Aspect Meets Modality: A Semantic Analysis of the German<i>Am</i>-Progressive

Abstract

This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the semantics of the German am V-inf sein construction, or am -progressive. Like its English counterpart and many other progressive constructions in the world's languages, the am -progressive is shown to convey not only a variety of aspecto-temporal meanings, but also a range of (inter)subjective qualifications, such as intensification, irritation, and evasiveness. These (inter)subjective connotations are argued to reflect the am -progressive's core meaning of epistemic contingency, which we believe is instantiated in all of its uses. *