The Semantics of English Progressive and the Imperfective Paradox

Abstract

The progressive in English is taken to be an operator which takes a non-stative predicate and returns a predicate which denotes a process with a temporal frame around some definite time or event. When it is combined with a predicate which has a culmination in the event, the sentence means that the culmination has not come yet. So the event denoted by the base predicate is not true at the current time. On the other hand, when it is combined with a predicate which has no culmination in the event, the event denoted by the base predicate is taken to be true. In this paper, this is explained by the semantics of the progressive based on the notion of contributiveness. I propose that a progressive sentence is verified by some subevents which are contributive to the current situation and the progress of the event beyond the threshold level of the event denoted by the base predicate. A sub-situation is contributive if the addition of it to the previous situation is more likely to lead to the whole situation than the previous situation.