About the different uses of 'be' with or without the progressive form:
In most English as a foreign language grammar books, you will find a
section on 'verbs not usually used in the progressive' (often called 'state
verbs'). These include verbs like 'be' (existence/appearance), have
(possession), hear (involuntary perception), know, believe (opinion),
please (impression) and similar verbs. The interesting point is that you
usually have another paragraph explaining that some of these verbs can also
be used as 'action verbs', but with different meanings:
STATE ACTION
I have a lot of money (possession, even if temporary) I'm having a shower.
He's a fool. He's being a fool.
(behavior)
I see. (understand)/ I can see you (perception) I'm seeing a
doctor. (meeting)
I think you're right (opinion) Be quiet. I'm
thinking. (in French: 'réfléchir')
Whether the change in meaning comes solely from the aspect, or whether it
is only because the verb has taken on a new meaning that we can use the
progressive with is a different question, of course (the second possibility
makes more sense to me as a French speaker because you have to use
different verbs in French for the right hand column examples).
Marie-Pierre Jouannaud
Grenoble, France
A 22:40 04/11/2004 -0800, vous avez écrit :
>Craig,
>
>I will continue to insist that there is more to -- let's call it the
>agentive 'be' -- than just the aspectual difference. Your perfect
>versions would not be as you write them: There is a difference between
>"George had been a jerk" or "George has been a jerk" and "George had been
>being a jerk" and "George has been being a jerk". Once more, a sense of
>deliberate action on George's part is being stated. Your perfects are
>statements of past category membership. They aren't more active. They do
> signal a change from George being categorizable as a jerk to his being
>categorizable as something not a jerk. That might imply some
>agency -- perhaps he worked on not being a jerk anymore, or maybe he had
>a brain event that changed his personality. But that is not directly coded
>in the expression; it is gotten by inference.
>
>I'm curious as to whether others on the list share my intuition about the
>deliberateness of this 'be'. If you tell someone "Stop being such a jerk!"
>You are addressing their behavior at the moment, and to me there is a
>strong sense that the person is deliberately being annoying. You don't say
>to a cow "Stop being a cow!"
>
>I was confused about the terms token, role, value. I don't know much
>Hallidayan grammar. My training is in Cognitive Grammar and mental space
>theory. In this school, "role" is the generic slot to be filled, and
>"value" is the person or thing plugged into the role. So if you say
>"Clinton used to be President", "Clinton" is the value and "President" is
>the role.
>
>Roles are different from categories because categories have more than one
>member: To say "Carla is a dentist" is to say that she is in a category
>with many other dentists. For the USA, there is only one role of President.
>
>"Token" is used to refer to the person/thing being assigned to the
>category. So in "Carla is a dentist", "Carla" is token and "dentist" is
>category.
>
>People reading these messages must be quite frustrated with the varying
>usees of terminology. That's a fact of life when you have multiple
>approaches to grammar, and it's a problem we have to face if we want to
>come up with a relatively uniform set of terms for teaching.
>
>As to Bruce's remark, in American (not Hallidayan) functional grammar, the
>grammatical shape of an expression comes from its communicative function.
>In Cognitive Grammar, there is no difference between syntax and semantics.
>Parts of speech have meaning-based definitions, and how something
>functions syntactically is determined by those meanings. I haven't been
>following recent developments in CG, but by now I believe discourse
>function is being incorporated into it, which I feel is absolutely
>necessary. In Cog. Gr., we don't "resort to" meaning; we seek an
>explanation from meaning first; purely formal explanations are the
>last resort.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University
>One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-2596
>• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page:
>http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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