"I'm lovin' it"

The McDonald started to use “I’m lovin’ it” as a slogan in 2003, with which we are very familiar on TV commercial and advertisement anywhere.

The adoption of the expression might symbolise the spread of an idea of "World Englishes."

Usually, “love” cannot take “progressive tense” (formed from the verb “be” and the suffix “ing”) because it is a “stative verb,” verbs that refer to mental states, attitudes/emotions, perceptions, or other state of existence.

Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English lists the verbs that occur less than 2 per cent of the time in progressive aspect:

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Mental/attitude verbs: 
agree, appreciate, believe, conclude, desire, know, like, want (p. 163)

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Practical English Usage also lists “Non-progressive verbs”:

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Mental and emotional states

Believe, doubt, feel (=have an opinion), hate, imagine, know, (dis)like, love, prefer, realise, resognise, remember, see (=understand), suppose, think (=have an opinion), understand, want, wish (p. 457)

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It's interesting the former doesn't includes "love," while the latter lists it as "Non-progressive verb."

No reference to "love" in Longman indicates the growing acceptance of the expression with progressive aspect, which might partly be influenced by the dissemination of the MacDonald's ads.

David Crystal, one of the greatest linguists of our time, mentions it in his lecture, which we will see later on.

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Works Cited

Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage, 3^rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 2005.

Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, eds. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002.