A Conceptual Approach to the -ING Construction: Aspects of Radiality and Subjectification

Abstract: The -ING construction has a number of uses in the English language, and teaching it to speakers of other languages poses some challenges, as learners tend to interpret the construction as a verbal one, in the progressive aspect, which is only one part of the picture. Bearing this in mind, we have developed a corpus-based research into the form-meaning/function pairing (Goldberg, 1995, 2006) of the construction, relying on Construction Grammar (Kay, Fillmore; 1999; Goldberg, 1995, 2006) and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 1987, 1990, 1991, 2008), apart from a semantic approach to the -I...