A Cognitive Grammar Study Of The Future Use Of English Present Progessive

The English progressive, which is one of the most interesting field of linguistic inquiry, has various usages and is remarkably polysemous. Since last century, scholars at home and abroad have studied the construction from different perspectives. Nowadays, the cognitive linguistics enterprise as an ascendant linguistic school provides us with the new paradigm and perspective for language study. Although many linguists have done research from the perspectives of diverse usages, little has been done concerning the future sense of the construction. In this thesis, the future use of English present progressive can be assumed as a prototype category, which consists of the prototypical usages and non-prototypical usages. Be going to can be regarded as the prototypical one. Thus there must be some reasons or underlying mechanisms that hide behind the unequal member status. According to Cognitive Grammar, verbs can be divided into four subclasses: punctual, extended, dynamic and stative verbs, which correspond to Vendler’s classification of verbs, i.e., achievement, accomplishment, activity and state verbs. In this thesis, we claim that virtual entities in our mind are responsible for the future use of the present progressive. For instance, be going to construction has gone through successful grammaticalization and now is a conventionalized construction used to signify future senses. Punctual verbs or achievement verbs, especially those having motion senses, can be used in the present progressive to indicate future meaning. The implication of future meaning is evoked by subjectification or by the WHOLE FOR PART metonymy. In Cognitive Grammar, a conceptual metonymy is regarded as a shift in profile. In other words, the future senses of achievement verbs derive from a shift in profile. Extended verbs or accomplishment verbs can be used in present progressives, which merely designate ongoing processes instead of expressing future senses. When an adverbial phrase of future time is added to a sentence, it can gain future senses due to the conceptual metaphor TIME IS PATH. In Cognitive Grammar, a conceptual metaphor is regarded as a domain mapping which can instantiate metaphorical concepts. In other words, the future senses of accomplishment verbs derive from domain mappings. Both activity/dynamic and state/stative verbs cannot express future senses because they are atelic and the projection will not happen.