Stative verbs in the continuous form?
As a nonnative speaker of English I was always taught in school that there are verbs that cannot be used in the continuous form, i.e. the stative verbs. However, I've seen some stative verbs used in the continuous form in American English, especially the verbs wish, feel, hope, guess, love and like. Is using these stative verbs in the continuous form wrong? If it's not, what's the difference between using them in the simple and continuous forms?
Solution 1:
Yes, the general 'rule' is that stative verbs don't have a continuous form; however, some stative verbs can also function as dynamic verbs. Let's take your examples: wish, feel, hope, guess, love and like.
- This Christmas, thousands of children are wishing for peace. (Here wishing has a dynamic thrust.)
- He was feeling my face. ([F]eeling here is examining something by touching)
- She was hoping that he would come back one day. (Perhaps hoping sounds odd to some here. This could be a continuous period, e.g., a month, a year, several years.)
Colloquially, like, love, and guess are sometimes used in a continuous aspect. FumbleFingers has already given an example for like.
- I'm guessing you didn't know. (This is found often in speech, but perhaps not in writing.)
- I'm loving this hamburger. (Very similar to liking but more emphatic)
In summary: to paraphrase Quirk et al. (A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language), it's not that stative verbs are incompatible with the progressive but that when they are used this way they have taken on a dynamic quality.