Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Ron, I've noticed that, too, with people from South Asia in general, and I wonder why that is. As a former (and -- sometimes -- still) teacher of ESL, and as a speaker of Spanish, I understand that many verb tenses don't translate exactly from one language to another. But I wonder, specifically, Ron, if you know Hindi (or any of the 1,600 or so other languages in India that may or may not give rise to this construction), and why that construction is so common in translation.

By the way, my former students who were Mandarin speakers told me their language did not have verb tenses (again, in the way we American-English speakers know), but that the temporal sense was conveyed by other constructions. Anybody know about Mandarin?

I can reply regarding the Mandarin. Your sources are correct, and take the time to explain it well. It annoys me when I hear simply "Chinese has no verb tenses." It certainly does. However, Chinese does not inflect the verb to express the tense, mood, and voice, but rather adds other words to the sentence.
In English we can get a taste of this by considering the already inflected form of Loved.
Chris loved Pat.
Chris was loved by Pat.
Pat had loved Terry.
Leslie has loved many.
Terry should have loved Chris.
Terry would have loved Chris, if not for Sal.
Leslie will have loved still many more.

'I'm thinking that' seems to suggest that the speaker's mind might be changed.
'will be arising' suggests that the ideas may not be fully formed.
'I'm loving it' suggests the feeling in the middle of the meal (rather than a constant state, as the simple present suggests).
It seems to me that these are just perceptive uses of the present progressive.
As the younger set might say: 'don't be hating, bro.' (Again, said in response to a stimulus in progress, not referring to a persistent state of affairs/state of mind'.)

I'm totally grooving on the living language!

What you said, Mr. Bob Bridges, is somewhat correct, but your discussion of the past progressive tense was a little off. The progressive tense describes an ongoing action, sure, but past progressive indicates that something was ongoing when something else happened. The past progressive is, as far as I know, never used without an intervening action, which is usually a discrete action described in the simple past. If there is no such intervening action, one should use the simple past (preterite) or, maybe, the past perfect ("had [verb, in past-participial form]"). My point is that "'I was walking to your house'" (emphasis added) does not describe a continuing action; it appropriately describes a past action that was more than instantaneous and, in most conversation, would be followed by another action: "I was walking to your house when Siva himself appeared and slapped me with all six of his hands."

Also, only mostly-physical verbs should ever have a progressive or gerund ("-ing") ending. Mental states are not continuing actions -- each moment renews the mentality. I'm not sure if I have much support for this position, but I still think "am thinking," "am believing," "am wishing," or "am desiring," just to name a few, all sound sloppy and improper.

Sure, tunawrites, but I think that's what I said. It's certainly what I meant, anyway. You don't actually have to name the "other action" at the time you use the progressive time (technically not a "tense"); I could be telling a story in which the background, so to speak, has already been named. But I agree, it's there whether named or implied.

I think you're mistaken about mental states, though. If you phone me I can perfectly well say "oh, I was just thinking about you!" (Notice, too, that "...when you called" is implied; it doesn't have to be explicit.) And I don't think you can have meant to name gerunds—you meant participles, right?—because any verb can be used in gerund form in order to talk about the activity. "Machines are good for following instructions, but thinking is for humans."

I say that progressive and simple and other such times are "technically not a tense"; I may in fact be mistaken. In classical Greek, which is where I learned about such things, the tenses are past, present and future; the additional modifier of simple ("I do"), imperfect ("I am doing") and perfect ("I have done") are called "times". It makes sense to me that there should be an analogous distinction in English, but linguists who know more than I (ie most of them) may explain that it's different in English.

Let me get this straight, "thank you for all of the counter-evidence, but I just think you are wrong." I'm sorry, that doesn't sit right with me.

Let's not forget that until the beginning of the last century or so, the vast majority of English speakers were 'less than educated', at least in the formal sense. Mostly they were illiterate, and yet, ours is their language. Access to a formal education, as much as that represents progress for mankind, does not give us special ownership of the English language.

Second, what, pray tell, is ungrammatical about 'don't be doing that'? How else do you propose to make an imperative out of a progressive sentence? The command form is the base form of the conjugated verb, in the case of the present progressive, the conjugated verb is 'to be', hence, 'you are doing that' --> 'don't be doing that'. You may not like the style, but that doesn't make it ungrammatical.

Tunawrites: you need to think about proper contexts. It is true, in general, that in English, verbs of state have lexical aspect (call it durative), thus, using the progressive with these verbs often sounds redundant. But, speakers constantly flout these conventions to create meaning above the literal interpretation of the words in the sentence:
'I am thinking about buying a new car.' (perfectly normal, and very different from "I think about buying a new car." Further, my wife might well say: "Don't even be thinking about buying that car!" She's fairly well educated.)

In the middle of a tedious speech: A: "A penny for your thoughts!" B: "I'm wishing he would end already!"

The friend to her lovestruck pal: "don't tell me you are believing his lines!"

And how is "I am desiring his job" objectively better than "I'm desirous of his job"?

Wait, tunawrites, maybe there's a misunderstanding here. I was assuming you already understood the difference between a participle and a gerund, and if you do please excuse the following explanation:

A participle is what we're talking about in this discussion. Technically, it's the adjective form of a verb: When a man fires a gun we can call him "a shooting man", where "shooting" is an adjective that describes his current action. In English we have just two participles, the present active and past passive, so when a man "is shooting" we know he's firing at a target and when he "is shot" we know he was the target. So that's the first definition: A participle is an adjective.

A gerund is the form of a verb when it's turned into a noun; it is the term for the activity the verb refers to. Here's the catch: In English, the gerund is formed in exactly the same way as the present participle, by putting "-ing" at the end of the present tense. So in the sentence "I've been skiing for hours", "skiing" is an adjective, a participle; in "Skiing is great exercise", "skiing" is a noun, a gerund. In English they look the same, but they make two different parts of a sentence.

My example "thinking is for humans" isn't a participle but a gerund; there is no tense or time in the word "thinking" in that sentence, because in that sentence "thinking" is a noun. And as you imply, its meaning is very similar to the infinitive: "Thinking is for humans" and "to think is for humans" mean about the same grammatically, even if they sound different stylistically. But "thinking" (in that example) is not a progressive or what I would call "continuous" form of "think"; gerunds are a different animal altogether, even though in English they look the same.

Ok, first, Glenn, I like it! And second, just to be a COMPLETE geek, I need to correct something in my last post: I said there's no time or tense in a gerund, but that's just in English. In other languages they use the infinitive as a gerund, and in classical Greek at least—I don't know about, say, Latin or Russian—there are extra forms of the infinitive: past/present/future and active/middle/passive, so that's nine at least, and maybe other combinations that I've forgotten. But what I said is still true of English.

So, this forum being in English, why do I keep talking about other and arguably irrelevant languages? Partly because I love languages. Partly because I understood English grammar much better once I'd studied my first couple alternate languages. Partly because I like showing off. And mostly because I love languages.