Languages & Linguistics
Present Perfect Progressive
The present perfect progressive tense is used to indicate an action that began in the past, is still ongoing, and may continue into the future. It is formed by using "has/have been" followed by a present participle (-ing form of the verb). This tense is commonly used to emphasize the duration or continuity of an action or situation.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
12 Key excerpts on "Present Perfect Progressive"
eBook - ePub- Geraldine Woods(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
remains = states of being existing at the same time; both verbs are in present tense) If two actions take place at the same time (or nearly the same time), use the same tense for each verb.Not Picture Perfect: Understanding the Perfect Tenses
Now for the perfect tenses, which, I must tell you, are not always used perfectly. In fact, these three tenses — present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect — may give you gray hair, even if you are only 12 years old. And they have progressive forms too! As with the simple tenses, each tense has a no-frills version called by the name of the tense: present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. The progressive form adds an “ing” to the mix. The progressive is a little more immediate than the other form, expressing an action or state of being in progress. In this section, I give you some examples of these tenses so you can identify each. In the next section, “Using the Perfect Tenses Correctly ,” I go into detail about when and how to use each tense.Present perfect and Present Perfect Progressive
The two present perfect forms show actions or states of being that began in the past but are still going on in the present. These forms are used whenever any action or state of being spans two time zones — past and present.First, check out examples with plain present perfect tense:- Roger and his friends have spent almost every penny of the inheritance. (The verb have spent is in present perfect tense.)
- For years, Lulu’s best friend, Roger, has pleaded with her to stop robbing banks. (The verb has pleaded is in present perfect tense.)
- Roger has been studying sculpture for 15 years without learning any worthwhile techniques. (The verb has been studying is in the progressive form of the present perfect tense.)
- Lulu and Lola have been counting sheep all night. (The verb have been counting
eBook - PDF- Martin J. Endley(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Information Age Publishing(Publisher)
As the following examples indicate, do will generally accept progressive marking quite happily: (75) a. She’s doing her homework. b. She’s doing very well in school. c. She was doing the laundry when the electricity failed. Primary be also permits progressive marking: (76) a. You are being foolish. b. The twins were being charming. Tense and Aspect in Combination: The English Present and Past Perfect The perfect aspect in English is formed with the auxiliary have plus the -en participle of a main verb. A prototypical perfect construction will have the following form: (77) Sub. + have + V-en Traditionally, the participle has been called the past participle. As with the (so-called) present participle, this is a rather misleading label. I will fol- low linguistic convention in referring to it instead as the -en participle, even though the actual form the participle takes varies (e.g., talked, written, sung). Again, it is the auxiliary verb that carries the tense. Compare a present per- fect verb with its past perfect counterpart: (78) a. Julie has talked all night. b. Julie had talked all night. As many EFL teachers will no doubt testify, the perfect aspect can be especially troublesome for DUEs. The problem is partly a lack of familiarity, since many languages do not have a comparable form. But the problems 252 Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar run deeper than this. Perfect aspect is conceptually difficult in that it com- bines a reference to more than one time frame. I want to explore this in greater detail. The main function of the present perfect is to refer to a situation that began in the past but which has “current relevance” for the speaker or hearer, either because the situation itself is continuing into the present or because the effects of the situation are still being felt. Consider the two examples in (79): (79) a. The professor has talked for the last hour! b.
eBook - ePub- Geoffrey N. Leech(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The second statement describes a situation which the speaker regards as temporary; it is therefore more appropriate when Lynn and Josh have not been married very long. It also hints that the situation is liable to change.Because of the semantic element of duration, the Perfect Progressive is difficult to use with verbs which normally refer to momentary events: He has been starting his car. ?*He has been starting his book.The first of these makes sense, but reflects badly on the car’s reliability. The second sentence, on the other hand, seems nonsensical because it gives duration to something which cannot have duration: the only way to make sense of it is to construe it as an ironical remark with the interpretation ‘He has been meaning / trying / pretending to start his book’.77 Two further differences between the Present Perfect Progressive and the Present Perfect meaning state-up-to-the-present are:A As examples above show, the Progressive does not have to be accompanied by an adverbial of duration. The sentence ?*It has snowed without any adverbial qualification sounds very odd, while It has been snowing is perfectly acceptable.B The Progressive can be used with many verbs which cannot be used with the non-progressive Present Perfect in this sense, because they cannot act as ‘state verbs’: You’ve been reading that book for ages is allowable, but not *You’ve read that book for ages.Once again, however, there is virtually a free choice between the two forms in many contexts: Jack has been looking after the business for several years and Jack has looked after the business for several years are both acceptable.a. There seems to be a tendency to avoid the ordinary Present Perfect with verbs such as sit, lie, wait and stay, which generally refer to temporary states. Thus I’ve been sitting here all afternoon is more idiomatic than I’ve sat here all afternoon. The same preference is exercised even with very long periods of time: The inscription has presumably been lying here for thousands of years is more likely to be used than The inscription has presumably lain here for thousands of years
eBook - PDFEnglish Modality
Core, Periphery and Evidentiality
- Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús Hita, Johan van der Auwera, Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús Hita, Johan van der Auwera(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Frank Brisard and Astrid De Wit Modal uses of the English present progressive 1 Introduction The semantics of the English progressive, which is used in a notoriously large variety of contexts, occupies a unique position from a cross-linguistic point of view (cf. Bertinetto et al. 2000). 1 Within the paradigm of the present, moreover, its characteristic interaction with the simple present-tense form has been widely noted and debated, not in the least because it represents a feature that seems fairly exclusively linked to English, among the more familiar European lan-guages. This is probably one of the main reasons why the English progressive has attracted a lot of scholarly attention in the past decades (e.g., Allen 1966; Sche ff er 1975; Adamczewski 1978; Ljung 1980; Römer 2005; for an overview of recent studies of the progressive aspect in “ outer circle ” Englishes, see Collins 2008). Most often, however, these studies restrict their semantic analyses to purely aspectual notions of continuity and duration, as illustrated in the follow-ing quote from Palmer: “ The progressive indicates activity continuing through a period of time. Activity with duration ” (1968: 61). De fi nitions such as this can account for some uses of the English progressive, and as such it constitutes a viable characterization of a part of the progressive ’ s semantics. However, in a number of examples attested in the corpus we have studied, the Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English (Du Bois et al. 2000), the use of the progressive does not seem to be primarily motivated by temporal or aspectual considerations: (1) . . . Well he says minorities. .. He ’ s smart. He talks about minorities.
- (Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
According to Hornby, the immediate (or real) present is usually indicated by the Present Progressive Tense, but by the Simple Present Tense in demonstrations and step-by-step descriptions, with verbs that contain the notion of continuity, with verbs of perception, and with Non-Conclusive Verbs. 138 All-inclusive time is usually indicated by the Simple Present Tense. Past time is usually indicated by the Simple Past Tense or by the Past Progressive Tense, but sometimes also by the Simple Present Tense (the so-called Historic Present). The inclusive present is indicated by the Present Pcrfect Tense to refer to past activities within a period extending to and including the present or by either the Present Perfect Tense or the Present Perfect Progressive Tense to refer to the present result of past activity or experience. The inclusive past and inclusive future are indicated by the Past Perfect (Progressive) and Future Perfect (Progressive) tenses respectively. Future time is indicated by the Future Tense, by the Future Progressive Tense, by the Simple Present Tense, by the Present Progressive Tense, by BE and a io-infinitive, by going to, by the use of the adjectives sure and certain with a io-infinitive, and by the Present or Present Perfect or Past Tense in temporal and conditional clauses. Repeated or habitual activities and continuing states are indicated by verb-groups like be in the habit of, by the Simple Present Tense or the Simple Past Tense with an adverbial of frequency, by the Present Progressive Tense or the Past Progressive Tense with an adverbial like always, by the verb can or could with be and a complement, by the verb will or would and an infinitive, and by used to and an infinitive. 13 * Hornby devotes several pages to a discussion of verbs of perception and non-conclusive verbs, which are not, as a rule, used in expanded verb-clusters.
eBook - PDF- Paul Portner, Klaus Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, Paul Portner, Klaus Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
More importantly, not all analyses are equally comprehensive in their attempts to explain the important phenomena; nor are they all equally detailed and precise. Thus, to take an instance, Nishiyama & Koenig’s (2004) paper is very brief, and it is not much more than suggestive on certain crucial issues; as a result, it is difficult to know such things as whether they mean to appeal to informational relevance in 342 Paul Portner invoking the notion of discourse topic. Because of limitations such as these, any summary (including this table, as well as this article as a whole) can best be used as a guide as one aims to develop a deeper understanding of each component idea, and as one attempts to understand and evaluate individual proposals. 3 The progressive The progressive is a periphrastic grammatical form used to say that some event is in progress, or ongoing, at the time indicated by the sentence’s tense. For example, (47) indicates that Mary’s action of walking was ongoing at some point in the past. (47) Mary was walking. Because it is used in this way, the English be+VERB-ing form can be referred to as “the English progressive”. Other languages have similar periphrastic forms, though they have seldom been the specific subject of formal analysis. In other instances, the term “progressive” is used to indicate a particular meaning or use of a grammatical form; for example, the Spanish imperfective (imperfecto) has among its many uses the ability to describe ongoing events (data from Cipria & Roberts 2000, (2b)): (48) Ibamos a la playa cuando nos encontramos con Miguel. go-1plu.IMPF to the beach when RECPR meet-1plu.PRET with Miguel ‘We were going to the beach when we ran into Miguel.’ Tab.
eBook - PDF- Co Vet, Carl Vetters, Co Vet, Carl Vetters(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
This semantic content can, in actual usage, get several more specific interpret-ations, such as progressive (SoA presented as ongoing), habitual (recurrent by virtue of habit), iterative (occurring repeatedly), and continuous (occur-ring continuously, without interruption or end-point). We shall assume that these different interpretations of Imperfective must be distinguished from the distinct grammatical aspect values Progressive, Habitual, Iterative, Continuous, which may get separate expression in other languages (and sometimes even in languages which do have the Pf/Impf opposition). (Dik 1989: 188). In other words, Dik wants to dissociate the English progressive from the Imperfective and considers it as a separate type of Phasal Aspect. On the other hand, he points out that the Progressive expresses one facet of what may be expressed by the Imperfective in other languages (pp. 188—189). Although I find the issue difficult to decide, I think that there are reasons to put forward a proposal which regards the English progressive as a specific and restricted realization of the Imperfective. 3. Towards an alternative Functional Grammar account of the English progressive 3.1. Preliminaries To begin with, let me first make a number of points which should be part of our understanding of the Progressive form in English, and which will have to be reflected in our Functional Grammar account. (i) The English progressive is a marked category, witness the following quo-tation from Quirk et al. (1985: 198): The English progressive tenses 165 The progressive aspect is infrequent compared with the nonprogressive. A count of a large number of verb constructions has indicated that less than 5 per cent of verb phrases are progressive, whereas more than 95 per cent are nonprogressive. This implies, of course, that the nonprogressive is the default category, and that the progressive is subject to a number of restrictions which will have to be accounted for.
eBook - ePubAn Uncommon Tongue
The Uses and Resources of English
- Walter Nash(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
In ‘I kissed the redhead’, ‘kissed’ is in the past tense; in ‘I was kissing the redhead when this guy with the tattooed nose came into the bar’, the construction ‘was kissing’ expresses an aspect of the action, called the progressive, as well as the time (past) of the event, and is accordingly labelled Past Progressive. In ‘I had been thinking about kissing the redhead when this guy with the tattooed nose began behaving unsociably, like he had been reading my thoughts or something’, ‘had been thinking’ and ‘had been reading’ express not only ‘pastness’ but also two kinds of aspect, the progressive and the perfective (meaning the aspect of an action completed over a stretch of time, or within a ‘time zone’); they are therefore described as examples of the Past Perfective Progressive. The English constructions traditionally labelled ‘Perfect’ and ‘Pluperfect’, following the descriptive practice of Latin grammar, are not primarily expressive of tense; their function is rather to convey aspect, for which reason it is preferable to refer to them as ‘Perfective’. 1 ‘So what?’ cries the average layperson, as well he or she might. The metalanguage is the grammarian’s business, and expresses the grammarian’s view of linguistic structure. Its only value for the laity must lie in its potential expediency in clarifying matters of usage. To ask a non-grammarian the question ‘Do you know when to use the Present Perfect Continuous (or Present Perfective Progressive)?’ is therefore to raise a pseudo-problem. It suggests that ordinary people of sound mind and sturdy mother-wit choose their constructions as they might choose neckties or petticoats, to fit the mood of some social occasion. It further suggests that these same people do not share the beatitude of Molière’s comic hero, Monsieur Jourdain, who discovered that he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it
eBook - PDF- Eleanor Dozier, Zulma Iguina(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Translation We have been running. b. Indicative Present Perfect Progressive Mi madre ha estado llamándome My mother has been calling me todos los días. every day. Copyright 201 7 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. C Compound Tenses 197 c. Indicative future perfect progressive Para cuando llegue, habré estado By the time I get there, I will manejando durante doce horas sin have been driving for twelve parar. hours nonstop. This form can also serve for probability, when referring to a completed ongoing action in the past: —¿Por qué está tan cansada Ana? “Why is Ana so tired?” —No sé. Habrá estado trabajando “I don’t know. She was probably toda la noche. working all night.” d. Indicative pluperfect progressive Cuando por fin me dejaron entrar, When they finally let me in, I had había estado esperando tres horas. been waiting for three hours. e. Conditional perfect progressive La policía habría estado vigilando The police would have been watching la casa si se lo hubieras pedido. the house if you had asked them. This form can also be used for probability, when referring to a completed ongoing action in the past prior to another: —¿Por qué crees que tardó tanto “Why do you think he took so long en abrir la puerta? to open the door?” — Habría estado escondiendo “He must have been hiding the las pruebas. evidence.” f. Subjunctive Present Perfect Progressive Use this form in a subordinate clause in which the main verb is in the present set and to refer to a completed ongoing action in the past: Dudo que haya estado haciendo I doubt that he was doing what lo que decía.
eBook - PDF- Alfred Schopf(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
1.2 The Present Perfect Progressive In comparison to pronouncements on PresPerf, there are very few on PresPerfProg. Those who view PresPerfProg as simply an aspectual modification of PresPerf parallel to all other progressives include Sweet 1900, who terms the meaning 121 of progressives 'definite', without, however, giving any kind of coherent or plausible definition of the term, and F. R. Palmer 1974, who says: The position (of perfect progressives) is exactly the same as with the non-progressive forms, provided only that it is accepted that the use of the progressive does not necessarily imply that the activity continues throughout the relevant period of time, but merely that it has duration within the period. (F. R. Palmer 1974:53-54) Bauer 1970 is also among those who see PresPerfProg as an aspectual modifi-cation of PresPerf. What it expresses is simply 'accomplished fact that action has been in progress at, or for, seme time within the time-sphere of the perfect, the span of time immediately anterior to the point of reference' (Bauer 1970:195). 'Telics' become 'quasi-atelic', i.e. iirperfec-tive, while with 'atelics', progressive aspect may be felt to be redundant (ibid: 195) or give rise to very subtle (semantic) distinction (ibid:196). On the other hand, we have accounts such as Leech 1969, where PresPerfProg is associated with only 2 of his four readings of PresPerf: 1. duration of state up to the present moment 2. duration of habit up to the present moment (Leech 1969:154) and that of Schmole 1977/8, who handles the progressive vs. non-progressive aspectual distinction in terms of meaning components, rather than holistically, at least initially, and then suggests which PresPerf senses do not have correlates with PresPerfProg.
eBook - PDFThe Grammar of the English Tense System
A Comprehensive Analysis
- Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
This explanation is also in keeping with the fact that a bounded representation of a situation is incompatible with an adver-bial enforcing a continuative reading: *I have written three books ever since I entered university. (Compare with I have written three books so far, which is grammatical but cannot receive a continuative interpretation.) *I have come to this shop thirteen times for years. (Compare with I’ve come to this shop thirteen times since then, which receives a noncontinuative reading.) This restriction is not affected by the use of the progressive form, because (as noted in 5.29.1) the progressive only renders the individual telic situations nonbounded, but not the series as a whole: *I have been writing three books ever since I entered university. *I have been coming to this shop thirteen times for years. 5.9 Factors triggering a continuative interpretation 5.9.1 Because a continuative reading means that the time of the full situation, which starts before t 0 , includes t 0 , many languages use the present tense to convey this interpretation. In Standard English, however, this reading requires the use of the present perfect when there is a time-specifying adverbial or bi-functional adverbial interpreted as referring to a pre-present period. III. More on the continuative reading of the perfect 239 I {have lived / *live} here since 1965. I {have known / *know} him for a very long time. I {have already been waiting / *am already waiting} for her for two hours. An adverbial specifying a period up to t 0 imposes the T-interpretation that the situation time is co-extensive with the pre-present and in doing so rules out an indefinite reading. The presence of such an adverbial is, however, compatible with a continuative interpretation (as well as with an up-to-now one). More-over, there are adverbials that are compatible with the continuative reading only. Compare: The Johnsons have lived in London for three years.
eBook - PDF- Östen Dahl(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The progressive in Romance, as compared with English 599 24. It should be observed that sentence PROGQ:19 ( He HAVE his hair CUT / right now /) was not correctly interpreted by some informants, who used a Compound Preterite. This sentence was also infelicitous because the causative construction employed elicited in Portuguese an idiomatic expression. 25. Here is the example: It was a bright sunny day. The bees HUM, the birds SING, the cows GRAZE in the greenfield. Suddenly, the earth opened and the devil came out. 26. The constraint concerning stative verbs may sometimes be circumvented even in Italian, especially in some colloquial varieties. Amenta (1994–95) presents a few spontaneous examples gathered in Palermo. But even a Northern newspaper like La Stampa may oc-casionally present sentences such as the following: Non credo che ci sia un maggior narcisismo. Anche se una certa generazione di sacerdoti quarantenni si sta vestendo un po’ alla ‘monsignore’ ‘I do not believe there to be more of a narcisistic attitude, even though a certain generation of priests is (currently) dressing so to say à la monsignor ’. This case is remarkable because the usage of PROG does not destativize the predicate, as normally happens in such cases. Rather, it merely introduces the idea of the temporary validity of the statement. We shall find further examples of this in the English postural verbs quoted below. Another example leading to the same conclusions is the follow-ing, heard on the radio in a commentary about the economic situation: I profitti quindi stanno rimanendo all’estero ‘the profits are thus kept abroad for the time being’ (lit.: are remaining). 27. Apparently, this could be considered a quite natural application of the intrinsic seman-tic value of the progressive, which is obviously related to the notion of temporariness. Indeed, also in John is being kind there is a clear implication that this is a temporary situation.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
