progressive forms: participle or gerund?

Question

Progressive forms of verbs consist of the form to be + participle. At least that is what most English grammars say or they are imprecise and speak of the -ing form. My question is what follows after the forms of to be?

I'm working in the garden.

Is working here a present participle or rather a gerund?
I asked myself this question long after I had left school, simply because one accepts what grammar books say without much reflection. But the longer I think about this problem, the more I tend to see it as a gerund.

I stumbled upon this through a curious way of speaking in German dialects. Normally we don't use progressive forms in German, but some dialects make extensive use of forms such as

Ich bin am Aufräumen - word-for-word translation: “I'm at tidying up”.

Normally in English a preposition such as in "at tidying up" is omitted and it becomes:

I'm tidying up.

On another forum, a German language one, we noted the German dialects that made extensive use of such forms as beim/am Aufräumen—and we discovered that these forms are used extensively in areas along the River Rhine from Switzerland to the north, but also in the east of Germany and in the south. So it is reasonable to ask what form is used in English, participle or gerund? In German it is a gerund, a participle would be unusual. So it might be the same in English, but since participles and gerunds have the same form, it is really difficult to decide which form it is.

I derive the progressive forms from a formula with "in the act of doing":

I'm working in the garden means “I'm in the act of working in the garden.”

When you omit "in the act of" you get the normal progressive form.

I forgot to mention that the following archaic form also exist

We were ahunting / went ahunting

where one may assume that the prefix a- is a relic of a preposition.

Your item 2: When you read my post you see that I used "at tidying up" as a word-for-word translation of the German sentence. The word-for-word translation is no Engisch, it is German with English words. Can you prove that there was never a preposition. — rogermue, Jan 29 '14 at 18:25
I could prove it if I consulted an English historical grammar (as could you); for now, I can only assure you that I know and am 100 % certain that this was not the case: the -ing form is a participle there, so prepositions would have been impossible. There is also absolutely no reason to even suggest that there might have been a preposition, since the Dutch/German construction is completely different and unrelated (it uses the infinitive). — Cerberus - Reinstate Monica, Jan 29 '14 at 19:32
Cerberus, I'm sorry to say it. But you are mistaken. The German construction "Ich bin beim Einkaufen" or "Ich bin am Überlegen" is no infinitive but a gerund. Einkaufen and Überlegen are spelt with capital letters and "beim" and "am" contain the article (bei dem, an dem), so it is a real noun from the infinitive. — rogermue, Jan 29 '14 at 19:47
Infinitives were originally nouns, and they still are, to some degree. But they are etymologically and formally distinct from (English) gerunds, even though they can indeed fulfil the same function in many cases. The word Einkaufen is not really a gerund, if only because German has no real gerunds like English; the German etymological and formal equivalent of the English gerund is -ung, as in Überraschung. So, yes, I am cleaning up and Ich bin am Aufräumen are semantically similar, but they are structured differently and have etymologically different components. — Cerberus - Reinstate Monica, Jan 29 '14 at 20:20
There are a lot of various opinions about what a gerund is. For me it is the infinitive as a noun - or at has a special ending such as -ing added to the infinitive. - How you call the form "beim Einkaufen" is not so important. It is the form of the infinitive spelt with capital letter and can take a preposition and the definite article. I call it gerund, others say Verbalsubstantiv/verbal noun/ other substantivated infinitive - it remains principally the same. - Another question: You say in — rogermue, Jan 29 '14 at 21:13
@falkb I have seen it, really a fine find and the first evidence I read that the progressive forms really can have their origin in a prep + ger. — rogermue, May 06 '14 at 04:21

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:38

6

This is a strange theory that is provably wrong. It is easy to trace "I am working" back to determine that it has not developed from "I am at working", and it is obvious that the rheinische Verlaufsform is different from the English Present Progressive in other ways, not just the preposition. For starters, it uses the nominalized bare infinitive, and it uses it with a definite article. So the English counterpart would really be "I am at the work", where work is a bare infinitive. Does not compute, sorry.

Edit: oh, and the German equivalent of this English -ing is actually -end. So it would have to be "ich bin arbeitend" in German, or something along those lines. Not "ich bin am Arbeiten".

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:38

Community

1

answered Jan 29 '14 at 14:44

RegDwigнt

97,231

And I'll see if I can get someone in chat with a better knowledge of Dutch to comment on this, as the rheinische Verlaufsform, to my knowledge, is all but standard there. – RegDwigнt Jan 29 '14 at 14:48
1

You write "provably wrong" - but in this matter there are not any proofs up to now. I have been looking for something that might give a hint, but the only formula I have found is "in the act of doing". Though this formula is rare it is used in English and here we have a gerund. – rogermue Jan 29 '14 at 14:53
2

Exactly cognate to the rheinische Verlaufsform is the way progressives are made in both Danish (Jeg er ved at rydde op = I am by/at to clean up = I’m cleaning up), European Portuguese (Estou a limpar = I am at/to/by to-clean = I’m cleaning), Irish (Tá mé ag glanadh = I am at/by cleaning [verbal noun] = I’m cleaning), Chinese (我在打扫 = I [am] at/by/in clean = I’m cleaning—verbs in Chinese, of course, are not inflected and cannot show which form is being used). The English construction is similar to the Spanish (Estoy limpiando = I am cleaning), where a simple --> – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 14:54
--> present participle is used with a copula to indicate the progressive tense. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 14:55
Very good. One of the best examples with gerund is Italian: Sto lavorando - word-for-word translation: I stay/stand in working. I wouldn't consider Chinese constructions as Chinese and German or English hardly had any influence on each other. But when Italian has a clear construction with a gerund one may ask the question what is/was it in English. – rogermue Jan 29 '14 at 14:58
@rogermue, the proof is the tracing back. You can trace the construction all the way back to Old English (though its meaning has changed a bit since then), back when the gerund and the present participle were different. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 14:58
The idea is clear. The problem is to find clear examples of Old English. – rogermue Jan 29 '14 at 15:03
let us continue this discussion in chat – rogermue Jan 29 '14 at 15:07
2

@RegDwigнt You're right, this construction is perfectly normal in Dutch. Ik ben aan het koken = "I am cooking". – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 29 '14 at 16:41
@JanusBahsJacquet: Still, the Portuguese doesn't have the article, I believe (which Dutch and German do have). (Ancient) Greek does have preposition + article + infinitive, so you would say e.g. because of the be absent, he missed her; but a preposition indicating "during" would not be combined with the infinitive—then they'd simply use a participle. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 29 '14 at 16:47
@Cerberus, you're right: the Portuguese, Danish, and Irish examples all lack the article (at in Danish is the equivalent of ‘to’ in infinitives—it is mandatory outside combinations with modals). In fact, adding an article to an infinitive is as impossible in Danish and (I believe) Portuguese as it is in English. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 17:49
@JanusBahsJacquet: Right. So those constructions are probably not directly related, although both groups may ultimately depend on the same, more fundamental property of Indo-European infinitives. A kind of convergent evolution. Or possibly even borrowing? But that seems unlikely: the Dutch construction feels to me like an old, inherited construction—as in, it does not sound old-fashioned at all, but neither does it sound like a new invention or borrowing. But it is infrequent enough that I would not expect any other language to borrow it, let alone Romance languages. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 29 '14 at 19:38
@Cerberus, we can’t really say much about Indo-European infinitives, because (as far as can be reconstructed), Proto-Indo-European did not have infinitives at all. Many, though not all, of the daughter languages have developed them by regularising various forms of verbal-derived nouns. No progressive or continuous aspects are really found that far back, either. Ultimately, all the Western European languages seem to have made progressives up by using either a present participle or an infinitive/gerund (usually with a preposition), but there’s no need for the different ‘solutions’ to be --> – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 19:55
--> related. The addition of the definite article to the infinitive is probably common to the German-Dutch dialect groups (basically West Germanic, but excluding the insular dialects), but there’s really no way of saying whether it is an addition to the same pattern found in Danish, or whether it’s just a separate development altogether. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 19:58
@JanusBahsJacquet: Right, I can only nod in agreement. Note that the continuous/progressive is not frequently expressed in Dutch. For some reason, English chooses to express it a lot more. I also observe that I am x-ing is used more and more where one would normally use the simple present. I predict it will be the default present tense in a century or two. Then it will have lost the aspect altogether, and we have entered a new phase. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 29 '14 at 22:06
@JanusBahsJacquet I would be careful about calling the Portuguese and Spanish -ando type words present participles. They really aren’t, since they are adverbs not adjectives and never inflect. They are called gerunds in those languages, not present participles, but cannot be nouns. They can be heads of adverbial phrases though. In some ways the -ante type words are a better match for the term present participle, but those are catch as catch can; some exist for some verbs and are usually adjectives but sometimes become nouns, but they are not automatic for all verbs the way the gerund is. – tchrist Sep 25 '15 at 08:03

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered May 02 '14 at 21:49

After some research I came across this remarkable academic document "On the progression of the progressive in early Modern English - icame": Please, read especially page 7, I think this is the actual puzzle piece we're looking for! Here some excerpts:

"... There seems to be pretty general agreement that at least as far as form is concerned it derives most directly from a construction in Old English, with parallels in many other early Germanic languages, which also consisted of a combination of a BE verb and a present participle, in Old English generally taken the ending -ende ... this construction was more common in translations from Latin, especially of complex Latin verb forms, than in original Old English texts ..." => e.g.: æt scip wæs ealne weg yrnende under segle. (that ship was all the way running under sail.)

Further quoting:

"... In Middle English two things happened: the BE plus present participle construction, never particularly frequent in Old English, became even less frequent, and the form of the present participle changed, from taking the ending -ende to taking -ing, to coincide with the nominal verb form known as the gerund, now regularly also ending in -ing. This meant not only that the construction of BE plus present participle became formally more similar to the progressive construction we are familiar with today; it also meant that the Middle English construction of BE plus present participle became more similar to another construction that occurred in Old and Middle English, with BE followed by a preposition, often on, plus the gerund, as in Old English ..." => ZyrstandæZ ic wæs on huntunZe (Here huntunZe is the nominal verb form, the gerund, corresponding to Modern English hunting, and so it means Yesterday I was hunting.)

And finally:

"... In Middle English similar constructions began to be common with just a light a before the main verb, as in ‘He was a-hunting.’, generally seen as a remnant of the full preposition. If the preposition was not only reduced but dropped altogether, there was no longer any formal difference between the two constructions: that with BE followed by the present participle, and that with BE followed by the gerund, now without any intervening preposition. At about the same time that this levelling of the difference between the two constructions became widespread, i.e. roughly at the transition from Middle to Modern English at around A.D. 1500, the combined construction consisting of BE plus an -ing-form seems to have started to increase quite drastically in frequency. ..."

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

I was just about to ask this question and saw that you already asked it. I only have hypotheses.

When I first read the terminology for the progressive/continuous aspect in English, it was be + gerund. That struck me as strange, since it seems that when you say “The teacher is talking,” the word talking modifies the teacher as adjectives normally modify nouns, as in “The teacher is tall” and “The teacher talking right now is Mrs. Lewis.” So, the -ing word seems to be functioning as a present participle. Indeed, today it’s more popular to call it a present participle.

Why two grammatical terms?

Considering that the gerund and the present participle always have the same form in English, where did people get the idea to call it by two names? The obvious suspect is people trying to understand English grammar in terms of Latin grammar—or perhaps by analogy with Romance languages. Italian has a present progressive and distinct forms for the gerund and present participle. And indeed, in Italian you say L’insegnante sta parlando (with the gerund), not L’insegnante sta parlante (present participle). But in English, the two forms are the same, so maybe the very question of which term to use for the -ing word in a progressive tense is pointless hair-splitting, resulting only from trying to force-fit English grammar terminology to foreign grammatical distinctions. Better to just call it “the -ing word” and be done with it.

On the other hand, just because two words have the same form doesn't mean they serve the same grammatical function. You modify a present participle with an adverb (“loudly talking") but you modify a gerund with an adjective (“loud talking”). You modify a verb in a progressive tense with an adverb (“The teacher is talking loudly”), so that would seem to seal the case for having two grammatical terms and for saying that the -ing word in progressive tenses is a present participle.

More grammatical functions

But wait! After looking at how the gerund and present participle are used in Italian, it’s clear that there are still more, decidedly distinct grammatical functions here. Consider the following:

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

A grinding stone is very heavy.

Rolling refers to the time when the stone is failing to gather moss. This is what the gerund means in Italian outside of progressive tenses: something happening while the main verb is happening or in connection with the main verb. While the stone is rolling and because the stone is rolling, it gathers no moss.

Grinding is an adjective describing the kind of stone. This is what the present participle means in Italian: it really is a way of converting a verb into an adjective, not a way to predicate something of a noun (the essential function of verbs).

Notice that in the present progressive tense, in both English and Italian, the verb predicates some action of the subject right now. This seems like a reasonable argument for saying that the present progressive in English is formed from be + gerund, not be + present participle, though of course the argument for the latter is pretty strong, too.

More grammatical restrictions

And can you really not modify a gerund with an adverb? We say “Loud talking is annoying” but also “Talking loudly is annoying.” “Loudly talking is annoying” is strange but maybe grammatical, and “Talking loud is annoying” is decidedly ungrammatical. Yet talking is clearly a noun in every sentence, and therefore seemingly a gerund.

Conclusion #1

Now consider:

My car is running.

Interpreted as a gerund, that would mean that your car’s engine is on right now. Interpreted as a present participle, that would mean that you have a running car right now, that is, a functional car.

So, my current thinking (tonight) is that the progressive tenses are made with be + gerund after all, contra my initial disbelief. Only, this is a gerund functioning as a verb, not a noun.

Another test of this hypothesis:

The children are describing talking with you at Chuck E. Cheese.

The children are describing talking robots at Chuck E. Cheese.

In the first sentence, talking is a gerund. In the second, talking is a present participle. And so describing is a gerund in both: it's really part of the verb, saying what the children are doing, not an adjective modifying children.

Conclusion #2

On the other hand, the fact that the gerund also functions as a noun (the Romance gerunds can’t do that) and the weird quasi-rules about where you need to put adjectives and adverbs make me think that the -ing form of a verb is just the usual English grammatical mish-mash: it serves many different roles, by various, sometimes conflicting, analogies with a variety of familiar constructions that serve as precedents, sometimes simultaneously. An ideal terminology might have to sort out the roles independently of the syntax, and allow a single -ing to serve more than one role at once.

There are two roles like Romance-language gerunds (present progressive and “something happening in connection with something else that’s happening”), there’s a role as a noun that works almost the same as an infinitive (also called “gerund”), there’s a role as an adjective unrelated to the time of the main verb, and maybe there are more. In a sentence like:

I am imagining playing the piano.

you could say that playing is a noun, the object of imagining, or you could say that playing is a gerund asserting an action that’s connected with imagining, or you could say that playing is a subordinate gerund, or you could even say that imagining playing is a compound present progressive verb. Just as with the many interpretations of quantum mechanics that are consistent with all observations, the language doesn’t provide evidence to say that one of these theories is right and the others are wrong.

Please, someone explain to me why this is wrong, either in a comment or another answer!

A few corrections: (1) It’s not just Latin that had separate participles and gerunds—Old English did too (or rather, participles and verbal nouns that could act as gerunds). They fell together in Middle English, with some southern Scottish dialects even keeping them separate to this day. (2) Grinding is not really an adjective here, but a gerund (or even a true verbal noun) acting as a noun adjunct. (More later—have to scoot for now.) — Janus Bahs Jacquet, Dec 29 '14 at 17:45
@JanusBahsJacquet Thanks for the correction on grinding. That sounds right on. Thinking about this the last couple days, I think I led myself astray by trying to understand -ing by analogy with Romance-language grammar! Well, now I know how it happens. I'm now leaning toward Conclusion #2, but I eagerly await your return and what you know about the southern Scottish dialects. — Ben Kovitz, Dec 31 '14 at 12:41

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 24 '15 at 01:35

Not only does your reconstruction of the English progressive as from a nominal construction with "at" make sense, it's still true! George Lakoff pointed out some years ago, that we can pronominalize the -ing progressive form with "it" provided we use "at":

She was working in her garden at 4, and two hours later, she was still at it.

At what? one might ask. At working in her garden, evidently. So since it is object of "at", it must be a nominal, hence a gerund rather than a participle.

Or maybe the it there is the coal face, or the grindstone. – Araucaria - Him Oct 24 '15 at 11:23 — Araucaria - Him, Oct 24 '15 at 11:23

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 09 '17 at 21:00

0

On the form 'The book is a printing' see article by Rissanen in Cambridge History of the English Language vol. 3 (1999) p. 218, who quotes Samuel Johnson's dictionary.

answered Jan 09 '17 at 21:00

Anthony Alcock

1

THis is more of a comment than an answer, since you're bringing up a specific instance of the user's question. Also, if the resource you're mentioning is not available on line, it's more helpful to say what was actually in the article, rather than referring the reader to an article they most likely cannot get right away if at all. – Katherine Lockwood Jan 09 '17 at 21:35

progressive forms: participle or gerund?

5 Answers5

Why two grammatical terms?

More grammatical functions

More grammatical restrictions

Conclusion #1

Conclusion #2

Linked

Related