A History of English Language

A history of the english language 276
210. The Progressive Passive.
The extension of such forms to the passive (the house is being built) was an even later
development. It belongs to the very end of the eighteenth century. Old English had no
progressive passive. Such an expression as the man is loved, feared, hated is progressive
only in so far as the verbs loving, fearing, hating imply a continuous state. But no such
force attaches to the man is killed, which does not mean the man is being killed but
indicates a completed act. The construction the man is on laughing was capable also of a
passive significance under certain circumstances. Thus the house is on building can
suggest only that the house is in process of construction. This use is found from the
fourteenth century on, and in its weakened form the construction is not unknown today.
Colloquially, at least, we say there is nothing doing at the mill this week. The dinner is
cooking and the coffee is brewing are familiar expressions. In some parts of America one
may hear there’s a new barn a-building down the road. When the preposition was
completely lost (on building>a-building>building) the form became the house is
building. Because such an expression may at times be either active or passive, it had
obvious limitations. Thus the wagon is making is a passive, but the wagon is making a
noise is active. And whenever the subject of the sentence is animate or capable of
performing the action, the verb is almost certain to be in the active voice (the man is
building a house). With some verbs the construction was impossible in a passive sense.
Thus the idea he is always being called could not be expressed by he is always calling.
In the last years of the eighteenth century we find the first traces of our modern
expression the house is being built. The combination of being with a past participle to
form a participial phrase had been in use for some time. Shakespeare says: which, being
kept close, might move more grief to hide (Hamlet). This is thought to have suggested the
new verb phrase. The earliest instance of the construction that has been noted is from the
year 1769. 54 In 1795 Robert Southey wrote: a fellow, whose uppermost upper grinder is
being torn out by a mutton-fisted barber. It seems first to have been recognized in an
English grammar in 1802. 55 As yet it is generally used only in the present and simple past
tense (is or was being built). We can hardly say the house has been being built for two
years, and we avoid saying it will be being built next spring.
The history of the new progressive passive shows that English is a living and growing
thing, that its grammar is not fixed, that it will continue to change in the future as it has
changed in the past, even if more slowly. If the need is felt for a new and better way of
54
OED, s.v. be.
55
The history of this construction was first traced by Fitzedward Hall in his book Modern English
(New York, 1873). Much valuable material is assembled by Alfred Akerlund in On the History of
the Definite Tenses in English (Cambridge, UK, 1911). See also Jespersen, Modern English
Grammar, vol. 4 (1931), and Fernand Mossé, Histoire de la forme périphrastique être+ participe
présent en germanique (2 parts, Paris, 1938).