The ‘Future Use’ of the Present Progressive in English: Subjectification of the Progressive and an Analysis in Terms of Cognitive Grammar

Abstract

<p>This study deals with the present progressive with future time reference. The aim of this paper is to show that the ‘future use’ of the present progressive is, diachronically, subjectified. After identifying the concept of subjectification defined by Traugott (1989, 1995, 2003, 2010) and Traugott &amp; Dasher (2002), I show that the ‘future use’ is more subjective than the use of present ongoing activities, and argue that the ‘future use’ has been modeled in terms of subjectification. Moreover, this paper argues that, although the ‘future use’ does not refer to physically ongoing events, in the ‘future use’ the situation can be viewed as ‘in progress’ cognitively, and proposes a new account of the ‘future use’ based on the framework of Cognitive Grammar, as laid out by Langacker (2008). Thereby, it is shown that the use of present ongoing activities and the ‘future use’ are both based on the same cognitive foundation, and the difference lies in which portion is profiled.</p>