Re: Invented (getting less lunatic by the second)

Sally Caves wrote:
> Question for anybody else reading:
> Are there any natlangs that don't make distinctions between ongoing and
> finished acts in the passive?  "It is cooked, it is being cooked."
IINM, archaic English was that way.  Shakespeare couldn't say "it is
being cooked", only "it is cooked".  Of course, in Shakespeare's time,
the progressive was still relatively new, for example, he had "what do
you read?" in _Hamlet_ where the question was about what he was reading
at that moment.  I suspect that most languages with a progressive in the
present would eventually develop a passive-progressive as well, but
that's just a guess.

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