When it comes to talk about hearts and minds, we might picture the difference between the Simple and the Progressive as above, one face being joyous, the other unhappy.

 

Saying, “I am hating you”, could be a joke.
Saying, “I hate you”, could declare hatred.

 

Most grammar books tell about “stative” or “static verbs”. The books enumerate such “stative verbs” to remember and never to use with the Progressive.

 

According to those books, we should never come across phrases as “I am loving you”, or “I am hating you”.

 

The fact is such phrases do occur, and we cannot expect of life to be as a grammar book.

 

Let us try things the classic way. Most grammars group the “stative” or “static verbs”. We may collect a few samples and reckon.

 

Our senses:
to feel, hear, look, perceive, see, sense, smell, sound, taste.

 

Our feelings:
to admire, adore, appreciate, cherish, cost, desire, detest, disdain, dislike, esteem, fear, feel, hate, like, loathe, love, prefer, regard, relish, respect, revere, want, wish.

 

Our minds:
to admit, appreciate, appear, assume, believe, belong, choose, cost, disapprove, esteem, expect, feel, hope, know, mean, object, perceive, prefer, realize, recall, recognize, recollect, regard, relish, remember, see, sense, stipulate, suppose, think, understand.

 

Property (things or animals owned):
to belong, charge, have, hold, owe, own, possess, retain, vest.

 

Properties (characteristics, attributes, features):
to appear, appertain, befit, concern, consist, contain, emerge, hold, inhere, keep, matter, seem, show, signify, sound.

 

We may be happy with own notes on words.

 

When we want more words, we can use a thesaurus, as at the THESAURUS.COM.

 

Let us compare the Simple and the Progressive, using our cognitive variables. We can maintain the infinity symbol for the Simple.

The infinity is not eternity or uncertainty. It is to mind that natural language is not a finished set.

 

 

We can begin with our senses. We have correlated the Simple with the variable {ON}, and the Progressive with the variable {IN}.

 

 

8. She feels cold. {ON}
Her body feels cold. {ON}

 

We can use ING when we use our sense of touch:

 

 

8a. She is feeling her temperature. {IN}
She is using palpation to feel the temperature. {IN}

 

We may reflect on our sense of touch:

8b. The wind feels cold (right now). {ON}

 

Our moods happen to be dynamic. We could ask,

8c. How are you feeling? {IN}
(How are you taking your own condition, mood?) {IN}

 

To convey the same meaning as in 8c, we also could ask,
8d. How do you feel? {ON}
(How are you taking your own condition, mood?) {IN}

 

The form may not refer to the sense of touch and well, the way we feel about answering can depend on who asks the question.

Our feelings are worth thinking about. We can use introspection.

 

 

We probably never say about someone shivering,
8e. She / he *is feeling cold. {IN}

 

This could sound hard-hearted, as if we would be saying someone is just exercising his or her senses, when his or her body temperature is low.

 

People naturally develop group language use. Our language may vary, dependent on who we speak with: a close friend or a stranger, for example. Grammars usually do not prescribe on group language use. However, we mostly say,

8f. She / he feels cold. {ON}
8g. She / he is cold. {ON}

 

In everyday language, we often use the Modal verb can, to tell about our senses. It may not change the meaning at all,

9. I can feel something strange. ~ I feel something strange. {ON}
9a. I can see something. ~ I see something. {ON}

 

The Modal yet may bring another connotation,
9b. Things can look better. {ON}
(They do not; it needs to stop raining.)

 

Verbs may become phrasal verbs. Their meanings may change then, as with to see about, or to look for.

 

Contemporary American English uses phrasal verbs extensively. We have a few phrasal verbs in our grammar guidance.

 

We can say we catch on a bit of language, when we get to hear or see it. We may catch on to a bit of language and learn it.

 

If we come across something or someone, we meet or find them, often by chance. When we look up dictionaries, we read them. If we look to something, we consider it.

 

We can get to know phrasal verbs better in Part Four.

 

Let us give some more time to eyesight.

10. What are you looking at? {IN}
(What are you viewing?) {IN}

 

10a. What are you looking for? {IN}
(What are you seeking?) {IN}

 

10b. She is seeing him tomorrow. ~ She is meeting him tomorrow. {IN}
10c. She is seeing about getting the new house. ~ She is arranging the purchase of the house. {IN}

 

Let us look to a few more examples about our senses. The meaning may change, if we change the variable.

11. I can hear some strange noise. ~ I hear some strange noise. {ON}
11a. They are hearing new candidates now. {IN}
(They are interviewing or auditioning them.)
11b. You are hearing things. {IN}
(Your nervous system is producing delusions.)

 

The meaning will always depend on the context and the speaker’s intentions. We can call it the locutionary intent, in linguistics.

12. You look great now! {ON}
(I like your appearance now.) {ON}

 

English is as honest as any other language ― in fact, it terms an innocent lie a “white lie”. Imagine a boss wearing a horrible suit. What might others say?
“Interesting, boss”. “Chic.”’

 

“White lies” are usually brief utterances. There is always the hazard of praising the boss while he or she would be deliberately wearing something awful, to tell friends from foes.

 

We can speak about our senses with an open time frame (please compare CHAPTER 6),

 

 

13. I have not heard from him in years. {TO}
(He hasn’t contacted me in years.) {TO}

 

 

Please compare,
13a. She has never seen anything like this. {TO}
(This is the first time she can see such a strange thing.) {ON}
13b. He has never felt so good. {TO}
(He is now very comfortable.)

 

Our noses are quite a regular sense. We can speak about smell with an open time frame, use the verb can, as well as balance our variables.

14. She has never smelled anything more portending savor. {TO}
(An irresistible scent is coming from the kitchen.) {IN}
14a. I can smell something nice. ~ I smell something nice. {ON}

 

 

Fresh herbs can make food healthier and irresistible.

 

14b. The roses smell beautiful. {ON}
14c. She is smelling the roses. {IN}
(She is using her sense of smell.) {IN}

 

How could 101 roses smell?

 

Psycholinguistics says there is always an emotional component in human learning and thinking.

 

Naturally, learning something does not mean automatically loving or hating it. However, if we choose to learn something, it is good to think about the advantages.

 

We humans remember pleasurable experiences much better than unpleasant impressions. Our senses are not our feelings directly, yet human emotionality may require some diplomacy about perception.

 

However tolerant to the verb can, our noses happen to be delicate. We may say,
15. It smells here. {ON}
Actually, we are going to be close to saying,
15a. It stinks here. {ON} TABOO

 

As this could be an ugly and unpleasant thing to say, we can mark this socially uncertain expression as TABOO.

 

We may be more socially agreeable, if we take some responsibility for our perception,
(as liable as we get to be).

15b. I (think I can) smell something. {ON}

 

We may want our taste buds to make sense, too:
16. I can taste some nice flavor in this. ~ I taste some nice flavor in this. {ON}

 

Same as with other senses, we can use ING to say that we are using our taste buds. When it is our sense of taste to be telling us something, we can simply stay ON our cognitive extent.
16a. The drink tastes sweet. {ON}
(This is what our taste buds are telling.) {IN}
16b. He is tasting the drink. {IN}
(He is trying it.) {IN}

 

Let us think about our variables and recur to CHAPTER 4. If we select part an extent for our view, we may mark we do not mean an entire extent.

 

 

When we use our senses or act on appearance, we can have this for an activity in progress, the same as any other actions we take or carry out. We can follow the dynamic use of verbs, that is, use –ING.

 

When we perceive, feel, or think, we may want our linguistic gravitation (compare SUB-CHAPTER 6.2). Our senses, feelings, and thoughts belong with our cognizance. We can stay ON our notional grounds.

 

Let us compare two forms,
What are you hoping for? {IN}
What do you hope for? {ON}

 

The latter form, hope for, would make an impression broader than the form hoping for. To discuss this, we need to talk about…

 

FEELINGS!

We cannot really speak a language if we are unable to speak about our feelings in it. We can present a few stative uses of verbs for feelings, in pairs of antonyms, that is, words of opposite meanings.

 

Thesauruses (or thesauri) mostly abbreviate antonyms as ant, and synonyms as syn.

 

Psycholinguistics says we are all language users. We can use words without carrying out any action about them. Never leaving home, we can speak about space flight, climbing Mount McKinley, or diving in the Milwaukee Deep.

 

Mount McKinley (or Denali) is the highest peak in the USA and North America entire. It is about 20,300 feet above the sea level. Denali is the third most prominent summit in the world. It neighbors on the Wonder Lake.

 

 

The Milwaukee Deep is the most profound depth in the Atlantic. It belongs with the Puerto Rico trench and is about 27,500 feet. USS Milwaukee discovered it. The USA has borders on the Atlantic Ocean in the east and on the Pacific in the west.

 

 

Language users as we are, we can present words about feelings in antonyms, without any emotional disturbance or distress.

admire, adore, cherish ~#~ detest, disdain
appreciate, esteem ~#~ disregard
benefit, favor ~#~ cost
dare ~#~ fear
desire, relish ~#~ abhor, reject
like ~#~ dislike
love ~#~ hate, loathe
prefer ~#~ reject
respect, revere ~#~ disparage
want, wish ~#~ have no relish in / taste for

 

Could the value ON be our earthling basic variable?
SUB-CHAPTER 8.1 has an idea.

 

We can try pairs of synonyms with our stative uses for thinking. Synonyms are words close in meaning. We yet cannot always use synonyms interchangeably.

accede, agree ~#~ admit, consent
appreciate ~#~ realize
assume ~#~ presume, stipulate
believe ~#~ consider, suppose
expect ~#~ think likely, count upon
feel ~#~ hold, think
forget ~#~ become oblivious of, overlook
know ~#~ be aware of, remember
mean ~#~ intend
object ~#~ disapprove
perceive, sense ~#~ consider, recognize
see ~#~ comprehend, understand
think ~#~ cerebrate

 

 

Human potential for language is inborn. However, ― with each and every language ― we all need to learn speaking and writing. Chatting with minors can be a clever thought (!)

We people are language users with regard to thinking and other processes, activities, or experiences. We can speak about Benjamin Franklin, the wave theory of light, or a Pulitzer Prize author, never getting to all the details of the lives, theories, and works.

 

Let us put our words for property together with synonyms and antonyms for us, sometimes rich and sometimes not-so-affluent people who learn.

 

belong ~#~ be part of, pertain to  ~#~ be exclusive of
have, hold, own ~#~ possess, retain ~#~ be devoid of
owe ~#~ be indebted ~#~ be creditor to
vest ~#~ charge ~#~ cost

 

Properties happen to come and go. Let us put our stative uses for properties together with their synonyms. When a property (feature, characteristic) is gone, we can use negation.

appear ~#~ look, seem
concern ~#~ be of interest to, relate to
consist ~#~ be composed of, be made up of
consist ~#~ exist
contain ~#~ hold or include within
hold ~#~ remain (valid, true)
matter ~#~ be of importance
signify ~#~ imply, mean
sound, look ~#~ convey an impression

 

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The above provides quite a thorough analysis of verbs for feeling and thought. To feel is a very interesting verb.

 

We might say, “I feel fresh”, to speak about our senses. We could say, “I feel love”, to speak about our emotions. We also could say, possibly in another context, “I feel this is stupid” [TABOO], to say what we think.

 

Natural language does associate feelings and thoughts with spatial variables. “High on emotion” or “in the deepest of our thoughts”, we require some of the notions for space, to think about time and feelings.

 

Cognitive variables naturally can help manage our expression on that.

 

 

The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated,
James Madison, the 4th President of the United States.

 

We can find resources about American presidents at WHITEHOUSE.GOV, the website of the President’s home. It is enough that we type “presidents” in the search field.

 

*****

 

Classing verbs as stative and grouping them in categories befits behaviorist analyses more. Our perspective is psycholinguistic: we stay with cognitive variables.

 

We can agree there might be stative uses of verbs, but we do not list special verbs never to use with the Progressive.

 

If we go WORDNET.PRINCETON.EDU, we get a project with the US National Science foundation, WordNet. It is free to download and use, according to the license. Resources like WordNet help view vocabulary in a connected way.

 

Feel welcome to the practice for the mind and the heart.
7.1. EXERCISES: THE SIMPLE OR THE PROGRESSIVE

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