Progressive

I hesitantly retain the term progressive as the most familiar label applied by grammarians of Present-day English to syntagms of the form be + Ving, as in

[1] Jim was singing the blues.

though without commitment to notional characterisations like 'ongoing action' or whatever. As in the previous chapter it will be convenient to use the one label for the whole period from Old English onwards, even at the risk of anachronism. (Visser, who prefers the slightly more neutral label 'expanded form', gives a long list of alternative terms, 1963-73: §1801.)