Stative situations and the Progressive construction (be/estar + gerund) in English and Spanish: a contrastive corpus-based analysis

Abstract

This paper explores the frequency with which English and Spanish make use of the Progressive construction (be + gerun, estar + gerund) with stative predicates. The behaviour of different verbs typically associated with stative process types has been examined in corpora of one million words of the European variety of both languages. This has revealed not just differences in the frequency of use of the Progressive construction, but also in the restrictions imposed on certain verbs in English and Spanish.