영어 진행형의 인지적 의미와 행위자성에 관한 분석

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the meanings of English progressives and their relationship with agentivity within the framework of cognitive grammar. English verbs have various meanings in terms of the process they represent. Though there are many ways to classify verbs according to their meanings, I classify verb processes into perfective process and imperfective process. Perfective process is bounded in the temporal domain and has change of state, imperfective process is not bounded and extends indefinitely. But these two processes have different aspects in the progressive. Perfective process is unbounded and means permanent state like imperfectives. On the contrary, imperfective process is bounded like perfectives. These are the important characteristics represented in the English progressive. English progressive in terms of these two processes is related to agentivity. Agentivity in the extended perfective process is very weak because the subject has very weak or no volition. On the other hand, agentivity in the intended imperfective process is strong because the subject has strong volition to do something. I show the figures that are profiled in each domain according to the framework of cognitive grammar. In short, English progressive seems to be dynamic in that it can be extended or intended in the spatial, temporal, or abstract domain and the strength of agentivity it presents can be changed.