The Functional Extension Of English Progressive Aspect Towards Subjectification

Subjectification not only manifests the regularity of semanticchanges but also is one of the major directions towards which agrammatical marker undergoes further grammaticalization. Throughanalyzing the functional extension of English progressive aspect, thepresent paper addresses the regularity of further grammaticalization ofgrammatical markers.Aside from its aspectual function of indicating the progressivemeaning, English progressive, aspect further develops three majorfunctions, namely (1) being used to refer to the future; (2) being usedwith stative verbs to indicate temporariness; (3) being used to indicatetactfulness. The author argues that these three extensions, among whichthere seems to be no connections, in fact all exhibit a commoncharacteristic, that is, they are all resulting from the development ofEnglish progressive towards subjectification. The functional extension ofthe progressive is essentially an issue of further grammaticalization of agrammatical marker. Grammatical markers, as the same as ordinarylexical items do, are inclined to develop towards subjectification.This study, compared with previous related researches, moves a stepforward, since it not only suggests a simple and unified explanation fordifferent extended functions of the progressive, but also as a universalregularity of further grammaticalization provides a heuristic perspectivefor our future studies of further grammaticalization of other grammaticalmarkers.This thesis is composed of six chapters. First it presents a literaturereview of previous studies regarding English progressive and indicatesthe problems that need to be resolved. In addition, the author also introduces the research scope and her point of view. And then thetheoretical basis is elucidated. Since this thesis is a study ofgrammaticalization, in Chapter Three it presents a historical sketch ofEnglish progressive and provides a general process English progressive isundergoing. More specifically, this part discusses how the aspectualmeaning of the progressive took shape with the aim of helping readersbetter understand its further grammaticalization. After that, the authoradopts three chapters respectively in detail to verify that these threefunctions are all related to subjectification, which is strengthened bymeans of Chinese data.