The syntax of progressive and ingressive aanhet-constructions in Dutch


 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.