On an educators forum I belong to they are having a (so far polite) discussion about the McDonald's slogan

"I'm loving it."

Half of the people there are taking a hard line prescriptive stance that this is in every circumstance ungrammatical. You simply can't - they say - use the progressive form with the verb "love".

Others, the ones who actually have references to back them up, say that you certainly can and everyone does.

My view is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this structure and I am utterly baffled with why anyone would consider it wrong. When they say you must use always the simple form "I love" I'd say that there is nothing wrong with either form and that they arguably have different meanings.

"I love teaching this class." and "I'm loving teaching this class." for me are both fine and carry slightly different implications.

Thoughts?

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
"I love teaching this class." and "I'm loving teaching this class." for me are both fine and carry slightly different implications.

I agree. I think we can use all stative verbs in the progressive form under certain circumstances, but I'm not exactly sure what those circumstances are.

I suspected that you would. The "no you can't" people in the other debate are getting quite passionate about insisting that it's always wrong.

I don't get it either, Bob. It never would occur to me that it's ungrammatical. Having said that, I'd probably not say, "I'm loving teaching this class," in lieu of, "I love teaching this class."

Stative verbs in the progressive form are common in Indian English.

How many different Englishes are there? Certainly England's English; Scottish and Irish are a bit different, so it's probably not a UK English. That means there is a Scottish and Irish English; a Canadian English; an Australian and New Zealand English; a Chinese English (?); an Indian English; any others?

Depends what you mean. Is Boston English different to Los Angeles English? They certainly sound more different to me than "England's English" and "Australian English".

As everyone has their own idiolect there are possibly as many "Englishes" are there are ENglish speakers.

Well, I suppose you are right. Surely northeastern and southern English are different from the rest of American English. Interestingly, I find northeastern English more similar to England's English than American English.

Given that, I meant countries.