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x-word grammar and have been encouraging students to say “the -ing form” instead of “present/past progressive” since those traditional terms can be so misleading and are also meaningless to students unfamiliar with them. I use examples like the ones you gave to help them see that the time meaning is found either in the context alone or in the context and the x-word (i.e. auxiliary is vs was etc). The sense of “temporary” is clear.

The only difference is syntactic (i.e. the way you make these sentences into questions or the way you negate them). But the meaning of ‘waiting’ is fairly constant, isn’t it?

when I tell them that time is not equal to tense. All those years of studying rule after rule leaves them in disbelief.

Labelling collocations like the present tense of the verb to be + -ing as the present progressive and then calling the whole thing a tense doesn’t seem to me to be of much use in developing that feel for what -ing means, au fond.

we should think of verbs as having a similar potential — to represent states, at times, and actions, at others. Thus, the verbs to know or to want normally describe a state, but occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion, hence we might (and do!) say “I find I’m knowing more and more about less and less” or — even more plausibly — “I’ve been wanting to meet you for ages”

steady state, as seen in its entirety.

I’m with you there; the progressive aspect is commonly used with those verbs traditionally described as ‘stative’ (and it’s become gradually more frequent over the last 20 years or so).

And that adding -ing marks them for dynamism. I think this is the line Michael Lewis takes in The English Verb, arguing that the base form – whether used as an infinitive or as a finite verb – is the unmarked form

affect (likes, dislikes, preferences, etc) is not normally thought of as being something that evolves, changes shape, has blurred edges, and so on. You either like something or you don’t. Just as you either know something or you don’t.

Which is all just to say that our perceptions influence our language choices. A different perception, a different language choice. That’s what I’m thinking/I think!

“You change the rules of the game by playing it”, as Diane Larsen-Freeman is fond of quoting. An advertising slogan (itself derived from a colloquialism) or a song lyric, or a line from a film, becomes a catchphrase, and it in turn influences how ‘the language of the tribe’ evolves. ‘I’m lovin’ it’ is a perfect example. ‘OK’ is another.

Now taking aspect to be taking a perspective/view on events/objects looking down from above the line we can either zoom out or zoom in. This can have 2 different effects: EFFECT 1– we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS/ STRUCTURE (if there is any internal structure/process)

EFFECT 2 – we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY) or the sense that it is a bounded whole entire UNIT

“I’ve been meaning to ask you…”, where MEAN is still solidly stative in general, but has become acceptably dynamic when used, as here, in conjunction with perfect aspect (at leat, in BrE). What is going on here, and can anyone spot other similar cases?

Given that perfect aspect allows us to ‘retrospect’ on situations (more on that in a further post) it’s probably not surprising that retrospection encourages an unfolding (i.e. progressive) view of what would normally be states. Hence, ‘I’ve been meaning to…’, ‘I’ve been wanting to…’

Could this also explain the difference between “I like swimming” and “I like to swim…” – the former used for the general enjoyment of the activity, the second used often with the (implied) context of a particular (!) occasion e.g.” …on a Saturday morning”. (unbounded vs bounded again) ?

Is it improbable to see an analogy in “It was interesting” vs “I was interested” the former being the unbounded experience, the latter the bounded bodily experience ?

– e.g. whether there is a core semantic difference between -ing forms and infinitives. I quoted The Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and McCarthy, CUP, 2006) to the effect that the difference in meaning is often not great, but -ing emphasises the action or event in itself, while the infinitive places the emphasis more on the results of the action or event (p. 515).

ater he goes horribly wrong: “In describing a current state… you have to use the simple present — he knows the answer; he wants a drink, not he is knowing the answer; he is wanting a drink. … Presumably this is because the progressive, which turns an action into a state, is redundant with verbs like know and want that already are states” (p.203). The progressive turns an action into a state? Surely it’s the exact opposite!

So I propose we stop talking about stative verbs and dynamic verbs, and simply talk about verbs being used sometimes statively and sometimes dynamically. And the same goes for countability in nouns.

we seeing these experiences as somehow bounded? ‘I like…’ and ‘I know…’ are definitely not as clear-cut as ‘She crossed the street’, which is an event, and has a definite beginning and end to it. Is ‘boundedness’ perhaps a continuum?

If time is represented on a line heading with an arrow from left to right (past –> future) with events placed along it, the tense locates events/objects along the line [relative to points in time, or relative to other objects/events on the line].

no internal structure or process to it; (in the noun analogy – we don’t see the dimples on the lemon, we just see a yellow dot)  we LOSE sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS

zooming in on an events/objects leads to us to start to see some of its internal structure and processes (in the noun analogy – we start to see the dimples, pips, segments etc).  we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS

noun analogy – see an entire and whole lemon ‘bounded’ by its lemon shape) > we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY)

magnifying a bit of an object/event (in the noun analogy – we will then see just a glob of lemon-like stuff – ‘unbounded’

But even though verbs such as ‘like’ normally describe a homogenous state, “occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion”. It’s because it’s only occasionally that makes it ‘marked’. To use a song as an example of something we like, we could use progressive when We want to show a dynamic change in degree in how much we like it: Okay, I’m liking this song more now, even with the vocals. I’m liking this song more and more every time I sing it. We want to express the dynamic process of beginning to like it: Even it’s only 20 seconds, I’m liking this song already. Or express that it is a dynamic changeable state of affairs: I’m liking this song though it’s surprisingly more country influence than I expected. It still sounds great though.

The first, inner circle, represents the here-and-now; the outer circle represents there-and-then. In this way we capture the fact that tense is about distance – typically distance in time, but not necessarily.

y way of comparison there are 256 examples of is/are/am wanting (and contractions) although in quite a few of these wanting is an adjective. But: If that’s what Mr. Shipp is wanting, ” she said, ” that’s not possible. The one other point, Daryn, that the marine general is wanting to make is, they are calling this not an evacuation. Bill is wanting to get a job but we can’t because we ain’t got a car And, of course, people are wanting to know who to blame. Is it the band? is it because of my allergies? I am wanting to know because sometimes I stop breathing while I am sleeping.

You’ll be wanting a bed for the night, then, I suppose?’ and ‘You want to get married, you want kids, next thing you’ll be wanting Tupperware.

progressive aspect with so-called stative verbs is that a lot of the citations with ‘be loving’ relate to enjoyment, e.g. ‘She’s been at university for three months now, and she’s loving it.’ Here, ‘love’ is more or less synonymous with ‘enjoy’, which is traditionally seen and used dynamically, and so it is less marked

slightly different sense of ‘love’ that people use when they see something they appreciate, and comment on it, as in ‘I’m loving the new hairstyle!’ Interestingly, people don’t seem to be using ‘want’ in this way, as in *’I'm wanting that car!’

‘Hi Sally! Did you eat yet?’ ‘Hey Jason. Uh, yeah. I ate already.’ In US English (at least that of the ‘Friends’ variety) the present perfect seems to be on the way out.

Interestingly, Chinese has the same ‘aspect’ ideas as English, although this is shown by adding particles and not conjugating the verb as in English. In Chinese you have a form which describes experiences “I have been to America” and another form which describes changes of state “We’ve run out of paper” and so on. This means that, unlike German learners, Chinese learners have no trouble with the concept of the perfect, they stumble on the form

a grasp of the basic concept of both progressive and perfect aspect isn’t best achieved by means of collocations, particularly adverbs and adverbial phrases. This in fact is what many coursebooks attempt to do, by strongly associating the present perfect with phrases beginning with either ‘for’ or ‘since’ (although they tend to get diverted by the different collocations within these phrases), or with ‘just/already’ or with ‘how long…?’

“Language has a fundamentally social function….. processes of language acquisition, use and change are not independent of one another but are facets of the same system…..This system is radically different from the from the static system of grammatical principles characteristic of the widely held generativist approach.” op cit p2 (Wiley Blackwell, 2008)-

that perfect aspect – albeit in a reduced and formualic way – is relatively early acquired (in L1) to express the function of ‘past event with present consequences’, and Klaus, who argues that, in L2, it is relatively late acquired, due to difficulties learners have of assigning it a function that is not already served by another form (i.e. either the past simple or the present simple)

similar examples of learners sticking to the ‘devil they know’, over-using one form at the expense of another, because the underused form is either not perceived at all (there is only a small difference between ‘I read this book’ and ‘I’ve read this book’, after all), or it is considered to be redundant – just another way of saying the same thing.

At higher levels, the link between tense choice and discourse probably is more important to focus on ( I’m thinking of your materials relating to tense choice in short news articles – the story of an escaped monkey in Uncovering Grammar).

I like the idea of looking at the present perfect as just another collocation. Let the context determine the meaning then repeat the particular collocation lots of times as in a substitution activity – then back to task – re-anchoring the language so to speak. We could even throw the description “the present perfect” out then and just approach it as another fixed expression.

In English, you have to make a decision which tense fits your intentions, and the form itself is very easy. In the beginning, you can get away by not making this decision and choosing the simplest tense.

n this second short video on the English tense and aspect system, I take  a look at perfect aspect.