C-gravitation and the grammaticalization degree of “present progressives” in English, French, and Dutch

This paper aims to explain the differences of grammaticalization degree among the “present progressives” in English, French, and Dutch by introducing the notion of “C-gravitation” (i.e., gravitation toward the consciousness of the speaker) into their grammaticalization process. Hirose (1995, 2000) & Hasegawa and Hirose (2005) proposed a general theory of linguistic comparison in which public-self-centered languages, such as English, are distinguished from private-self-centered languages, such as Japanese, in terms of the notions of “public self” (i.e., the subject of communicating) and “private self” (i.e., the subject of thinking), based on which I developed two types of C-gravitation in Wada (2008) to explain differences concerning tense and mood among public-self-centered languages, including English, French, and Dutch. The above differences will be explained along these lines from a broader perspective.