Chapter 11. Incipient and intimate

The youngest son of a Cornish miller, William Clift (1775–1849) was apprenticed to the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter in 1792, and after Hunter’s death he became the first Conservator of the Hunterian Museum of anatomical specimens in London in 1799 (Austin ed. 1991: 1). During the final years of the eighteenth century, Clift was a young and ambitious social riser, working his way in London to the professional ranks. He also represents in many ways a typical user of the progressive (or the be+ing construction) in the CEEC Extension: he is a letter-writer with lower-rank background who corresponds with a close family member at the end of the century. William Clift and his sister Elizabeth Clift (1757–1818), the recipient of William’s letters in the corpus, are exceptionally frequent users of the progressive which is generally characterised as an oral-like, informal feature. On the other hand, William’s use of the progressive passival (novels that are publishing) illustrates that prolific though he is and therefore certainly an innovator, he is not innovative in terms of syntax; the progressive passive (novels that are being published), one of the few grammatical innovations of the Late Modern period, does not appear in William’s letters at all. In fact, the progressive passive occurs in the CEEC