Continuous and progressive aspects
The aspect can often be ambiguous; "Tom is reading Ulysses" may describe his current activity (it's in his hand), or the state of having started, but not yet finished, the book (it's in his bag).
Salikoko Mufwene[7]: pp.35–36 contrasts the effect of the progressive form on the meanings of action verbs versus those of lexically stative verbs: The progressive aspect in English likely arose from two constructions that were used fairly rarely in Old and Early Middle English.
[9] The second used beon/wesan, a preposition, and a gerund (-unge), and has been variously proposed as being influenced by similar forms in Latin and French[10] or British Celtic, though evidence one way or another is scant.
This change, which was complete in southern England around the late fifteenth century and spread north from there, rendered participles and gerunds indistinguishable.
[12][13] Linguist Herbert Schendl has concluded that "with this feature, a polygenetic origin ... seems attractive, and at least the further extension of the progressive is a language-internal development.
But in the Riff variety of Berber, the participle aqqa is added before the verb to form present continuous.
In order to emphasize the progressive aspect rather than the continuous, 喺度 (literally meaning "at here") can be used in front of the verb: 我I喺度at here著wear緊PROG衫。clothes我 喺度 著 緊 衫。I {at here} wear PROG clothes喺度 can also be used without 緊 to indicate the progressive aspect.
That being said, French can express a continuous sense using the periphrastic construction être en train de ("to be in the middle of") followed by a simple infinitive; for example, English's "we were eating" might be expressed in French either as nous étions en train de manger (literally "we were in the middle of eating"), or as simply nous mangions ("we ate").
An exception is in relating events that took place in the past: the imperfect (or imparfait) has a continuous aspect in relation to the simple (historic) past (or passé simple); e.g. nous mangions quand il frappa à la porte ("we were eating when he knocked at the door").
It is also possible to use the present participle (or participe présent) as a gerund (or gérondif) in relation to the tense of the opposed verb, e.g. Nous mangeant, il frappait à la porte, opposed here to the imperfect but the simple past is also possible, e.g. nous mangeant, il frappa à la porte.
If the subject of the gerund is the same as the opposed verb conjugated at any other tense, it is omitted in the progressive gerund, but implied by the preposition en, e.g. en mangeant et nous discutant, il ne nous écoute pas ("while eating and while we are discussing, he doesn't listen to us").
The preposition en may be omitted if the gerund has an implied subject and takes an object which is not a pronoun; in that case the object may be prefixed before the gerund verb (and its possessive may be omitted when it refers to that implied subject), e.g. Chemin faisant, il ne pense à rien (lit.
"to be after") followed by a simple infinitive; for example, English's "we were eating" might be expressed either as simply nous mangions with the imperfect (imparfait) like in France, or as nous étions après manger; but in France, this could be confusively understood as a discontinuous past (lit.
Formed exactly as in Rhenish German, Jèrriais constructs the continuous with verb êt' (be) + à (preposition) + infinitive.
Known as the rheinische Verlaufsform (roughly Rhenish progressive form), it has become increasingly common in the casual speech of many speakers around Germany through popular media and music, although it is still frowned upon in formal and literary contexts.
[16] In Southern Austro-Bavarian, the aspect can be expressed using tun (to do) as an auxiliary with the infinitive of the verb as in er tut lesen for he is reading (cf.
In Hawaiian, the present tense progressive aspect form ke + verb + nei is very frequently used.
Its usage differs slightly from English, as it generally cannot be used in static contexts, for example standing or sitting, but rather to describe specific activities.
The construction *ég er að standa á borðinu is incorrect[clarification needed] in Icelandic.
[18][19] In Portuguese the continuous aspect is marked by gerund, either by a proper -ndo ending (common in Brazil and Alentejo) or a (to) and the infinitive (gerundive infinitive – the standard form in most of Portugal); for example to be doing would be either estar a fazer or, similar to other Romance languages, estar fazendo.
In Slavic languages, there is a clear distinction between perfective and imperfective grammatical aspects in the verb stem, with the latter emphasizing that the action is, was or will be in progress (habitual or otherwise).
Perfective verbs generally cannot be used with the meaning of a present tense – their present-tense forms in fact have future reference.
Conjugations of the Present Progressive in Spanish: Swedish has several ways of constructing continuous aspect.
