The syntax of progressive and ingressive aanhet -constructions in Dutch

Abstract This paper presents a novel syntactic analysis of the much-debated Dutch aanhet -construction, e.g. Pieter is aan het opruimen ‘lit. Peter is on the cleanup: Peter is cleaning up’. We show that the construction’s syntactic behavior varies with the matrix verb: progressive zijn ‘be’ versus ingressive gaan ‘go’ and slaan ‘hit’. Based on this variation, we argue that there are two aanhet -projections occupying different synchronic positions on a functional-to-lexical cline.