The Progressive in 19th-century English

Download or read book The Progressive in 19th-century English written by Erik Smitterberg and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smitterberg's The progressive in 19th-century English is a superb account of the development of the progressive, its different forms and uses in Late Modern English English (EngE). For the nineteenth century the development of the passive progressive and the progressive form of 'be' have been recorded, but so far there has been no comprehensive corpus-based study of the progressive using periods, genre and gender as variables. The author's findings are corpus-based and are related to previous research throughout. The basic line of argument is that quantitative developments reveal where and to what extent the progressive became increasingly integrated into EngE. The book's wide scope will make it a convenient and reliable reference work and should stimulate further research.