Bidrag til L in C

A Norwegian Progressive Marker and the Level of Grammaticalization

Ingebjørg Tonne

Abstract

In this paper it is shown that parallel concordancing represents an efficient means of explicating the grammaticalization level of linguistic forms. One progressive form in Norwegian and the progressive in Spanish are found to be translationally equivalent in some contexts but not in others. In addition, the degree of overlap of the two constructions is seen to vary with the direction of the translation, i.e. the Norwegian progressive is more often translated by a Spanish progressive than vice versa. These results correspond neatly to the part of grammaticalization theory which emphasizes the relation between the general meaning of a form, the widening of distribution and the increase in frequency: The general meaning of the Spanish progressive gives it a wider distribution and a higher frequency than the Norwegian progressive. Corresponding results are also found in a test case comparing the Norwegian and the English progressives. Parallel concordancing thus strengthens the claim based on monolingual studies that this Norwegian progressive is partially but not totally grammaticalized. The parallel concordancing method has the additional advantage that the contexts determining when the forms are translationally equivalent can be read off directly from the concordances.

1. Introduction

If we look at the meaning elements that go into the formation of the progressive periphrasis, it would appear that the original function of the progressive is to give the location of an agent as in the midst of an activity.

Bybee et al. (1994: 133)

For the progressives of Spanish (Estoy comiendo) and English (I am eating) the description of the origin and the meaning of progressive periphrasis in the above quote from Bybee et al. fits well. The progressive constructions are known to originate from locative constructions (Comrie 1976:102) and they describe the agent as in the midst of an activity. The much less known construction, the sitter og V'er - construction (e.g. Jeg sitter og spiser (lit: 'I sit and eat') of Norwegian, is clearly a progressive construction, too, according to these criteria. The difference between the Spanish and English progressives on the one hand and the Norwegian progressive on the other is that the Norwegian construction not only originates from a locative construction, it still is a locative construction.

The Spanish and English progressives are in advanced stages of grammaticalization (Comrie 1976: 102, Bybee et al. 1994: 133). The conclusion is reached based on the observations that they are general in meaning, have a wide distribution, are obligatory in certain contexts (the English progressive), and have high frequencies. The sitter og V'er - construction in Norwegian, on the other hand, although it adds progressive meaning to a sentence, still carries a relatively specific meaning of posture. This information, combined with the fact that Norwegian has several competing progressive constructions, forms the basis for the claim that the sitter og V'er and similar constructions do not have full grammatical status in the language (see e.g. Ebert, to appear, and Tonne 1999); we may call it pre-grammaticalized. In the present study I test the pre-grammaticalization claim by comparing the distribution of the particular progressive marker in Norwegian with the grammaticalized Spanish progressive. A further comparison is made between Norwegian and English, in order to see if the results carry over to another language with a highly grammaticalized progressive. I test the above claim by using parallel corpora. We can then observe from parallel concordances how the specific meaning of the Norwegian progressive marker restricts the contexts in which it is used.

2. Progressives

Progressive forms are verbal forms that contribute progressive meaning. Progressive meaning is held to have many facets. For this study, where the locative progressive of Norwegian is central, the observation from Bybee et al. quoted in Section 1 is especially interesting. Comrie (1976), too, describes the progressive as being connected with locative information:

In many languages, belonging to various genetic and geographical groupings, there is similarity between the formal expression of imperfective aspect, especially progressive aspect, and various locative adverbial phrases.

Comrie (1976: 98)

[A]nother possibility would be the use of an auxiliary verb whose function is otherwise primarily locative, and similarly where an etymologically locative verb comes to be used as a progressive auxiliary we have diachronic evidence of such a relation.

Comrie (1976: 102)

Progressivity is held to be the prototypical case of imperfectivity (e.g. Bertinetto and Delfitto to appear). Imperfectivity, in its turn, may be described as viewing an event as partial, as opposed to viewing the event as a whole. The progressive is often described as combining with non-stative predicates only (e.g. Comrie 1976: 35), and as yielding durativity and often dynamism, in the sense of energy or intensity (Comrie 1976: 34-40, 98-103).

Below, we will see that both the Norwegian progressive and the Spanish progressive contain forms that stem from locative verbs (verbs of posture or position). The difference in this respect is that the Spanish form has lost its locative meaning whereas the Norwegian form has only been slightly reduced semantically. The Spanish progressive may combine with perfective aspect morphology, which complicates the picture somewhat, whereas the Norwegian form not only signals clear imperfectivity, but also prefers to combine with imperfective predicates. Only the Spanish form is restricted to non-stative predicates, and it is more closely connected with dynamism than the Norwegian form. Both forms signal durativity.

3. Norwegian pseudocoordination

The type of Norwegian progressive in focus here is known in the literature under the name 'pseudocoordination' (Wiklund 1996 and Johannessen 1998) or 'postural verb construction' (e.g. Ebert, to appear). I use the term 'pseudocoordination' here. Pseudocoordination in Norwegian (as well as Swedish and Danish) consists in what looks like a coordination of two verbs in the same tense (or lack of tense), where the first verb describes a posture-state or movement that sets the background for the activity described by the next verb. An example is seen in (1):

(1) Det var engang en Kjærring, som sat og bagede.

Lit: there was once a woman who sat and baked

'Once upon a time there was a woman who was baking.'

(From Norwegian Folk Tales, Asbjørnsen and Moe 1852, p. 327, quoted in Vannebo 1969.)

Vannebo (1969) describes the construction as formal coordination but logical subordination. This intermediate position between coordination and subordination is also advocated in more recent studies like Johnsen (1988), Wiklund (1996) and Johannessen (1998). Andersson (1979: 6) discusses the Swedish V-V-constructions in general. His tests reveal that pseudocoordination shows interesting similarities with auxiliary constructions like Pelle bör vinna ('Pelle should win') and is therefore different from ordinary coordination. One of his tests, reproduced here, shows that ordinary coordination (2) yields different yes-no-questions than pseudocoordination (3), whereas the auxiliary construction (4) patterns with pseudocoordination:

(2) Röker och super Pelle?

Lit: smoke and drink Pelle

'Does Pelle smoke and drink?'

(2') * Röker Pelle och super?

Lit: smokes Pelle and drinks

(3) *Sitter och röker Pelle?

Lit: sits and smokes Pelle

(3') Sitter Pelle och röker?

Lit: sits Pelle and smokes

'Is Pelle smoking?'

(4) *Bör vinna Pelle?

Lit: should win Pelle

(4') Bör Pelle vinna?

Lit: should Pelle win

'Should Pelle win?'

Auxiliary constructions are grammaticalized. Pseudocoordination shows some similarities with such constructions, as seen from (2) - (4). On the other hand, pseudocoordination also differs in important respects from them. Pseudocoordination has two, not one, tensed verb forms, and there is a conjunction (og/och ('and')) which is not present in auxiliary constructions.

Pseudocoordination belongs to a set of pre-grammaticalized forms in Norwegian which add progressive meaning to a sentence. The other forms are (see Faarlund et al. 1997 and Tonne 1999 for descriptions): holde på (med) å... ('be about to.../ be in the process of...'), være i ferd med å... ('be about to..../ be in the process of...'), være i gang med å... ('have started the process of doing...'), være på vei til å... ('be about to..../ be in the process of...'). I consider these to be progressive because they have a progressive meaning ('be in the process of...'), although most of them have a 'be about to...' reading, too, depending on contexts. These constructions do not seem to interfere much with the pseudocoordination-progressive comparison of the Spanish-Norwegian and Norwegian-Spanish texts studied here, since holde på å... occurs only twice in the texts, and the others are not attested at all. They are never used as a translation of the Spanish progressive in the text studied here, and they are never translated with a Spanish progressive either. One of the reasons for this may be that the 'be-about-to' meaning is not part of the meaning of the Spanish progressive. As for the English-Norwegian parallel texts examined here, the English progressive in the original text has the 'be-about-to' meaning in about 10% of the cases, and the Norwegian form holde på å... is used as a translation of these five times. In addition holde på å... is used three times as a translation of the more normal process reading of the progressive. Pseudocoordination is set apart from the other progressive markers in Norwegian by combining almost exclusively with atelic predicates, whereas the others normally combine with telic predicates (Tonne 1999). A look at the Spanish texts used here indicates that the Spanish progressive patterns with pseudocoordination in this respect. For the English progressive, it seems that, although atelic sentences make up the majority of the combinations with the progressive, telic sentences in combination with the progressive are by no means rare. This fact is also reflected in the vast literature on what is called the 'Imperfective Paradox' (see e.g. Dowty 1979), addressing exactly the question what the interpretation is of a telic sentence like Mary crossed the street combined with the progressive (Mary was crossing the street).

Normally, in pseudocoordination, the lexical semantics of the verb of posture (the first conjunct) is not emphasized. Nevertheless, the verb of the first conjunct does have some truth functional content with regard to the description of the posture and position of situations. Thus, in a situation where Jan is standing in front of the window, looking out, the following does not describe the situation successfully:

(5) Jan sitter og ser ut av vinduet.

Lit: Jan sits and looks out of window-the

'Jan is sitting looking out of the window.'

The importance of the content of the first conjunct verb varies with context. Thus, as will be seen from the corpora used here, the information about posture included in the pseudocoordination is sometimes translated into Spanish and English, sometimes not. An example where the posture is kept in the Spanish translation is (15) and (15') below. An example where the posture is not kept in the Spanish translation is (14) and (14'). This is also reflected in my translations into English in this paper; the information on posture is included in the English translations where the position of the activity is of some importance.

Contrary to what is often held to be a property of progressive markers, pseudocoordination may combine with stative predicates. Hence the following is acceptable:

(6) Han satt og visste svaret, men ville ikke si noe.

Lit: he sat and knew answer-the but would not say something

'He knew the answer, but did not want to say anything.'

The set of verbs used for the first conjunct is a closed class. The verbs sitte ('sit') and stå ('stand'), which are by far the most common verbs used in these constructions, comply well with what we have noted above with regard to lexical content. Other verbs which it is possible to use, although they are actually less frequently used, focus less on the lexical content. Two such verbs are gå ('walk') and drive ('drift/do'):

(7) Man kan ikke bare gå og prate om lov og rett, det må vises ved tegninger og ting. (Aftenposten)

Lit: one can not just walk and talk about law and right it must be-shown with drawings and things

'You cannot just go around talking about law and rights, it must be shown with drawings and things.'

The verb of the first conjunct, gå ('walk'), is not to be interpreted in the normal lexical way here. The sentence may truly describe a situation in which the agent is not necessarily walking while talking. The verb går ('walk') as it is used here is thus more functional than when it is used alone, in the sense that here it adds a durative and a dynamic reading to the interpretation, and the lexical interpretation of 'put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other' is not emphasized. The verb driver ('drift/do'), when used in pseudocoordination, is even more void of lexical content than går ('walk'):

(8) Ungene dreiv og samla sammen papir og treull. (Alf Prøysen, Teskjekjerringa)

Lit: kids-the drifted and gathered together paper and wood-wool

'The kids were gathering paper and wood wool.'

With regard to dynamism, which is sometimes regarded as a feature of progressives, my intuition is that pseudocoordination with the verbs that have kept a greater part of their lexical content (e.g. sitte ('sit') and stå ('stand')) shows no extra dynamism compared to the simple verb construction. For the verbs that have lost most of their original lexical content (e.g. drive ('drift/do') and gå ('walk')) when used in pseudocoordination, there seems to be an addition of dynamism compared to the simple counterpart. This is not so surprising, perhaps, if we compare pseudocoordination to the Spanish progressive, which contributes dynamism, and where the auxiliary is highly functional, i.e. has lost its lexical content.

4. The Spanish progressive

Historically, the progressive in Spanish agrees with the observation of Bybee et al. (1994) quoted above that "the original function of the progressive is to give the location of an agent as in the midst of an activity." Comrie (1976: 102) notes:

The progressive auxiliary in Spanish (e. g. estoy cantando 'I am singing') and Portuguese (e.g. estou cantando 'I am singing') derive etymologically from the Latin verb stare 'stand', though in the Iberian languages they are used primarily in the sense 'to be (somewhere, or temporally)'.

The aspectual system of Spanish is complex, and only the most important contrasts are described here. There is a grammaticalized perfective/imperfective distinction with verbs in the past tense, which is not found in the other tenses. The progressive is a form that comes on top of these other two past forms. In addition, the progressive is used in the other tenses. The progressive consists of two parts; the auxiliary verb estar ('to be') is inflected, i.e. either perfective (e.g. 1st. p. sg.: estuve) or imperfective (e.g. 1st/3rd. p. sg.: estaba) in the past tense, while the lexical content is concentrated in a gerund form (e.g. comiendo ('eating')). The progressive contributes dynamism and duration (Westfall 1995). Examples are given in (9) and (10):

(9) Juán estaba comiendo tranquilamente.

Lit: Juan was-IMPERFECTIVE eating quietly

'John was eating quietly.'

(10) Estuve comiendo toda la tarde.

Lit: (I)was-PERFECTIVE eating all the afternoon

'I ate/spent time eating all afternoon.'

The perfective morphology in (10) is due to the temporal boundedness signaled by the adverbial (toda la tarde). The progressive is different from the simple perfective and imperfective forms in being periphrastic and in not being limited by tense. In addition, it is different in not occurring with stative predicates (examples from Westfall 1995: 291):

(11) *Estaba teniendo dolor de cabeza

(he) was-IMPERFECTIVE having pain of head

(12) *Estuvo sabiendo la respuesta

(he) was-PERFECTIVE knowing the answer

Westfall notes (ibid: 322) that the progressive with statives may occur in spoken language, and then mainly in the present tense. In written language, however, she has not found any occurrences of such a combination.

We will now compare the distribution of the Spanish progressive briefly to that of the English progressive. The Spanish progressive is to a certain extent interchangeable with the imperfective simple form, though not in all contexts (see Westfall 1995: 291). Since the progressive competes with the imperfective simple form in many of the contexts where English can only have the progressive, one may expect the English progressive to be more frequent than the progressive in Spanish. Comrie (1976: 38-39) emphasizes the wide use of the English progressive, covering meanings not traditionally subsumed under the definition of "progressive". He further points out that it seems to be extending its areas of use.

In an extensive survey of the distribution of the simple form and the progressive form in British English, Biber et al. (1999) show that the use of the progressive varies somewhat across registers, but that simple aspect verbs dominate, making up about 90% of all verbs. The rest are verbs in the perfect aspect and in the progressive aspect. In conversation the progressives make up about 6% of all verbs, in fiction about 5%, in news reportage about 4%, and in academic prose about 2%. Nevertheless, these are higher frequencies than for both the Spanish and the Norwegian progressives. Later sections in this paper show that whereas the Spanish progressive is about twice as frequent as the Norwegian progressive under study here, the English progressive is between three and four times as frequent as the Norwegian progressive.

To give a further indication of the relation between the two progressive forms; the Spanish and the English, I turn to Santos (1996), which is a parallel-corpus study comparing the tense and aspect systems of Portuguese and English. Portuguese has a similar aspectual system to that of Spanish, in the sense that the progressive is a form that comes in addition to the perfective/imperfective distinction. In her corpus of texts in English translated from Portuguese, only seven of the 102 English past progressives originate from a Portuguese progressive. Progressives in the Portuguese texts resulting in other forms than the past progressive in the English translation are so few that they are not included in her survey. In the majority of the cases (eighty-two out of the 102) the English past progressive stemmed from the Portuguese imperfective simple form. On the other hand, in the original English texts, there were fifty-eight past progressives, out of which thirteen were translated into the Portuguese progressive. Thirty-two were translated into the Portuguese imperfective.

By such a difference in distribution it is shown that the English progressive is widely used and highly grammaticalized. It is also more frequent than the Spanish progressive. In this paper I do not intend to explain this difference in any other way than by pointing to the fact that two forms in English, i.e. the simple tense and the progressive, correspond to three in Spanish, i.e. the perfective simple tense, the imperfective simple tense and the progressive (counting the perfective progressive and the imperfective progressive as one). In the investigation described in section 8, the differences between Norwegian pseudocoordination and the English progressive are searched for.

It should be noted that there are other types of progressives than the estar-type in Spanish, but they are not attested in the Spanish text used in this study. These are progressives with motion verbs, like ir ('to go'), venir ('to come') and andar ('to walk') (example from Solé and Solé 1977):

(13) Poco a poco, iba limitando su independencia

Lit: little to little went limiting GEN-3.P.SG independence

'Little by little, she was going along limiting her independence'

We are now in a position to compare the independent semantic descriptions of pseudocoordination in Norwegian and the progressive in Spanish. We note that there may be some overlap in the use of the two constructions. They both convey the core progressive meaning, i.e. that the agent is in the midst of an activity. They both have forms that stem from locative verbs (verbs of posture or position), although the historically locative verb estar does not carry any lexical locative content in modern Spanish, it is a pure copula verb.

There is an obvious drawback in a small-scale study like this. A single form is picked from each language, disregarding the complex systems these forms are part of. Nevertheless, I hope to show that with the parallel concordancing method this problem can be overcome to some extent, since it is possible to show exactly what other forms emerge, and in which contexts they appear, if there is not a perfect match between the two forms compared. We now turn to a discussion of the texts that have been examined, and then look at how the pairing, the parallel concordancing, of pseudocoordination and the Spanish progressive comes out.

5. The Spanish-Norwegian and Norwegian-Spanish texts

The material consists of part of Mysterier ('Mysteries') by Hamsun in Norwegian with its Spanish translation, and part of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba ('No one writes to the colonel') by García Márquez, in Spanish with its Norwegian translation. The Norwegian original excerpt consists of 6,383 words and the Spanish original excerpt consists of 8,975 words. These texts have been scanned and proofread. The extraction of relevant forms is done using the program Conc, and the parallel concordancing and extraction of information by means of the database-handling tool FileMaker Pro.

It can be objected that the material is too small to say anything conclusive about the possible correspondences. This is probably true. On the other hand, the testing through these short texts gives an indication of what the correspondences may be, and larger-scale testing should be carried out in order to check the results. It may also be objected that the texts are not representative, and that both the authors' and the translators' individual ways of formulation may colour the result too much. For the Norwegian texts (original and translated), I hold that they are representative since I have had the opportunity to compare the text with the larger monolingual Norwegian material (about 330,000 words) I have used for my study of pseudocoordination and other progressive markers in Norwegian (Tonne 1999). The texts I use in the present study are average with regard to the frequency of pseudocoordination. As for the frequency of progressives in the original Spanish text and the Spanish translation of the Norwegian text, it should be evaluated against later studies with larger and more varied corpora. The Spanish original text and the Spanish translation of the Norwegian text are very similar as regards the frequency of the progressive, however. Another (3000-word) Norwegian-Spanish parallel text was excluded from the study due to what was held to be an idiosyncrasy of the translator, since there were no progressives in the translation, only gerunds. Furthermore, as a possible corrective for the results of the Norwegian-Spanish comparison, a further test is undertaken in order to check the distribution of pseudocoordination in a Norwegian translation from English and vice versa. See further Section 8.

6. Comparing the Spanish and Norwegian texts

In the text extracted from Mysterier by Knut Hamsun there were seven occurrences of pseudocoordination, i.e. 1.1 per 1000 words. The same verb, sitte (sit), is used in the first conjunct in all the seven occurrences. Five of the pseudocoordinations are translated with a progressive, exemplified by the pair (14) and (14'). The pair (15) and (15') is one of the two cases of pseudocoordination which were translated into something else.[1]

(14) Hvorfor sitter De forresten og plaprer ut med dette i alle disse folks påhør?

Lit: why sit you-POLITE by-the-way and babble out with this in all these people's on-hear?

'Why are you bursting out with this with all these people listening, by the way?'

(14') Por cierto, ¿por qué está contando todo esto en presencia de toda esta gente?

Lit: by-the-way why are-you-POLITE telling all this in presence of all this people

(15) Johan Nagel sat inde i hotellets kafe og holdt en avis i hånden da Minutten kom ind

Lit: J. N. sat in in hotel-the-'s café and held a paper in hand-the when Minute-the came in

'Johan Nagel sat in the café of the hotel holding a newspaper in his hand when The Minute came in.'

(15') Johan Nagel estaba sentado con un periódico en la mano en el café del hotel cuando entró El Minuto.

Lit: J. N. was sat with a paper in the hand in the café of-the hotel when entered The Minute

Hence there is a large (71%) overlap of Norwegian pseudocoordination and the Spanish progressive for the Norwegian original text and its Spanish translation. Interestingly, as we shall see, this picture changes when we turn to look at translation in the other direction: from Spanish into Norwegian.

Sixteen occurrences of the progressive were found in the text El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, i.e. 1.8 per 1000 words. Only two have pseudocoordination in the translation. This constitutes an overlap of only 13% between the progressive in Spanish and pseudocoordination in Norwegian. The Spanish progressive is far more often (69%) translated into a simple tense in Norwegian. The pair (16) and (16') below is one of the cases where the progressive is translated with pseudocoordination, whereas the pair (17) and (17') shows one of the translations with a simple (here past) tense.

(16) ...es que esos pobres muchachos están ahorrando.

Lit: is that those poor-PL boys are-3.PL saving

'...is that those poor lads are saving.'

(16') ...er at de stakkars gutta holder på og sparer.

Lit: is that those poor boys hold on and save

(17) Cuando terminó el café todavía estaba pensando en el muerto.

Lit: when finished-3.SG-PERFECTIVE the coffee still was-3.SG-IMPERFECTIVE thinking in the dead

'When she finished the coffee she was still thinking of the dead man/woman.'

(17') Da hun hadde drukket kaffen, tenkte hun fremdeles på den døde.

Lit: when she had drunk coffee-the thought she still on the dead

For comparison, the translated texts were also examined in order to find the occurrences of pseudocoordination in the text translated from Spanish and the occurrences of the progressive in the text translated from Norwegian. We also want to see if the translations are relatively typical with regard to the frequencies of pseudocoordination and progressive. In the Norwegian translation of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, eleven occurrences of pseudocoordination were found. This is 1.2 pseudocoordinations per 1000 words, i.e. pseudocoordination is just as frequent in this translated text as it is in the original Norwegian text Mysterier (which had 1.1 per 1000 words).

For the sake of completeness, we note that the original forms corresponding to these pseudocoordinations are four imperfective forms, two predicatives with an imperfective form, two progressives, one prepositional phrase (modifying the noun phrase), one predicative with a perfective form and one gerund. The two progressives thus account for only 18% of the sources of pseudocoordination in the translation. The most frequent (55%) trigger for pseudocoordination in the translation is the imperfective, alone or with a predicative. The example pair (18) and (18') shows the latter type, whereas the pair (16) and (16') from the above survey of the progressive-pseudocoordination correspondences is of course one of the two cases of pseudocoordination as the translation of a progressive.

(18) Estirada en la cama la mujer seguía pensando en el muerto.

Lit: stretched in the bed the woman continued-3.SG-IMPERFECTIVE thinking in the dead

'Stretched out on the bed his wife was lying, still thinking of the dead man/woman.'

(18') I sengen lå konen og tenkte på den døde.

Lit: in bed-the lied wife-the and thought on the dead

The last text where I examined the correspondence between the progressive and pseudocoordination is the Spanish translation of Mysterier, which has twelve occurrences of the progressive. The frequency of the progressive in the translated text is thus 1.9 per 1000 words, also very close to the frequency of the construction in the original Spanish El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (which had 1.8 per 1000 words). Five out of the twelve progressives stem from pseudocoordinations (i.e. 42%). The rest are simple present or past, and one perfect. The sentence-pair (14) and (14') in the description of the text Mysterier above also exemplifies the correspondence between the progressive translation and the original pseudocoordination, whereas (19) and (19') below exemplify the cases where a simple tense triggers a progressive translation:

(19) ...og nu lærer De herren derborte det samme.

Lit: and now teach you-POLITE gentleman-the there-away that same

'...and now you are teaching the gentleman over there the same thing.'

(19') ...y ahora usted está enseñándole lo mismo a aquel señor.

Lit: and now you-POLITE are teaching-him that same to that gentleman

This indicates that the progressive in the Spanish translation is quite often (42%) triggered by pseudocoordination in the original. Only slightly more often (50%) do the simple tenses in Norwegian trigger the progressive in the Spanish translation. The findings are summed up in Table 1.

Construction

Text

Progressive (Spanish) translated into or from the Norwegian pseudocoordination

Pseudocoordination (Norwegian) translated from or into the Spanish progressive

El coronel no tiene quien le escriba

2 (out of 16 = 13%)

2 (out of 11 = 18%)

Mysterier

5 (out of 12 = 42%)

5 (out of 7 = 71%)

Table 1 The correspondences between the Spanish and the Norwegian progressives.

We see that there is considerable overlap between the members of the text pair consisting of the Norwegian original (Mysterier) and its translation: The union of the sets of pseudocoordination and progressives has nineteen members, and their intersection has five members, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Mysterier: PSEUDO represents one Norwegian pseudocoordination of the original text, PROG one Spanish progressive of the translation, and PSEUDO/PROG a translation-pair with a pseudocoordination translated by a progressive.

Fig. 1 makes explicit two important features of the relationship between the progressive in Spanish and pseudocoordination in Norwegian. The first is that pseudocoordination in Norwegian is almost entirely subsumed under the progressive in Spanish. What characterizes the pseudocoordination sentences when they are not translated into the progressive can be easily extracted from the parallel concordance. This is done in the next section. The other important feature to be read from Fig. 1 is that there are a number of progressives in the Spanish translation that stem from other sources than pseudocoordination. These sources were specified above, and their general characterization is found in the next section.

The overlap between the members of the text-pair consisting of the Spanish original and its translation is drastically smaller than for the other direction of translation: The union of the sets of progressives and pseudocoordination has 27 members, whereas their intersection has only two members. This is illustrated in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 El coronel no tiene quien le escriba: PROG represents one Spanish progressive of the original text, PSEUDO one Norwegian pseudocoordination of the translation, and PROG/PSEUDO one translation-pair with a progressive translated by a pseudocoordination.

Fig. 2 illustrates that the Spanish progressive is often translated into something other than a pseudocoordination. Mainly the simple verb form is used in the Norwegian translation, as we saw above. Also, we see that pseudocoordination is used in the Norwegian translation in many instances where it does not originate from a progressive. We found that it often originates from simple verb forms in Spanish. In the next section we will compare pseudocoordinations with such origins to those that stem from a progressive construction in the original.

7. The restricted distribution of pseudocoordination

We stated above that the difference between the progressive in Spanish and pseudocoordination in Norwegian is that pseudocoordination involves two verbs with lexical information, both of which have to agree with the situation that is to be described. The copula of the Spanish progressive does not have lexical content; its function is simply to express durativity and dynamism.

These observations are interesting for a theory of grammaticalization (see e.g. Dahl 1985, Hopper and Traugott 1993, Bybee et al. 1994). One important feature of grammaticalized items is that they are function words: they serve to indicate relationships between other parts of speech, and they do not have descriptive content. Frequently it can be shown that function words have their origin in content words. When a content word assumes the grammatical characteristics of a function word, the form is said to be grammaticalized.

We have already noted that there are first-conjunct verbs of pseudocoordination in Norwegian which are so reduced semantically that the verb of posture need not describe an event where the subject is in such a posture. The verbs gå ('walk') and drive ('drift/do') are examples of this. Nevertheless, although pseudocoordination in Norwegian is sometimes found with a first-conjunct verb which is reduced semantically, this is not the typical kind of pseudocoordination. Rather, the first verb conjunct specifies the posture of the subject, and this specificity makes us expect the distribution of the form to be more restricted than the distribution of a form like the Spanish progressive, which is more general in meaning.

The restricted distribution is observed in the data studied here. The durative and imperfective aspect of pseudocoordination is important for its distribution, but the presence of information about posture and location often decides in favour of choosing pseudocoordination, whereas lack of such information in the original prevents the choice of pseudocoordination in the translation. The latter point is exemplified in the pair (20) and (20'). A simple form is used in the translation even though the original has the progressive. It is hard to imagine a posture or location for the action, however, and pseudocoordination is not chosen:

(20) Me estoy cuidando para venderme.

Lit: REFL I-am caring-for for sell-me

'I am preparing so that I can sell myself.'

(20') Jeg forbereder meg så jeg kan selge meg.

Lit: I prepare REFL so I can sell me

The observation that pseudocoordination is used in the Norwegian translation whenever there is information about posture and position and the event described is durative, even when there is no progressive in the original, shows the tight connection between pseudocoordination and location. Examples are the pairs (21, 21') and (22, 22'):

(21) Sentadas a la puerta de las casas las mujeres de negro esperaban el entierro.

Lit: sat at the door of the-PL houses the-PL of black waited-IMPERFECTIVE the funeral

'Seated by the doors of the houses, the women in black were awaiting the funeral.'

(21') Svartkledde kvinner satt i dørene og ventet på gravfølget.

Lit: black-clothed women sat in doors-the and waited on grave-procession-the

(22) El coronel y su esposa tomaban el café en la cocina cuando él empujó la puerta de la calle y gritó:

Lit: the colonel and his spouse took-3.PL.IMPERFECTIVE the coffee in the kitchen when he pushed the door of the street and cried

'The colonel and his wife were having coffee in the kitchen when he opened the front door and shouted:'

(22') Obersten og hans kone satt og drakk kaffe på kjøkkenet da han skjøv opp gatedøren og ropte:

Lit: colonel-the and his wife sat and drank coffee on kitchen-the when he pushed up street-door the and shouted:

The most common trigger for pseudocoordination in these cases is, not surprisingly, the imperfective form in Spanish. As for the reason why the progressive is not found suitable for describing the situation, while the imperfective is, one may only guess. We recall that the progressive of Spanish adds dynamism to the description. Pseudocoordination contributes less dynamism (at least in cases of specific posture meaning). A look at the relevant sentences reveals that some of the situations described are not compatible with additional dynamism. The sentence pair (21) and (21') above is a case in point, as is the following (the context is a funeral)):

(23) Los hombres —vestidos de blanco con corbatas negras— conversaban en la puerta bajo los paraguas.

Lit: the men dressed of white with ties black talked-IMPERFECTIVE in the door under the umbrellas

'The men - dressed in white, with black ties - were having conversations in the doorway under the umbrellas.'

(23') Mennene ‑ som var kledd i hvitt med svarte slips ‑ sto i den lave inngangen og pratet sammen under paraplyene.

Lit: men-the who were dressed in white with black ties stood in the low entrance and talked together under umbrellas-the

Turning to the Norwegian original text, we find that the two sentences of the Norwegian original where pseudocoordination is not translated with a progressive have a stative main verb (holdt/holder ('held'/'hold'), tener in Spanish; recall the impossibility of (11)). We recall that stative predicates are excluded with the Spanish progressive. One of these sentences with its Spanish translation was given in (15) and (15') above, repeated here:

(15) Johan Nagel sat inde i hotellets kafe og holdt en avis i hånden da Minutten kom ind

Lit: J. N. sat in in hotel-the-'s café and held a paper in hand-the when Minute-the came in

'Johan Nagel sat in the café of the hotel holding a newspaper in his hand when The Minute came in.'

(15') Johan Nagel estaba sentado con un periódico en la mano en el café del hotel cuando entró El Minuto.

Lit: J. N. was sat with a paper in the hand in the café of-the hotel when entered The Minute

The other sentence where the pseudocoordination is not translated with a progressive is shown in (24) and (24'):

(24) Minutten sitter stiv ret op og ned på stolen, holder sig fast med begge hænder som om han er rædd for å falde ned og skjærer tænder så hans hode dirrer.

Lit: M. sits stiff straight up and down on chair-the, holds himself firmly with both hands as if he is scared for to fall down and grinds teeth so his head quivers

'The Minute sits stiff straight up on the chair, holding onto the chair with both hands as if he is scared of falling down and grinding his teeth so hard his head quivers.'

(24') El Minuto está sentado tieso, agarrado a la silla con las dos manos como si tuviera miedo a caerse de ella mientras rechina los dientes tan fuerte que su cabeza tiembla.

Lit: the M is seated firm held to the chair with the-FEM.PL two hands as if had-SUBJ.3P fear to fall-REFL off the-FEM.SG while grinds the-MASC.PL teeth so hard that his head quivers

For both pairs the translator chooses to translate sat/sitter ('sat'/'sit') by estar sentado ('be sat'). Estar sentado is the way to express that someone is sitting in Spanish, since there is no lexically stative verb conveying the same content. In the pair (15) and (15') the stative second conjunct verb holdt ('held') of the Norwegian original is avoided in the Spanish translation by the use of a prepositional phrase (con un periódico en la mano ('with a newspaper in his hand')). The specification of posture (the sitting) would seem superfluous in the translation (15') since sitting is the normal posture in a café. A background for The Minute's entering is needed, however. Since the progressive is not possible due to the stative holdt ('held'), the same specification of background as is used in the original Norwegian sentence, i.e. the sitting, serves well in the Spanish translation, too.

In the pair (24) and (24') the lexical content of the posture verb (sitter ('sit')) is so important that it has to be included in the translation. The reason is that the manner ('The Minute sits stiff, straight up on the chair'), not only the place, of the sitting is important in the sentence. The verb denoting 'holding' is excluded from being in the progressive due to its stativity, here, too.

We have seen that pseudocoordination is restricted to postural or locative contexts. On the other hand, pseudocoordination can, contrary to the Spanish progressive, occur with stative predicates. The postural and locative restriction of pseudocoordination has greater consequences for the distribution than does the stative restriction, however. Hence this study substantiates the connection between general meaning, wide distribution and high frequency. It is a consequence of the progressive being more general in meaning than pseudocoordination that the frequency of the progressive is higher, as shown in Table 2:

Text \| Construction	Pseudocoordination (Norwegian)	Progressives (Spanish)
Mysterier (6383 words)	7 (1.1 per 1000 words)	12 (1.9 per 1000 words)
El Coronel... (8975 words)	11 (1.2 per 1000 words)	16 (1.8 per 1000 words)

Table 2 Frequencies of the Spanish and Norwegian progressives in the two texts.

8. The English - Norwegian corpora: a possible corrective

As noted in section 4, the English progressive has a wide range of use, even wider than the Spanish progressive. The following study shows that the frequency of the construction is in accordance with its high level of grammaticalization. The study also shows the same pattern as that found in the Norwegian-Spanish comparison above: There is an overlap between pseudocoordination and the progressive in English, but the Norwegian pseudocoordination is more often translated with an English progressive than vice versa. The differences observed in this English - Norwegian comparison as against the Spanish progressive vs. the Norwegian pseudocoordination can be traced back to the less restricted use of the English progressive. Compared to both the Norwegian pseudocoordination and the Spanish progressive the English progressive is much less restricted in its use.

Here I will report on the study of an excerpt from Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. The excerpt consists of about 20,000 words. As many as forty occurrences of pseudocoordination are found in the translation. The Norwegian translation of Winnie-the-Pooh thus contains a good deal of pseudocoordination, with two occurrences per 1000 words. Still, the translation is not extreme compared to Norwegian original texts of the same genre (children's literature). Teskjekjerringa by Alf Prøysen, for example, has almost four occurrences of pseudocoordination per 1000 words. The forty cases of pseudocoordination in the translation of Winnie-the-Pooh stem from a progressive in the original sixteen times, from a gerund twelve times, from simple tenses ten times and twice from a copula construction. In seven of the ten instances where the pseudocoordination stemmed from a simple tense, there was information about posture or location in the original sentence.

In the original English Winnie-the-Pooh text the progressive occurs in 150 sentences (other instances of the gerund form are found 227 times). That means 7.5 occurrences of the progressive per 1000 words. Compared to the investigation made by Biber et al. (1999), this text places itself nicely between Biber et al.'s conversation material (about 9 per 1000 words) and their fiction texts (about 6 per 1000 words). It also means that there are almost four times as many progressives in the original as there are pseudocoordinations in the translations.

As noted, the progressives are translated by a pseudocoordination in sixteen of the cases (11%). In as many as ninety-five of the cases (63%) the English progressive is translated by a simple tense in Norwegian. Of these cases only two describe an activity as taking place at a specified location or in a specific posture. It is also of interest that another Norwegian progressive marker, holde på å... ('be about to.../be in the process of...') occurs eight times as a translation of the progressive. The use of the form holde på å... matches the 'be-about-to' meaning of the English progressive in five of the cases. Besides there are eight predicative constructions serving as a translation of the progressive, and twenty-three cases in which the progressive in the original was not translated (this latter point may give an indication of translation quality as compared to the Spanish-Norwegian and Norwegian-Spanish texts where all sentences found a match).

I do not intend to conduct a full investigation of the relation between Norwegian pseudocoordination and the English progressive, but a small Norwegian original text translated into English can be compared to the results from the study of the Winnie-the-Pooh texts, in order to see if the same pattern emerges as in the Norwegian-Spanish comparison. For this purpose I used an excerpt from Teskjekjerringa (Mrs. Pepperpot), a text of 2,646 words. Ten cases of pseudocoordination are found in the Norwegian original (i.e. 3.8 per 1000 words). They are translated by the English progressive in five of the cases (50%), and two are translated by a non-finite ing-clause. One instance of pseudocoordination is not translated, one is translated by two simple-tensed verbs, and one is translated by a copula and a noun. Twenty-three progressives are found in the English translation (i.e. 8.7 per 1000 words). There is thus a relatively high frequency of pseudocoordination in the excerpt from Teskjekjerringa, whereas the English translation has a normal frequency of the progressive. Five of the sentences with the progressive in the translation stem from pseudocoordination. An overview of the results is given in Table 3.

Construction

Text

Progressive (English) translated into or from a Norwegian pseudocoordination

Pseudocoordination (Norwegian) translated from or into an English progressive

Winnie-the-Pooh

(20,000 words)

16 (out of 150 = 11%)

7.5 per 1000 words

16 (out of 40 = 40%)

2.0 per 1000 words

Teskjekjerringa

(2,646 words)

5 (out of 23=22%)

8.7 per 1000 words

5 (out of 10 = 50%)

3.8 per 1000 words

Table 3: The correspondences between the English and the Norwegian progressives, along with the frequencies of the two constructions in the texts.

As shown by the results for the Norwegian original Teskjekjerringa, pseudocoordination is often (50%) translated into a progressive in English. Although the percentage is lower than for the Norwegian-Spanish text pair, it certainly points to a substantial overlap of the uses of the two constructions, in the Norwegian-English direction of translation. By looking at the translations of the original pseudocoordination, we can check what the translations are in the cases where the progressive is not used. To a great extent the English translator has used a construction which is quite similar to the Norwegian pseudocoordination, i.e. several verbs in coordination, with the first verb specifying posture or position. Examples are (25, 25') and (26, 26'):

(25) Og kjerringa lå i bøtta og sukka og pusta og skjønte ingenting.

Lit: and woman-the lay in bucket-the and sighed and breathed and understood nothing

(25') Mrs. Pepperpot lay there panting, trying to get her breath back. She had no idea where she was.

(26) Der sto kjerringa på kjøkkenet og pynta bløtkaka, og på bordet i stua lå pipa med sølvbeslag.

Lit: there stood woman-the on kitchen-the and decorated cream-cake-the and on table-the in living-room-the lay pipe-the with silver-furnishing

(26') There stood Mrs Pepperpot in the kitchen, decorating his birthday cake, and on the table lay the pipe with the silver band.

Only 22% of the sentences with a progressive in the English translation of Teskjekjerringa derive from pseudocoordination. By comparison, in the Norwegian-Spanish text pair, 42% of the Spanish progressives in the translation stemmed from pseudocoordination. This can be tentatively explained in the following way. The frequency of the English progressive is generally high in these kinds of texts, as it is in this translation, too. The relatively high frequency of pseudocoordination in this original text, 3.8 per 1000 words, does not totally "remedy" the big mismatch in frequency between the constructions: There are too many English progressives compared to pseudocoordinations for it to be possible for pseudocoordination account for any large number of the progressives in the translated text. But why is the English progressive so frequent? The answer seems to lie in its range of use. The progressive in English has an unusually wide range for a progressive (Comrie 1976: 33). The choice between progressive and nonprogressive meaning is obligatory, and the choice is made by selecting either the progressive or the nonprogressive form. The two forms are mutually exclusive, they are not interchangeable. In Spanish, on the other hand, there is a third aspect distinction which can be made (see Section 4). In addition to the progressive, there is both a perfective and an imperfective form. The progressive and the imperfective are interchangeable in some contexts, possibly lowering the number of Spanish progressives. As we saw in Section 4, the frequency of the progressive is indeed lower in Spanish than in English. The lower number of Spanish progressives makes the gap in number between the progressive and the pseudocoordination smaller. In turn, then, it is possible to get a good overlap of the two constructions; 42% represents such an overlap.

If the English progressive has such a wide range of use, why does it not serve as the translation in more than five of the pseudocoordinations? Several instances of pseudocoordination were translated by a construction in English very similar to the pseudocoordination, as we saw in the discussion of the examples (25, 25') and (26, 26') above. In English, in the children's book text used here, it seems to be necessary to add the locative or postural information in addition to the information that the event was durative and imperfective. The postural and locative information is important for conveying the content of the original sentence. When the locative/postural information is added by way of a tensed verb, a normal progressive is excluded, since there is no place for the auxiliary be. In the Norwegian-Spanish texts studied in Sections 6 and 7, the contexts in which pseudocoordination is used in Norwegian do not have an important locative or postural aspect to them, as we saw in (14, 14'), repeated:

(14) Hvorfor sitter De forresten og plaprer ut med dette i alle disse folks påhør?

Lit: why sit you-POLITE by-the-way and babble out with this in all these people's on-hear?

'Why are you bursting out with this with all these people listening, by the way?'

(14') Por cierto, ¿por qué está contando todo esto en presencia de toda esta gente?

Lit: by-the-way why are-you-POLITE telling all this in presence of all this people

If the locative information is important, a totally different construction has to be used in Spanish, as we saw in (15, 15').

Another, perhaps surprising, result to be read from Table 3, is that the overlap between the progressive in the English original and pseudocoordination in the translation is great (40%). The corresponding percentage for the Spanish-Norwegian text pair is much smaller (18%). Recall that, for the Spanish-Norwegian texts, the tendency was, in translation from the Spanish progressive, that a different construction was used in the Norwegian translation if the posture or location of the subject could not be inferred from the context of the original Spanish sentence. As such information often could not be inferred, a different construction than pseudocoordination was indeed chosen in the Norwegian translation. The Winnie-the-Pooh text, on the other hand, is full of locative expressions, also co-occurring with progressives. In the English original text, as was the case for the English translated text, constructions with progressives in coordination, or progressives in coordination with gerunds, are highly frequent. In these cases the first conjunct specifies the posture or position of the agent, whereas the second conjunct describes the parallel action or state. Such a construction finds a perfect match in the Norwegian pseudocoordination. Hence, translation pairs like (27, 27') and (28, 28') are frequent:

(27) Piglet was lying on his back, sleeping peacefully.

(27') Nøff lå på ryggen og sov trygt.

Lit: N. lay on back-the and slept safely

(28) Piglet was sitting a little way off, his head in his paws, snuffling to himself.

(28') Nøff satt med hodet mellom labbene og snufset.

Lit: N. sat with head-the between paws-the and snuffled

The last but not least important correspondence to be read from Table 3 is that the progressives in the original English text correspond to pseudocoordination in only 11% of the cases. This result is in good agreement with the comparison between the Spanish original progressives and their translation into the Norwegian pseudocoordination, which showed an overlap of 13%. The fact that the English progressive has a wide range of use means it is used in many contexts where the locative or postural information is absent, which makes pseudocoordination unsuitable as a translation. Examples of such non-locative contexts, where a progressive in the original is not translated by pseudocoordination, are seen in the pairs below. In (29') the original does not warrant any suitable posture verb for a pseudocoordination, due to the inanimate subject, and the simple form is used in a conjunction, bringing out the durative aspect.

(29) all the streams of the forest were tinkling happily

(29') alle bekker klukket og lo

Lit: all streams gurgled and laughed

In negative contexts pseudocoordination is not possible; a non-event cannot be localized:

(30) But Eeyore wasn't listening.

(30') Men Tussi hørte ikke på dem.

Lit: but T. heard not on them

Pseudocoordination does not go well with the perfect, especially if there is a result involved. Hence a simple form is used in the translation:

(31) I have just been thinking, and ...

(31') Jeg har nettopp tenkt og ...

I have just thought and

About 10% of the progressives in the English original describe a situation as coming nearer, but not necessarily being reached. In such contexts, pseudocoordination is not possible, since it must describe an interval within, not prior to, the event referred to by the main predicate:

(32) I was beginning to get anxious

(32') Jeg begynte nesten å bli redd.

Lit: I began almost to become afraid

In fact, as we saw in Section 3, such a 'be-about-to' description is covered by a different aspectual construction in Norwegian, namely holde på å... (lit: 'hold on to...'; 'be about to...'). One of the five examples of this is (33, 33'):

(33) just as the night was beginning to steal away

(33') nettopp som natten holdt på å stjele seg bort,

Lit: ust as night-the held on to steal REFL away

The small-scale comparison between the English progressive and the Norwegian pseudocoordination made here thus strengthens the pattern found in the Spanish-Norwegian comparison: The narrow, locative/postural type of range of pseudocoordination makes it more likely to be translated with the progressive, which has a wider range. The differences between this English-Norwegian comparison and the Spanish-Norwegian comparison is due to the fact that the English progressive has an even wider range of use than the Spanish progressive. Furthermore, the high frequency of locative information in the English-Norwegian texts (children's literature) caused the English original and the English translation to have lots of constructions with a tensed form of a postural verb like sit or lie, excluding the auxiliary of the progressive, and hence the progressive, but yielding a construction which resembles the Norwegian pseudocoordination.

9. Conclusion

In this study, we have found that the progressive in Spanish and the progressive in English are not as often translated by pseudocoordination in Norwegian as vice versa. In going from a progressive to the posture-sensitive pseudocoordination, information about posture and position, if not included in the original, has to be added. If it is difficult to deduce such information from the context, pseudocoordination is not chosen. These findings agree well with, and can be seen to follow from, the fact that the progressives in Spanish and English are more general in meaning than pseudocoordination. On the one hand, it can be held that pseudocoordination is grammaticalized to some extent, since the first conjunct verb has lost some of its lexical content, and it behaves like an auxiliary in some respects. Furthermore, it is constant in conveying the information of the agent being in the middle of an activity, and it is fairly frequent. On the other hand, this study shows that the Norwegian pseudocoordination is not as grammaticalized as the Spanish or the English progressive. It shows how the relatively specific locative meaning of pseudocoordination restricts its distribution compared to the Spanish and the English progressives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Hallvard Dørum, Elisabet Engdahl, Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen, Hilde Hasselgård, Jan Tore Lønning, Stig Johansson, Diana Santos and Kjell Johan Sæbø for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. The work was partly funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) and partly by the Joint Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities (NOS-H 124964/541).

Ingebjørg Tonne

Department of Linguistics

University of Oslo

Box 1102 Blindern

N-0317 Oslo

E-mail: ingebjorg.tonne@mail.hf.uio.no

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[1] The English translations of Mysterier and also of El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba are my own, not the published English translation.