Webschrift for Anne Zribi-Hertz: XXX–XXX, 2023 ã 2023 Marie-Laurence Knittel On the unavailability of être + Vant progressive in French 1 Marie Laurence Knittel Université de Lorraine & ATILF 1. Introduction Contrary to several other Romance languages (1) and English (2), the progressive aspect in French is not realized by être/be + V-Gerund (3a), but by a periphrastic structure, être + en train de + VInf (3b) (Bertinetto 2000, Laca 2004, De Wit, Patard & Brisard 2013). The structure in (3a) was however formerly available (3c), until its decline and full disappearance between the 16th and 18th centuries (Vangaever & Carlier 2020) 2 . 1 3 . a. Sta legg-endo. 'I'm reading.' [Italian] stare-1Sg read-Ger b. Está corriendo. 'He/she is running.' [Spanish] estar-3Sg run-Ger c. Estem jugant. 'We are playing.' [Catalan] estar-1Pl play-Ger 2. He is sleeping. pro.3Sg be-3Sg sleep-Ger/PstPart. 3. a. *Il est travaillant. pro.3Sg be-3Sg work-Ger b. Il est en train de travailler. pro.3Sg be-3Sg en train de work-Inf 'He is working.' c. Un prestres ert messe chantant. a priest was mass sing-ant 'A priest was singing the Mass.' (Adgar Collection of Miracles 9.1 in Vangaever 2021: (137), p.191) In this contribution, I will examine the causes of the disappearance of structures such as (3c), to the benefit of (3b). 1 I am grateful to the reviewers for their comments, that have helped me to improve the content of this article. 2 Two differences between Old French on the one hand and Italian, Spanish & Catalan on the other hand have to be mentioned. First, the auxiliary used in the latter historically derives from the Latin verb stare 'to be', 'to stand'. In French by contrast, stare did not survive later than Old French; être derives from esse, a Latin auxiliary meaning 'to be' (Marques Ranchhod 1995). Second, gerunds and present participles, that were different inflected categories in Latin and still are in other Romance languages, do not differ morphologically or syntactically in French, where the term 'gerund' is mostly used to refer to a clause headed by en and where the verb is inflected by -ant, rather than to a specific inflected form (Sarré 2000, Vangaever & Carlier 2020, Riegel & al. 1994). 3 Abbreviations: Agr: Agreement; Fem: Feminine; Fut: Future; Ger: Gerund; Imp: Imperfective; Inf: Infinitive; Nom: Nominative; Neg: Negation; Perf.Past: Perfective participle; Pl: Plural; PstPart: Present participle; Sg.: Singular.