The Progressive Revisited: Historical and Quantitative Studies in Germanic and Romance languages
What is it about?
The volume offers an in-depth look at a number of progressive aspect constructions in select Germanic and Romance languages. The studies included use corpus data to discover or describe the development and/or use of well-established and rare progressive constructions.
Why is it important?
Linguists interested in a particular issue in a language, or a language family, may not be aware of the progress which has been made in the work on similar issues by linguists focusing on different languages or working within different traditions. Typological studies try to bridge this gap but they are normally not detailed enough to focus on, for example, low-frequency structures. This volume addresses this problem by offering a collection of articles on the progressive in Germanic and Romance languages, with attention mainly being given to English and Italian but also with substantial discussions of other languages such as Norwegian and Spanish.