This article presents a corpus-based comparison of the two most frequent progressive constructions in Dutch: the prepositional construction aan het INF zijn 'be at the INF' (PREP-progressive) and the posture verb construction liggen/zitten/staan+te+INF 'lie/sit/stand+to+INF' (POSprogressive). Both constructions have in common that they cannot occur with stative verbs, both are grammaticalised constructions with locative origins and both can often occur with the same verbs. However, we argue

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... each construction has its own semantic profile: the PREPprogressive has a processual profile, zooming in on the ongoing process itself, whereas the POSprogressive has a situational profile, typically locating the ongoing process in a well-described spatio-temporal frame. This profile is in fact a relic from their original postural use; as such, the POS-progressive provides a good illustration of Hopper's (1991) persistence principle.