Collaborative project on the forms and functions of habitual markers
Habituals are aspectual markers expressing that a situation usually occurs, such as English used to, Spanish soler, or the suffix -va in Czech and Slovak. Despite an abundant literature on aspect in various languages of the world, habituals are a somewhat neglected phenomenon in linguistic research.
I have investigated the cross-linguistic diversity of habitual markers in collaboration with a number of colleagues from the University of Amsterdam. Together with Eva van Lier, I carried out a study of habitual markers in a sample of c. 185 of the world’s languages, which is currently in press. We were particularly interested in the formal properties of such markers, i.e. how habitual meaning is expressed, and their lexical sources, i.e. where they come from.
In the research group Habituals, led by Kees Hengeveld, we explored the diversity of habitual constructions from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar and the idea of layered semantic structure. The findings suggest that ‘habituality’ is not a unified phenomenon across languages and that many languages have several habitual constructions with subtle semantic differences between them. The project resulted in the volume A layered approach to habitual constructions, which was published in 2026 by John Benjamins.
A hierarchical approach to habitual expressions (with Hongmei Fang, Egbert Fortuin, Rene Genis, Riccardo Giomi, Kees Hengeveld, Lois Kemp, Paula Kyselica, Ezra La Roi, Hella Olbertz, Eugenie Stapert, Jacques van der Vliet, Hein van der Voort, Sjaak de Wit, Arok Wolvengrey, and Ewa Zakrzewska)
Habituals and Habitual Auxiliaries workshop, Université Paris 8
07/10/24
A cross-linguistic survey of habitual markers (with Eva van Lier)
A hierarchical approach to habitual expressions (with Hongmei Fang, Egbert Fortuin, Rene Genis, Riccardo Giomi, Kees Hengeveld, Lois Kemp, Paula Kyselica, Ezra La Roi, Hella Olbertz, Eugenie Stapert, Jacques van der Vliet, Hein van der Voort, Sjaak de Wit, Arok Wolvengrey, and Ewa Zakrzewska)
Habitual constructions, such as those based on English used to and Spanish soler, are linguistic expressions denoting situations that typically occur. This volume proposes a novel approach to such expressions, arguing that habituality is not a unified semantic category, but rather a family of related meanings which differ in their scopal position within the clause. The volume contains a detailed account of habitual meaning from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar as well as in-depth empirical studies of habitual constructions in ten languages: Coptic, Plains Cree, Dolgan, Ancient Greek, Kwaza, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish. It will be of interest not just to specialists of these languages, but to anyone working on habituality and other aspectual categories in the languages of the world.
@book{gregersen&hengeveld2026,title={A layered approach to habitual constructions},editor={Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees},series={Typological Studies in Language},number={136},year={2026},doi={10.1075/tsl.136},publisher={John Benjamins},address={Amsterdam}}
A layered approach to habitual constructions: Introduction
Sune Gregersen, and Kees Hengeveld
In A layered approach to habitual constructions, 2026
In this book, habitual meaning is studied from a typological perspective, with Chapters 2–11 describing habitual meaning in ten different languages, and Chapter 12 presenting typological generalizations. In this introductory chapter we define the notion of habitual meaning, introduce the theoretical framework used, explain the methodology that was applied, and present our typological predictions. As an appendix we provide the typological questionnaire which the language-specific chapters are based on.
@incollection{gregersen&hengeveld2026intr,title={A layered approach to habitual constructions: Introduction},author={Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees},booktitle={A layered approach to habitual constructions},editor={Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees},series={Typological Studies in Language},number={136},doi={10.1075/tsl.136.01gre},pages={1--41},year={2026},publisher={John Benjamins},address={Amsterdam}}
A layered approach to habitual constructions: Typological generalizations
Hongmei Fang, Egbert Fortuin, Rene Genis, and 13 more authors
In A layered approach to habitual constructions, 2026
This chapter presents typological generalizations that can be derived from a comparison of the data presented in Chapters 2–11 in this volume. The languages are compared in the light of the two predictions presented in Chapter 1: (i) across and within languages, dedicated habitual expressions may differ from one another in terms of the layer(s) at which they apply; (ii) if a habitual expression applies at more than one layer, the layers involved will be contiguous in the hierarchy of layers established within Functional Discourse Grammar. Both predictions are confirmed without exceptions, and thus support the new approach to habitual meanings elaborated in this volume.
@incollection{fang&al2026concl,title={A layered approach to habitual constructions: Typological generalizations},author={Fang, Hongmei and Fortuin, Egbert and Genis, Rene and Giomi, Riccardo and Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees and Kemp, Lois and Kyselica, Paula and la Roi, Ezra and Olbertz, Hella and Stapert, Eugenie and van der Vliet, Jacques and van der Voort, Hein and de Wit, Sjaak and Wolvengrey, Arok and Zakrzewska, Ewa},booktitle={A layered approach to habitual constructions},editor={Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees},series={Typological Studies in Language},number={136},doi={10.1075/tsl.136.12fan},pages={372--385},year={2026},publisher={John Benjamins},address={Amsterdam}}
2021
Habituals in contrast: Danish pleje and its Dutch and German translations
This paper investigates the expression of habitual meaning in the three Germanic languages Danish, Dutch, and German. We first survey habitual expressions in Danish, arguing that the primary means for expressing habitual meaning is the catenative verb pleje ‘usually do, used to’. Using a parallel corpus of Danish literary texts from two time periods (1843–1901 and 1973–1987) and their translations into Dutch and German, we then investigate how pleje is translated into these two languages. Although closely related verbs are available in Dutch (plegen) and German (pflegen), our findings suggest that there is no single way of conveying habituality in these two languages. Instead, habituality can be expressed by a number of different strategies which are subject to diachronic and stylistic variation. In addition, the material shows that Danish pleje may have a contrastive function along with its habitual meaning, expressing an explicit contrast between the usual and the current state of affairs.
@article{gregersen&al2021habituals,title={Habituals in contrast: Danish pleje and its Dutch and German translations},author={Gregersen, Sune and Karsten, Nils and Olthof, Marieke},journal={Linguistics in Amsterdam},volume={14},numer={1},pages={39--64},year={2021},}
The paper surveys the expression of habitual meaning and the origins of habitual markers in four Bantu languages: Eton (A.71), Swahili (G.42), Fwe (K.402), and Nyanja/Chewa (N.31). The division of labour between the habitual marker and other tense and aspect markers differs between the languages, but the coexpression of habitual and generic meaning is found in three of them. Swahili and Fwe both testify to a development COP + INF > HAB, but otherwise the habitual markers under scrutiny have different origins. The final section of the paper considers my findings in light of the cross-linguistic literature on habituals.
