52 Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood
whereas in [a] the situation is presented as being in progress at a certain time. The
two clauses have the same tense - the preterite - but they differ in aspect.
The progressive and imperfectivity
Clauses with progressive form usually have imperfective interpretations. We
have just noted, for example, that while [47b] is concerned with her writing a
novel as a whole, [47a] is not: the former has a perfective interpretation, the latter
an imperfective one. Not all clauses with imperfective interpretations, however,
have progressive form - cf. the discussion of [29] in §4. The characteristic mean
ing of progressive aspect involves a specific kind of imperfectivity - it presents
the situation as being in progress. This implies that the situation has the following
two properties:
it has duration, rather than being instantaneous, or 'punctual';
it is dynamic, rather than static: states don't progress, they simply hold or obtain.Clauses describing punctual or static situations thus generally appear in the non
progressive:
[48] a. I finally fo und my key.
ii a. She has blue eyes.b. At last it has stopped raining.
b. This jug holds two pints.[punctual]
[static]Finding one's key (as opposed to searching for it) is punctual, and one wouldn't say
- I was finally finding my key. Having blue eyes is a state - hence the striking pecu
liarity of *She is having blue eyes. It's the same with the other examples.
Contrasts between non-progressive and progressive
The basic meaning of the progressive is to present the situation as being in
progress, but this general meaning tends to interact with features relating to the
kind of situation being described to yield a more specific interpretation, a more
specific difference between a progressive clause and its non-progressive counter
part. Writing a novel, for example, is a situation with a determinate endpoint (when
the novel is completed), and thus while [47b] entails that the novel was indeed
completed, [47a] does not: she mayor may not have gone on to complete it. But
there is no such sharp difference in the pair They watched TV and They were watch
ing TV. Watching TV (as opposed to watching a particular programme) does not have
a determinate endpoint, and so we find that if They were watching TV is true, so is
They watched TV.
Here are four contrasting pairs of examples where the grammatical difference is
purely that one is non-progressive and the other is progressive:
[49] NON-PROGRESSIVE
a. He nodded.
ii a. He is very tactful.
iii a. She lives with her parents.
iv a. She reads the 'New Scientist'.PROGRESSIVE
b. He was nodding.
b. He is being very tactful.
b. She is living with her parents.
b. She is reading the 'New Scientist'.