This paper addresses the diachronic development of the periphrastic construction,
beon/wesan + the participial ending -ende in Old English, into the progressive
construction in Modern English. Even though there are two different hypotheses
regarding the origins of the progressive – the beon/wesan + -ende construction and the
locative construction with the verb be + the preposition on + the nominal ending –ung–
it is suggested that both forms somehow merged giving way to the present day
construction be + -ing. Some of the examples of the construction in Old English
correspond to the present day usage of the progressive but not others and this is why it
is suggested that the usage of the beon + -ende construction was still undeveloped. In
Middle English, the ending –ende had different dialectal forms in different parts of
Britain but finally the –ing form prevailed over the rest of the endings. New forms of
the progressive developed in this period, leading finally to the grammaticalization1
of
the construction in Modern English where it stopped being a stylistic variant and began
to have a verbal status. Some of the new progressive forms developed in Modern
English, such as the progressive passive, were forbidden by the grammarians.
Nevertheless, the use of the latter form increased among literary people who used the
construction in private letters to friends and as they started gaining prestige, this form
was no longer forbidden. In this paper the semantic development of the construction
will also be treated, showing the differences and the shift in meaning between Old
English and Present Day English
