PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION – AS SUBMITTED TO THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL PRAGMATICS

PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION – AS SUBMITTED TO THEJ OURNAL OF H ISTORICAL P RAGMATICSSmitterberg, Erik. 2005. The Progressivein 19th-Century English. A process ofintegration. Amsterdam and New York:Rodopi.Reviewed by Sebastian Hoffmann (University of Zurich)In this monograph, which is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis, Smitterberg presents the first comprehensive cross-genre investigation of the development and use of the progressive in 19th-century (English) English. Drawing on an extensive set of authentic language data, he convincingly demonstrates that this particular period represents an important – and interesting – phase in the 'integration' of the progressive into the grammatical system of the language.1Given that the 19th century is a period that has received comparatively little scholarly attention in the area of English syntax, Smitterberg's study is a very welcome addition to the existing literature.The book is divided into eight chapters of varying length. In the opening chapter, readers are introduced to the aim and scope of the investigation and are presented with a brief outline of the study. This is complemented by an overview of terminological, typographical and statistical conventions as well as a discussion of the theoretical and methodological frameworks employed, most prominently corpus linguistics and Biber's (1988) multi-dimensional factor-analysis. In contrast to other studies that have typically focused exclusively on texts where the progressive is found frequently (e.g. letters in Arnaud 1998), Smitterberg's investigation aims to cover a wide range of different genres. In addition, time and sex of the author are considered to be important extralinguistic features that condition the use and development of the construction.The first part of Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed description of the corpus used in this study, viz. the Corpus of Nineteenth-Century English (CONCE). Containing almost one million words from seven different genres (Debates, Drama, Fiction, History, Letters, Science, and Trials), its texts are divided into three periods (1800-1830, 1850-1870, and 1870-1900) of roughly equal size.2As will become apparent in the chapter summaries presented below, this corpus does indeed offer a suitable basis for many of the issues investigated. However, the relatively small size of individual genre portions2 S EBASTIAN H OFFMANN per period (e.g. just under 20,000 words for Debates) means that the empirical basis for the description of some genre-specific diachronic changes is necessarily rather limited.In the second part of Chapter 2, Smitterberg illustrates the automated retrieval of potential progressives from the corpus and describes how the resulting set of data was manually post-processed to discard irrelevant instances (e.g. formally identical constructions such as appositively used participles, gerunds and the BE going to-future). Smitterberg's methodologically sound approach results in the retrieval of 2,440 progressives in the whole of CONCE.3At the beginning of Chapter 3, Smitterberg presents a lucid discussion of the difficulties involved in calculating reliable frequency counts for progressives in CONCE. Thus, while normalized frequencies can easily be calculated, their explanatory power is limited since they cannot account for the fact that the number of progressives is dependent on the number of verb phrases in a text rather than on the total number of words. When looked at from a variationist perspective, the occurrence of the progressive would therefore have to be investigated in relation to the non-occurrence of the progressive in situations where the construction could, in principle, have been used. Given the large number of verb phrases in a one-million word corpus, this type of analysis is however not a viable option for a quantitative study. After discussing other methods that have been used in previous research, Smitterberg opts for a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, the progressive is investigated as a linguistic feature in itself and results are presented as normalized frequencies (referred to as the M-coefficient); on the other hand, Smitterberg introduces his own method, the S-coefficient, which approximates the variationist approach but remains largely accessible to automated retrieval.4 The remainder of Chapter 3 then presents the distribution of the progressive over the various periods and genres of CONCE. According to Smitterberg's data, the frequency of the progressive almost doubles over the course of the 19th century. Furthermore, while some genres exhibit quite drastic developments (e.g. History with an almost sevenfold increase), others display much more moderate levels of increase (e.g. Fiction and Trials). With respect to the genre variable, a clear divide emerges between expository and non-expository texts. Finally, progressives are more frequently found in female than in male writings.In Chapter 4, some of the results presented in the previous chapter are related to dimension scores for the seven genres of CONCE described in four studies by Geisler (e.g. 2002). The underlying assumption is that a correlation between the frequency of the progressive and frequencies of features that are characteristic of opposing poles on Biber's (1988) dimensions of variation mayT HE P ROGRESSIVE IN 19TH-C ENTURY E NGLISH 3 offer insights into the functional distribution of the progressive. Smitterberg's results suggest that, on the whole, the progressive tends to correlate with features that indicate involved production and situation-dependent reference. However, individual genres can be seen to exhibit very different patterns of co-occurrence – a fact which Smitterberg ascribes to the multi-functionality of the progressive.In Chapter 5, the focus shifts to a description of four morphosyntactic features of the verb phrase, viz. tense (present vs. past), the perfect, voice, and modal auxiliaries. With respect to voice, the 19th century is particularly interesting as the period during which the passival (the house is building) is replaced by the passive (the house is being built). Although raw frequencies are low – a total of only 35 relevant instances – this development is also clearly borne out in Smitterberg's data. For the tense variable and perfect progressives, results are inconclusive and no particular diachronic trend can be observed. Co-occurrence of modal auxiliaries with progressives, finally, is a comparatively rare phenomenon, and contrary to expectation, the proportion further decreases from five per cent in the earliest period to only one percent in the final period.Chapter 6 continues along the lines of the previous chapter by investigating a list of five linguistic features that have been described in previous research as being influential for the development of the progressive, viz. the type of (main) verbs found in the progressive, the Aktionsart categories with which it co-occurs (e.g. ±stative, ±durative), the agentivity of subjects of progressive verb phrases, its modification by temporal adverbials, and the type of clause in which the construction occurs. Smitterberg's findings concerning main verbs reveal that GO is the most frequent verb used in the progressive but that differences in subject matter in the various genres naturally have an influence on the verbs used. Interestingly, genre diversity (as expressed by type/token ratios of the three periods in CONCE) is shown to increase over time – a fact which runs counter to the hypothesis that the progressive became more integrated in the course of the century.5No major diachronic development could be detected concerning both Aktionsart values as well as the agentivity of subjects. However, modification by temporal adverbials displayed a significant decrease over the three periods covered in CONCE while the proportion of progressives in main clauses increased. Smitterberg discusses each of these findings in detail and interprets many aspects of the observed patterns as signs of an increased integration of the progressive.In Chapter 7, Smitterberg turns to the not-solely-aspectual functions of the progressive (e.g. as expression of subjectivity, emotional attitude or emphasis) – an area which is rarely discussed in quantitative studies of the progressive. For this purpose, he investigates the co-occurrence of the4 S EBASTIAN H OFFMANN progressive with always and semantically related adverbials, potentially 'experiential' progressives, and 'interpretative' progressives. With respect to the first of these three features, no diachronic trend can be detected. Since ALWAYS-type adverbials have been found to co-occur with progressives for many centuries, Smitterberg interprets the low but stable proportion of this feature as a sign of completed integration. In the case of experiential progressives, Smitterberg again fully relies on an analysis of overt contextual features. Thus, a progressive is deemed to carry a (potentially) not-solely-aspectual function if three of the following four criteria are fulfilled: (1) occurrence in the present tense without perfect or modal auxiliary, (2) in a main clause, (3) with a first- or second-person subject, and (4) as part of a 'stative' situation. In contrast to the co-occurrence with ALWAYS-type adverbials, experiential progressives exhibit a statistically significant increase in the 19th century. A similar – albeit not statistically significant – increase is found for interpretative progressives, a category of progressives which interprets two situations as being identical rather than simultaneous. Given the lack of reliable contextual features for this type of progressives, they are the only aspect in Smitterberg's study which is investigated with the help of close readings of the larger context.In the final chapter, Smitterberg briefly summarizes the major findings of his study and evaluates them with respect to the concept of integration. While progressive constructions clearly increase in frequency – which is a strong indication of an increased level of integration – his results suggest a more complicated picture. Thus, he interprets the process of integration as the outcome of a complex and interrelated set of features with sometimes seemingly conflicting developments. Among these, the genre parameter certainly plays a major role. Smitterberg stresses that a corpus-based approach is indeed well-suited for this type of investigation. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research.As will have become apparent from these chapter summaries, the book under review pursues an explicitly quantitative approach. Thus, it contains 77 tables but a comparatively low number of illustrative examples (116), many of which are used to demonstrate methodological issues rather than to give readers an impression of the use of progressives in context. This approach clearly has its advantages. For example, in the discussion of not-solely-aspectual progressives, it enables Smitterberg to employ (comparatively) objective and explicitly defined criteria whose interpretation does not rely on the application of Present-day English intuitions to 19th century data. The downside of this type of approach, however, is that it introduces a – potentially considerable – level of imprecision. Smitterberg is well aware of this fact and repeatedly draws the attention of readers to such possible shortcomings.T HE P ROGRESSIVE IN 19TH-C ENTURY E NGLISH 5 However, the addition of a more qualitative level of description involving close readings of individual progressives in their larger context would have further increased the validity of Smitterberg's conclusions.This point is perhaps well illustrated by Smitterberg's interpretation of the radically different frequencies of progressives in Debates and Trials (with M-coefficients of 89 and 309, respectively). He hypothesizes that this dissimilarity in two genres which are both partly based on recorded speech may be explained by such factors as... differences regarding the formality of the occasion, the probability of publication of the proceedings and the speakers' awareness of this probability, the extent to which it may have been possible for speakers to prepare parts of the texts in advance, and the editing process that texts [...] went through when being transferred into writing (pp. 63-4).While such issues may indeed have played an important role, it appears highly likely that fundamental contextual differences relating to the setting and pur-pose of the interactions may constitute an even more decisive influence. Thus, conversational exchanges in trials typically attempt to reconstruct the exact temporal succession – or simultaneousness – of events (e.g. "what were you doing before you stabbed him?") and would therefore be highly conducive to the use of progressives. This is not normally the case in parliamentary debates. Such differences, which are almost completely excluded from Smitterberg's approach, might well have come to light in close readings of individual texts.Finally, an additional comment about CONCE is due. Although the corpus was not specifically compiled for this book project, its wide range of different genres no doubt renders it a suitable basis for this type of investigation – and Smitterberg is very adept at extracting relevant patterns and presenting them to readers in clearly structured tables. Nonetheless, the relatively small overall size of CONCE means at times that results must remain inconclusive. This is particularly the case in cross-tabulations of genre and period categories, which necessarily lead to low raw frequencies in individual cells. Smitterberg is aware of these limitations and frequently alerts readers to the low levels of reliability of some of his findings. However, he does occasionally overshoot the mark by following up such caveats with overly assertive descriptions of apparent trends that emerge from his data. For example, he points out the "consistent trend [in Debates]" that the "percentage of progressives occurring in relative clauses decreases over the century" (p. 197). While this trend is indeed suggested by the percentage values of 50%, 36%, and 17%, this observation is in fact based on a total of 14 occurrences in all three periods.6 S EBASTIAN H OFFMANNThese minor quibbles notwithstanding, Smitterberg's book deserves a prominent place in studies of the progressive and his findings will no doubt engender further research in this area. The quantitative approach taken in this study will particularly appeal to a corpus-linguistic audience but its findings should also serve as a useful source of information for any scholar who is interested in diachronic change and cross-genre variation.1By 'integration', he refers to processes commonly subsumed under the concept of grammaticalization as well as related areas such as "the formal expansion of the progressive across the English verb phrase, the extension of the progressive to new types of situations and subjects, and the general increase in the frequency of the construction"(p. 58).2 The proportion of the different genres varies considerably: one third of the corpus consists ofLetters while Debates only constitute approximately 6% of the data (59,240 words).3Unfortunately, readers are not told about the proportion of irrelevant instances in his automatically retrieved set of data.4 For example, imperative verb phrases and BE going to + infinitive constructions with futurereference are discarded.5In this context, Smitterberg lapses when he calculates type/token ratios on the basis of unevenly sized samples. However, a look at the number of types and tokens per period (Smitterberg, personal communication) suggests that the author's conclusions are certainly valid for the development between periods 2 and 3.ReferencesArnaud, René. 1998. The Development of the Progressive in 19th Century English: A Quantitative Survey. Language Variation and Change 10, 123-52.Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Geisler, Christer. 2002. Investigating Register Variation in Nineteenth-Century English: A Multi-Dimensional Comparison. In: Randi Reppen, Susan M.Fitzmaurice and Douglas Biber (eds.) Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 249-71.About the authorSebastian Hoffmann is lecturer at the University of Zurich. His research focuses on syntactic change, aspects of fixedness (e.g. collocations) and the interplay between corpus data and language theory. A second major area of his research is corpus linguistic methodology. He is the author of Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions. A Corpus-based Study. London: Routledge (2005).。