Continuous aspect
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In English, and sometimes in other languages, the continuous or progressive aspect is an aspect that denotes an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. A continuous or progressive tense is a tense formed by applying the continuous aspect to a simple tense.
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The English continuous
Formation
The continuous aspect is expressed with a regularly conjugated form of to be, together with the present participle of the main verb. For example, in the sentence "I was going to the store," the verb phrase was going is in the past continuous tense - that is, in the continuous aspect and the past tense.
The continuous aspect can be applied with any mood, voice, and tense, and in combination or not with the perfect aspect, although for obvious semantic reasons, some combinations are less common than others. Some examples of the continuous aspect include:
- We had been talking for hours. (indicative mood, active voice, past tense, perfect continuous aspect)
- If you're not going to be working on it the whole time, … (indicative mood, active voice, present tense, continuous aspect)
- … then I recommend you at least be working on it when the teacher gets back. (present subjunctive mood, active voice, continuous aspect)
- I wish I were being given more interesting tasks. (past subjunctive mood, passive voice, continuous aspect)
Use
The continuous is generally used with actions that are actively on-going at the time in question, and does not focus on the larger time-scale. For example, the sentence "John was playing tennis when Jane called him" indicates what John was in the middle of doing when Jane called him, but does not indicate for how long John played, nor how often he plays; for that, the simple past would be used: "John played tennis three hours every day for several years."
The perfect continuous (have been doing), as a special case, implies that the action being described was interrupted at the time in question, and does not clarify whether the action resumed. For example, "John had been playing tennis when Jane called him" suggests that Jane's calling him interrupted his tennis-playing (whereas in the former example, it was possible that he simply ignored her call), and leaves open the possibility that what she told him required such urgent action that he forfeited his match and left.
In the present tense, the continuous aspect can be used to describe actions that have not begun yet; and in any tense, a similar effect can be achieved with the auxiliary "go" in its continuous aspect. An example of the former is "I'm taking three classes next semester"; of the latter, "I was going to do it if I had time, and then I didn't have time." In this use, this construction has a temporal (tense-like) quality in additional to its usual aspectual one.
The continuous in other languages
While, as noted above, the term continuous is originally specific to English grammar, it can be extended to other languages that have similar constructions.
In Spanish, the continuous is constructed much as in English, using a regularly conjugated form of the verb estar together with the gerundio of the main verb. Unlike in English, the continuous cannot be used to describe an action that has not yet begun at the time of interest; however, in the present tense, the simple present suffices for this, and in any tense, a similar effect can be achieved with the auxiliary ir ("to go") in its non-continuous aspect.