Aspect meets modality: a semantic analysis of the German am-progressive

This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the semantics of the German am V-inf sein construction, or am-progressive. Like its English counterpart and many other progressive constructions in the world's languages, the am-progressive is shown to convey not only a variety of aspecto-temporal meanings, but also a range of (inter)subjective qualifications, such as intensification, irritation, and evasiveness. These (inter)subjective connotations are argued to reflect the am-progressive's core meaning of epistemic contingency, which we believe is instantiated in all of its uses.

Jaar van publicatie:2016

Trefwoorden:A1 Journal article

BOF-keylabel:ja

BOF-publication weight:0.5

CSS-citation score:1

Authors from:Higher Education

Toegankelijkheid:Open