3.1. General Distribution of the CPV+te+infinitive Construction.

Comparing the frequency of the aspectual uses of the CPV+te+V construction to its regular uses (see table 1 above), one notices that the overall frequency ranking is comparable for both, staan > zitten > liggen, with staan occurring more then twice as often as liggen.¹⁴

Newman and Rice (2004)—a source of inspiration for the present article—present a similar corpus-based analysis for English posture verbs in three different constructions: (i) verb-particle constructions (sit down, stand up, and lie down), (ii) simultaneous conjunctions (CPVing and Ving, as in sitting and reading), and (iii) consecutive conjunctions (CPVed PART and Ved, as in stood up and walked out). Newman and Rice regard (i) and (ii) as stative uses and (iii) as a dynamic use, as the CPV codes the onset of an action sequence. The frequency ranking for (i) and (ii) in the British National Corpus (BNC) is sit > stand > lie, and for (iii) the frequency ranking is stand > sit > lie. In other words, for the stative uses (i) and (ii), sit is more frequent; for the dynamic CPV and Ved, stand is much more frequent. For the two conjoined constructions, a higher frequency is aligned with the collocation of a greater range of verbs.

Newman and Rice see a possible experiential motivation for this distribution that can be related to grammaticalization patterns in other languages. Sitting is the most relaxed, comfortable posture associated with many social events (eating, drinking, etc.) and intellectual activities (deskwork, reading, etc.). A standing posture, by contrast, requires much more muscular effort and is usually maintained for a short period of time only. It is nevertheless still relatively frequent, since it is the starting posture for common activities such as walking and running, and it is also the posture often associated with other common activities such as giving speeches. Finally, a lying posture has a more limited purpose (sleeping, resting, etc.), and may have a negative connotation often associated with weakness, decay, or death. The higher frequency of stand up observed for the dynamic consecutive conjunction can be attributed to the fact that standing up is often the starting point of the event chain. It is thus very close to the inchoative use of Dutch staan, as in Wat staat er te gebeuren? which literally translates as ‘What stands to happen?’ (or ‘What is about to happen?’).¹⁵

How can we explain the difference in frequency ranking in Dutch data presented in table 1? One may argue that this difference is due to differences in register, since the BNC, the main corpus on which Newman and Rice base their frequency count, also contains spoken data.¹⁶

The Dutch data parallel the BNC data in its low frequency of liggen for both aspectual and non-aspectual uses. It is possible that this parallel is again due to the fact that a lying posture allows only a small range of activities and is associated with inactivity, as illustrated below. At the same time, note the high frequency of staan for both categories, which may lend support to the claim made by Van Oosten 1986 and Lemmens 2002 that Dutch staan is associated with a default position for both humans and inanimates much more than English stand is. Recall that to describe an object resting on its base Dutch always uses staan. Interestingly, and in line with the frequency differences observed here, English allows the verb sit in this context. Consider the following contrast in the way Dutch and English may express the location of a computer on a desk:

In English, the verb sit emphasizes the inactivity (hence Newman's [2002] term for this usage inactivity sit), whereas no such meaning is present in the Dutch construction with staan; it simply encodes the default posture for computers (on their base). Note that to render such an inactivity reading, Dutch can actually have a stacked staan te staan construction, often with other modal particles added, as shown in 7.

A similar type of “stacking” is possible with liggen te liggen and zitten te zitten, but all three are relatively uncommon (for example, the corpus used for this study does not contain any such examples).

Returning to the higher frequency of Dutch staan, I argue that this is due to the verb being strongly associated with the entity's canonical and/or functional position when engaged in an activity. The next section discusses in more detail the range of activities that occur with each verb.

Before we turn to the complement verbs, let us briefly look at the distribution of the agent in these aspectual constructions. As table 2 shows, the aspectual construction is restricted primarily to a human agent (83.8% in total), as opposed to the non-aspectual uses, which are not restricted in this way (approximately 25%). However, this is not so much due to the CPV as such (inanimate subjects being obviously quite common in the non-aspectual uses), but rather to the semantics of the progressive itself which has an overall preference for animate agents. Indicative in this respect is that the prep-progressive construction aan het V zijn ‘be at the V’, where zijn ‘be’ does not impose any thematic restrictions on its subject, has a similar preference for a human agent (73% of a total of 1,040 occurrences in the INL corpus). At the same time, 65% of the pos-progressives with a human subject are used to refer to posture, as opposed to approximately 10–15% in non-aspectual use.

Notice, however, that the overall high percentage of human agent is not observed with respect to liggen: 46.2% of the INL examples have an inanimate subject. The reason for this should be clear from the foregoing discussion of the overall frequency hierarchy (see table 1): for humans, it is quite difficult to be engaged in an activity while lying (and as we shall see, the range of possible activities is more limited too). Thus, human subjects are expected to occur less frequently with liggen. In addition, liggen is the default locational verb that expresses the positioning of ships, symmetrical objects, substances, and geotopographical locations (cities, countries, etc.), all of which are well represented in the corpus. Table 2 also confirms some other typical patterns for the non-aspectual uses of CPVs, such as the common use of zitten for small animals (rabbits, frogs, etc.), birds, and insects (see Lemmens 2002).

3.2. Verb Complements of the CPV+te+infinitive Construction.

Once again inspired by the corpus study in Newman and Rice 2004, I also investigated the complement verbs that occur in pos-progressives. In addition to the bodily posture meaning, CPVs involve “inherent stative semantics or temporal ‘unboundedness' of the verb situation” (Kuteva 1999:206).¹⁷

When looking at the Dutch complement verbs occurring in the pos-progressive, one notices that the frequency ranking presented in table 1 (staan > zitten > liggen) correlates with a wider choice of complement verb types, as shown in table 3.¹⁸

One of the results that stands out very clearly is that for all three constructions the verb wachten ‘wait’ is most frequent. This is of course fully in line with the durative semantics of the posture verbs and with our experience that waiting is usually done while sitting, standing, or lying (in that order of frequency). Strikingly, the verb wachten has not been attested in the prep-progressive (aan het V zijn ‘be at the V’) in a total of 1,040 occurrences drawn from the same corpus. It is possible in principle to say Ik ben aan het wachten ‘I am at the wait-INF’ (an informal search on the Internet produced a number of examples). Yet there seems to be a strong preference for using the pos-progressive instead, which supports the strength of the experiential association.

There is a distinct drop in frequency—by one-half—for both staan and zitten when they occur with the second verb kijken ‘watch’. (The two verbs wachten and kijken account for 401 attestations, or almost 30% of the total.) That the frequency of this verb occurring with liggen is considerably lower (only 3 attestations, 1.6%) comes as no surprise: it is a posture from which one's visual perception is quite limited.

The high frequency of kijken with staan and (less so) zitten may be explained as follows. First, the verb is the prototypical expression of what can be regarded as our most prominent perceptional activity, automatically activated when not sleeping (so mostly when standing or sitting); yet, in itself, a relatively passive activity, and thus in full accord with the posture progressive. Second, the construction staan te kijken frequently occurs in two idiomatic contexts. In one context, it has the metaphorical meaning ‘be surprised’, as in the following examples:

The two examples illustrate the two syntactic construction types that typically have this meaning: (i) ADJ staan te kijken with the adjective expressing the strange look on the beholder's face (as in vreemd or raar both meaning ‘strange, weird’), and (ii) ergens van staan kijken, literally ‘from somewhere stand to watch’, where the locative somewhere refers to the origin of the surprise, and mostly does so anaphorically (as er[van] ‘thereof’ does in 8b above).

The other idiomatic usage of staan te kijken that plays a role here is a reference to inactivity: someone standing and watching is often associated with that person not engaging in any action, usually in these contexts evaluated negatively. It can roughly be considered as the equivalent of English stand around doing nothing.

The third factor motivating the suitability of kijken, this time as a complement of zitten, is that we often sit and watch all kinds of performances, such as plays, films, concerts, television programs, etc. A more detailed discussion of such social activities is presented below.

Table 4 also shows that apart from the high frequencies of the typical combinations discussed above, the frequency of the other verbs, when taken individually, drops sharply. The second verb that occurs with liggen is slapen ‘sleep’, which comes as no surprise. After that, the frequency of combinations drops to six and lower. Thus, while the pattern of the pos-progressive is in principle relatively open and productive (within some limits as outlined here), the frequency count clearly shows that there are typical combinations that seem to have acquired strong unit status. From an encoding perspective, then, this means that these units will have a greater chance of being selected than other constructions available to the Dutch speaker, as was illustrated above for the contexts of ongoing waiting: the unit zitten/liggen/staan te wachten is well-entrenched, which makes it the most likely candidate for selection, much more than the aan het wachten zijn alternative.

Grouping the individual verbs in larger semantic classes, as does table 5, further reveals interesting experiential patterns. The different classes confirm the general stative (and typically atelic) character of the verbs that occur in the pos-progressive, because they revolve around states, cognition processes, rest, etc. The largest class is that of stative verbs. Here, this term is used to refer to (i) verbs that express the meaning of being located statically, such as is the case for standing, hitchhiking, posing, birds brooding, etc., or (ii) a number of otherwise hard to classify verbs that express a (temporary) state, such as N/ADJ zijn ‘be N/ADJ’. Also, “waiting” has been included in this class, which of course affects the overall frequency of the class.

More interesting are some of the other groupings that confirm patterns observed in earlier analyses of posture verbs.²⁰

staan

trappelen ‘trample’, dringen ‘jostle’, springen ‘jump’, dansen ‘dance’, aanschuiven ‘line up’, draaien ‘turn’, trillen ‘tremble’, wankelen ‘wobble’, wiebelen ‘wiggle’, schommelen ‘swing’, etc. (46 types, 152 tokens)

zitten

springen ‘jump’, aankomen ‘arrive’, trappelen ‘trample’, draaien ‘turn’, knikken ‘nod’, etc. (14 types, 43 tokens)

liggen

rollen ‘roll’, woelen/draaien ‘toss/turn’ (in bed), spartelen/kronkelen ‘squirm/squiggle’, drijven/deinen ‘float/bob’, etc. (10 types; 15 tokens)

The verb liggen is compatible with verbs expressing motion that can cooccur with lying. Floating objects also occur in this construction (but not in the two others), since floating objects will naturally assume a horizontal posture, which, as pointed out earlier, also explains why liggen is the default verb used to describe the positioning of ships (see example 5b).

The motion verbs that can occur with staan often include in their conceptual structure the notion of maintaining an upright position, as well as using one's feet as in dancing, trampling, etc. Such verbs may also express balance-related notions, such as wobbling or tottering, which are strongly associated with the standing posture. A related case, included not in the group of motion events but in that of play, concerns sports such as tennis, football, or hockey, where being on one's feet seems to be the salient posture throughout the game. This explains the existence of constructions such as staan te voetballen, staan te tennissen, staan te hockeyen ‘stand to play football/tennis/hockey’, as in 9.

In sum, staan+te+V can be used in reference to TRANSLATIONAL MOTION events where the moving entity changes its actual location, but these contexts generally involve what could be termed a dynamicized standing posture, that is, the agent is moving around but saliently maintains a standing posture.²²

The motion verbs one finds with zitten mostly refer to body part motion as well, such as nod or gesture, or those compatible with a sitting posture, as in zitten te fietsen ‘sit to cycle’. Some motion verbs (springen ‘jump’ and aankomen ‘arrive’) seem to be in conflict with zitten. However, this conflict is only apparent, since these verbs are used in a metaphorical sense: zitten te springen means ‘be impatient to act’ and probably derives from the fact that impatient people eager to start doing something may often be described as “jumping” up and down on their chair. Also, many of the self-contained motion verbs—that is, verbs describing situations where the agent does not really change its location such as dringen ‘jostle’, trappelen ‘trample’, springen ‘jump’—are used in this sense when they occur with staan. It is no coincidence that verbs with the meaning ‘be anxious’ (either as a metaphorical extension, or as their basic meaning, such as popelen ‘be anxious’ whose motion sense has been lost) do not occur with liggen, since it is not the position associated with eagerness and readiness for action.

The case of zitten aan te komen ‘sit to arrive’ is more complicated. A typical example is provided in 10.

The arrival is, as in all the other nine occurrences of this construction, metaphorical. Notice that the aspectual nature is quite complex: arriving is generally an achievement verb (punctual), yet in this context it has become an ongoing event. Strictly speaking, it is still a progressive, yet the nature of the event leads to an ingressive interpretation as well (‘is about to’).

The only cases found in INL in which the actual motion is truly incompatible with sitting is example 3a above, to which we can add the personally attested 3c, both repeated here for convenience, as well as another example drawn from the Internet (using WebCorp).²³

The example in 12 is noteworthy, since it contains aspectual zitten (combined with the motion verb hollen ‘run’), as well as locational zitten (not necessarily exclusively postural, although sitting is pretty much the normal posture when in the train). Given that zitten is the most apostural of the three verbs, it seems natural that precisely this verb acquires various dynamic senses. Liggen and staan retain most of their postural semantics, even if the latter is already somewhat more tolerant to nonpostural uses.

This is in line with what one finds in other languages as well. Heine et al. (1991) observe that while grammaticalization toward progressive, durative, or habitual markers is found with all three posture verbs, the ones expressing the concept of sitting seem to be the most common, followed by lie-verbs, and then by stand-verbs.²⁴

At present, however, uses of zitten combined with translational motion verbs as in the examples above—where virtually nothing remains of the static nature of zitten, and where it merely indicates progressive aspect— are still relatively infrequent and indicative of a more informal register.

The Internet is generally a good source for informal language, yet a search via WebCorp did not yield many such cases. An informal Google search for the strings zitten/zit/zat/zaten te V returned a number of examples. While more limited than the WebCorp's interface, the results may suggest a certain pattern of ongoing grammaticalization worthy of further exploration. The total number of hits is still limited, but in many cases the complement verb means either ‘to run’ (lopen/rennen/hollen) or ‘to walk’ (wandelen).

In contrast, no results have been found for other more specific verbs of human (self-propelled) translational motion, such as stappen ‘step, walk’, tuimelen ‘tumble’, hinkelen ‘hop’, or manken ‘limp’. This does not mean that combinations with these verbs would be completely unacceptable, but they are clearly rare, which suggests that the construction is still fairly limited in scope and restricted to the most typical verbs of walking/running. Moreover, often these combinations include the particle rond ‘around’. This particle converts the true translational motion into one occurring (repetitively) within a certain location. The repetitive character of the motion, as well as the motion not really progressing to its endpoint, is what often gives these constructions their negative connotation (see the quote from the ANS above).²⁵

The Google search also yielded some examples of zitten te vliegen ‘sit to fly’. However, these were restricted to insects or birds—for which zitten is the default posture and flying their proto-movement, such as walking/running is for humans—or cases where people are flying virtually, using a flight simulator, and are thus seated. One interesting case, found in a report written by a ten-year-old girl, concerned Harry Potter flying in his friend's magic car: hij zit in de auto en zit te vliegen ‘he sits in a car and sits to fly’. Here too, the agent is seated while flying. In addition, one may justifiably wonder to what extent the use of zitten te vliegen is triggered by the use of zitten in the preceding clause.

The fact that this is a child's report may be important. A brief count of pos-progressives in other children's narratives (the frog story data, see Berman and Slobin 1996 and Verhoeven and Strömqvist 2004) by children of 5, 7, and 9 years old, shows that zitten is far more frequent (22 or 67%) than liggen (6 or 18%) or staan (5 or 15%). These figures should be interpreted with caution, given the small sample, as well as the fact that two important characters in the story are a frog and a dog whose default posture is expressed by zitten. Nevertheless, the higher frequency of the verb, as well as its higher number of different verb complements (13, as opposed to four for staan and two for liggen), invite the hypothesis that children may be more sensitive to the apostural use of zitten, and may thus overgeneralize its use. For example, a narrator may use it in contexts in which the figure's posture is in conflict with that expressed by zitten; for example, a standing boy who zit te schreeuwen ‘sits to yell’.

A final point worth mentioning with respect to zitten and motion events is that the verb can also be used in other constructions, without a te+V complement, to express motion. Consider the following Internet examples:²⁶

The common expressions achter iemand aanzitten, literally ‘sit behind at someone’, iemand achterna zitten, literally ‘sit someone behind-after’, and iemand op de hielen zitten, literally ‘sit someone on the heels’—almost untranslatable because of their complex particle constructions—require motion verbs in English, such as chase or follow. The closest English equivalent is the expression be after someone. Dutch has some true motion verbs that more congruently express such follow-events; for example, volgen ‘follow’ or achter iemand aanhollen/aanlopen ‘run after somebody’. The idioms with zitten are often used to profile the closeness of the chase, a logical extension of the notion of contact that is incorporated into the semantics of zitten (see Lemmens 2002:114ff.). The aspectual construction illustrated in 12 above is an example of such idiomatic use.

Returning to the groupings in table 5, we observe another pattern that is more clearly reflected in the verb complements for zitten, that is, that most of our everyday activities involve sitting. These activities can be grouped as follows:

• [bull ] Social interaction (eating, drinking, talking, meeting, negotiating, etc.)
• [bull ] Cognitive activities (reading, thinking, brooding, meditating, etc.)
• [bull ] Creative activities (writing, typing, etc.; knitting, sewing, etc.)
• [bull ] Visual/auditory perception (watching television, a play; listening, etc.)

None of these activities requires strong physical strain, yet some effort (physical and cognitive) is required over a longer period of time. The sitting posture is optimal, as it permits activity while in a comfortable position. I suggest the term ACTIVE REST to denote the notion strongly associated with zitten.

Verbs from the visual or auditory domain can also occur with staan, yet these verbs are slightly different from those occurring with zitten, as they all express the emission by the entity itself. Such verbs belong to a separate category of emission verbs and describe events such as shining, glittering, prancing, and showing off. That these verbs occur more frequently with staan finds an experiential grounding as well: standing entities are more easily perceived by others (compare with English stand out and outstanding).

A final note on the grouping presented in table 5 concerns some of the patterns found with liggen that reflect the verb's strong association with inactivity (lying being the typical posture for complete rest) and decay (lying being the typical posture when dead or ill). Thus, it is not surprising that complements of this verb include verbs such as rotten ‘rot’, roesten ‘rust’, beschimmelen ‘getting moldy’, and niets doen ‘doing nothing’, whose meanings center around these notions. Mostly, these situations are evaluated negatively, which may explain the use of liggen te V to convey the speaker's negative attitude, as in Lig niet te zeuren!, literally ‘lie not to whine’, that is ‘Stop whining!’, where the verb typically expresses a speech activity, such as whining or complaining. Intuitively, this usage feels more typical of Northern Dutch—in Belgian Dutch zitten would be more common—but the corpus used in this study does not allow verification of this intuition.

To conclude, the types of complement verbs that occur in the pos-progressive are largely compatible with the posture verbs’ stative semantics. Moreover, the collocational clusters reveal some typical, experientially grounded associations, which strengthens the idea that the range of verbs occurring in these constructions is not as random as it may appear (and, in fact, quite different from the range of verbs that occurs in the prep-progressive). Staan has the widest range of verb complements, a fact attributable to (i) it being the default posture for humans and many inanimate objects, and (ii) it being the starting posture for activity. At the same time, zitten appears to be most permissive, allowing true translational motion verbs as its complements, in line with the stronger apostural character of the verb. Additional data from the Internet and from children's narratives suggest some ongoing grammaticalization, a hypothesis to be pursued further. It has been observed that the use of zitten in combination with a translational motion verb is facilitated by use of the particle rond ‘around’, deemphasizing the translational character of the motion. This brings us to another aspect of the pos-progressive that has not been discussed, namely, the occurrence of other adverbial or aspectual modifiers. This issue is addressed in the next section.

3.3. Durative and Locative Semantics of the Pos-Progressive.

This section presents a short discussion of various modifiers that occur in the pos-progressive. As I show below, the distribution of temporal and aspectual modifiers may shed light on the differences between the pos-progressive and the prep-progressive aan het V zijn ‘be at the V’. Although a full comparison is beyond the scope of this paper, some observations are worth considering for the sake of completeness.

Kuteva (1999:209) observes that auxiliated posture verb constructions often contain temporal adverbial phrases, such as all the time, all day long, etc., that emphasize the durative or progressive aspect, and states that such adverbials are “redundant rather than necessary.” Table 6 provides an overview of the temporal and aspectual modifiers found in the pos-progressive in our corpus (the percentages are computed relative to the total number of pos-progressives).

The results indeed suggest that these adverbials are redundant: only 12.2% (167) of the 1,373 cases have a durative modifier that can take the form of an aspectual marker, such as nog ‘still’, or a temporal marker, such as de hele dag ‘all day’ or jarenlang ‘for years’. In other words, the posture verb seems to do all the work in this domain. In a similar vein, the low percentage of momentary modifiers, such as op dat moment ‘at that moment’, can be attributed to the conflict between punctuality expressed by the modifier and duration expressed by the verb. Note, however, that in the prep-progressive—where no such salient durative focus can be attributed to the general verb zijn ‘be’—the ratio of durative modifiers is not much higher (16%), although momentary modifiers are somewhat more frequent here than in the pos-progressive (11% versus 4.4%). The frequencies of repetitive modifiers, such as vaak ‘often’, elke dag ‘every day’, and of general temporal modifiers that merely specify a certain time frame, such as gisteren ‘yesterday’ or vorig jaar ‘last year’, are also comparable. In short, these aspectual and temporal modifiers are not particularly revealing, at least not in our data selection, although they do contribute to the general characterization of the two progressive constructions.

Another type of modification worth investigating is the presence of locational modifiers. When posture verbs are used as non-aspectual locational verbs, a locational complement is compulsory, as shown in 15a. In contrast, with the aspectual usage it is optional, as in 15b.

Despite its optional character, a locational complement is still expressed in 44% (601) of the aspectual constructions, which is relatively high, especially when compared to the 12% of locational modifiers that occur in the prep-progressive.

In the case of other types of modifiers occurring in the pos-progressive, they mostly concern a modifier pertaining to the figure or to the manner in which the action is carried out, which is more closely associated with the figure than with the action expressed by the complement verb. In contrast, the modifiers found in prep-progressives typically apply to the event expressed by the complement verb and the speed with which it evolves.

Taken together, these observations support the claim that the pos-progressive is still very much tied to the verb's stative and locational character. Therefore, this construction is more typical in contexts where the action is viewed from a wider perspective, situated within the location at hand or as part of the setting. In contrast, the prep-progressive focuses on the action itself.