2.3.2 Progressive and temporary or incomplete action

Rule: The progressive expresses that the predication is temporary or incomplete.

Examples of errors:

1. Old people are living alone in most cases.
2. I'm living in the Ruhrgebiet.
3. Yes, I'm studying in Kassel, but my parents are living in a little town in Niedersachsen.
4. At home the children of foreign workers are speaking their mother tongue whereas at school they have to adapt to German.
5. You learn that people are talking in a different way, depending on which region of the country they come from.
6. The students are running around in this confusing building for hours and it is impossible for them to find their rooms.
7. She's smoking Camel filters or she rolls her own.
8. Students are going to school for at least nine years.
9. Some young people get together and form communes. Such a group of people is governing itself.
10. He is doing sports.
11. I just like to listen to folk music, because I'm enjoying it.
12. Do we really enter a new age?
13. I think the GhK develops more and more into an ordinary university.
14. I do a writing course this semester.
15. You haven't been writing to me for a long time.

Temporariness and incompleteness are both aspects of the meaning of the progressive, one or the other of which predominates, depending on the meaning of the verb. With live (cf. (l)-(3)), the progressive indicates either temporary residence or a new address, versus permanent residence:

We're living in Kassel for the time being/now.

The present perfect progressive in (15) would indicate that the situation (your not having written) leading up to the present is a temporary one (cf. Leech 1971:§276), as in

You haven't been writing to me lately.

The addition of the adverbial for a long time, however, contradicts the notion of temporariness and rules out the progressive. With most verbs (cf. (4)-(ll)) the progressive correlates with specific rather than general statements--with actions, activities, events, etc. of limited rather than indefinite duration. A rule of thumb is to ask "Do you mean right now?" (or "then", if the time reference is past or future) or "Do you mean in general?", e.g.:

Right now...

I'm speaking English.

I'm smoking a Camel.

They're governing themselves.

I'm enjoying this record.

In general...

I speak German.

I smoke HB.

Others govern them.

I enjoy folk music.

With verbs indicating transitional events or processes (transitional event or telic verbs--cf. Quirk et al. 19726.§3.41; Nehls 1978:§3.1.3, 4.3-9) the notion of incompleteness is more prominent. In (12) the progressive indicates that the process of development is not yet complete. (An expression like more and more, furthermore, can turn even a stative verb like resemble into a process verb with progressive aspect: He's resembling his father more and more.) With these verbs, too, the non-progressive form is more appropriate to general statements, where the process or event is seen as complete, and most likely as something which is repeated:

Do we really enter a new age every 50 years?

Gesamthochschulen (tend to) develop into ordinary universities.