A Micro-typological Perspective on Progressive Aspect in Sinitic: the Case of the Locative Progressive Marking (RF/LC/2024/S/001) ($33,468.75 )

Progressive aspect refers to an unbounded aspect without a definite beginning, nor endpoint (Comrie 1976). It encodes an event “progressing dynamically over a time frame opened up by an utterance” (Mair 2012: 803), to which “the speakers’ claim on this occasion is confined” (Klein 1994: 4). Cross-linguistically, two features are observed in relation to progressive markers: First, progressives are more commonly marked periphrastically in the world’s languages (Dahl 1985), hence the grammatical category of ‘progressive aspect’ has been generally extended to include both morphologically marked and periphrastic progressive constructions (Mair 2012); second, several major sources of progressive markers are acknowledged, namely verbs of location, e.g. the combination of the copular and locative expressions, the coverb ‘be.at’, exist, lie, live, etc., stative verbs of postures like sit and stand, and occasionally motion verbs such as come and go (Bybee 1985, Dahl 1985, Chappell 1992, Kuteva et al. 2019). In Sinitic languages, the above two tendencies are well-attested as well, as evidenced by the best known progressive marker zài ‘be.at’ in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), a coverb functioning both as the copular verb and a locative marker, marks an ongoing dynamic event periphrastically. Although relatively more attention has been paid on the functions and historical development of zài ‘be.at’ in MSM, and the forms and functions of the progressive constructions in certain Sinitic varieties such as Shicheng Hakka (Zeng 1989), Nanchang Gan (Xu 1999), and Lianyuan Xiang (Wu and Li 2009) during the past few decades, such works are mostly descriptive in nature, and they rely heavily on linguistic elicitation of translation tasks mediated by MSM. Also, a major shortcoming is, often, the lack of a neat distinction between the aspectual categories of progressive and continuous, whose patterns of expression may overlap, but who remain different: understanding the commonalities and differences between the forms of expression and the origin of these two subtypes of imperfective aspect will help us gain a better understanding both of the characterization of aspect in Sinitic, and of the semantics and pathways of development of progressive aspect markers, as well as related aspectual categories. Lastly, what is lacking is a typological and areal analysis on the synchronic strategies of progressive marking, as well as a diachronic account on the pathways of grammaticalization for those markers. In order to address the above research gap, this project proposes to carry out a pilot study, first of its kind, on the locative type of progressive marking on Sinitic languages. We aim to provide a micro-typological account of the coding strategies of the locative type of progressive markse, including the be + locative type, and the zài ‘be.at’-type of progressive marking, mainly in Jianghuai Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, but also in some Gan, Xiang, Hui, Min, Yue and Hakka varieties. Factors like word order and markedness across Sinitic will be taken into consideration. Moreover, we will offer some preliminary considerations on possible grammaticalization pathways for locative progressives. To sum up, we aim to:
1. To carry out a micro-typological survey on the coding strategies of the locative type of progressive marking in Jianghuai Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, Gan, Xiang, Hui, Min, Yue and Hakka varieties.
2. To provide a historical account of the grammaticalization pathways of such locative type of progressive constructions.