Double progressives?

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:42 PM -0400 5/23/01, Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:
>This appeared on the LINGUIST List, and I thought it might not be out of
>place on ADS-L as well. It's probably best to reply to the questioner.
>
>    Mark A. Mandel : Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company
>           Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Senior Linguist
>  320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com
>
>>>>>>
>      Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 17:02:24 +0100
>      From: jlc115 <jlc115 at york.ac.uk>
>      Subject: Double progressives?
>
>Some dialects of English allow the use of double aspectuals:
>
>1. He could have not have gone.
>
>Some American English dialects allow double modal constructions:
>
>2. He might could have gone.
>
>I was wondering if there are any dialects that allow double progressives?
>

I won't reply to the questioner since I'm not sure what the relevant
forms are ("He is quitting smoking"--OK, but "smoking" is a noun
here.  "He is being eating"--pretty unlikely to me, but who knows?).
It might be worth mentioning, though, that there are also double
passives:

It was tried/attempted to be repaired.

I just came across one of these in Japan (i.e. in Japlish), but I've
seen them from native English writers as well.

larry