic culture were still present in western Europe, the fall of the Empire allowed for a modest revival of local traditions in former Roman provinces, and the Celtic cultures of Ireland, Wales and Scotland were thriving, even influential in the continent. Later, with the advance of the English conquest, the latter lost much of their strength and prestige. Yet the progressive is completely absent from early English and from early Romance (even today, French has no progressive). The earliest traces of a progressive in both language groups, from what I remember reading, are from the very late Middle Ages. The progressive seems to be a western European, Renaissance invention!

I know, original research and all that. I won't speculate on which group, if any (Iberian or English), developed the progressive first, or on whether one borrowed it from the other. Incidentally, Italian has a progressive of sorts, too. FilipeS 21:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Progressive aspect in Spanish

I am not an expert, so I write this in the talk page, but it seems to me that Spanish has a progressive aspect in "ir + gerund", as in "los participantes iban llegando a lo largo del día" or "me voy poniendo viejo". Compromiso (talk) 22:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not like that. Although we use a kind of continuous tense (estar + gerund), in Spanish we don't really have any progressive or continuous tense. The gerund in Spanish is for expressing actions which are done simultaneously: camino leyendo (I walk and read at the same time); como hablando (I eat and speak at the same time).--Le K-li (talk) 21:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
PS: I have to make a correction: me voy poniendo viejo is wrong; the correct sentence would be me estoy volviendo viejo.
ah, not wrong, simply idiomatic (my first example was andaluz, my second argentinian):

"El tiempo pasa Nos vamos poniendo viejos El amor no lo reflejo como ayer En cada conversacion Cada beso, cada abrazo Se impone siempre un pedazo de Temor "

and i thouhgt that estar+gerund might be continuous, while ir+gerund (though only used in restricted contexts) might be progressive. i don´t see that "iban llegando" could be the same kind of construction as "como hablando", for while it is difficult to eat and to talk at the same time, it is certainly impossible to go and to come simultaneously! Compromiso (talk) 00:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I think you're right! But, as I said, we don't actually have any progressive nor continuous tense in Spanish as you have in English. Those expressions are more like idiomatic. At least, that's what I've been told at school!!!--Le K-li (talk) 14:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
PS:It's not that difficult to eat and speak simultaneously. Have you ever tried??? (:-P) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Le K-li (talk • contribs) 23:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference between "progressive" and "continuous", anyway? The article is not very clear. FilipeS (talk) 23:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)