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Predicting the Progressive Passive: Parametric Change Within a Lexicalist Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Anthony R. Warner
Anthony R. Warner*
Affiliation:
University of York, England
*
Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Heslington, North Yorkshire, England YOl 5DD e-mail aw2@york.ac.uk
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Abstract

The English progressive passive (e.g. is being carried) is first attested in the second half of the eighteenth century. The paper offers a new interpretation of this development as integrated into a series of changes which affected be (and have) at this period. It arose not as a combination of progressive and passive constructions but (with the other changes) was a consequence of the reduction of inflection in auxiliaries which followed the loss of thou in informal speech. This is interpreted as a parametric change, for which there is an overt triggering difference in the primary linguistic data, and the account is formalized within HPSG.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 533 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Linguistic Society of America

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