A Cognitive Grammar Account Of The English Present Progressive

“Aspect” is one of the features of English verbs.It can be divided into perfective aspect and progressive aspect that expresses the processes or the states of actions in period of time.The English progressive,which is applied to indicate the ongoing action or event at the moment of speaking,belongs to the central or core category in English grammar.Consequently,scholars at home and abroad have studied this construction from different perspectives.They have conducted a comprehensive analysis on the features of this construction from various fields,such as traditional grammar study,transformational-generative grammar study,functional grammar study as well as cognitive linguistics study.However,few scholars explore the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive.Therefore,this thesis aims to analyze the problem of the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive.Based on the analysis of the previous studies and cognitive grammar theories,the thesis claims that bounding and debounding,profiling,clausal grounding are the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive.By adopting the cognitive grammar theories,this thesis aims to solve the following questions: The cognitive mechanism of the classification of the perfective verbs and imperfective verbs is what.The method of the perfective process transform into imperfective.The program of the profiled process gets into the present progressive clause.After detailed discussion,three conclusions are drawn:First,the English verbs can be classified into the imperfective verbs and the perfective verbs that can be used in the present progressive.The cognitive mechanism of the classification is applied in the bounding theory,which is the analogy of the category of the count nouns and the mass nouns.Second,the English verbs profile a complex relationship during this process.The function of “-ing” structure is to construe the moment action by utilizing the “internal perspective”.Therefore,the result of the “-ing” form is to transform the perfective process into imperfective process.Third,according to the clausal grounding theory,tense or modals are the ways for grounding and the profiled content can be described by using the English present progressive.In the definite clauses,the grounding elements(tense and modals)are the cognitive mechanisms of the multi usage types of the English present progressive.This thesis attains some achievements on the analysis of the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive.This research can expand the usage of the theories in cognitive grammar.It also provides a new approach for the cognitive mechanisms in other categories of the English progressive forms.However,it still has many shortcomings and some limitations.