 In Italian, "stare" is used mainly for location, transitory state of health ("sta male" 's/he is ill' but "è gracile" 's/he is puny') and, as in Spanish, for the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as "sto scrivendo" to express 'I am writing'.The historical development of the "stare" + gerund progressive in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such as "sto pensando" 'I stand/stay (here) thinking', in which the "stare" form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' to grammaticalization of the construction as expression of progressive aspect (Similar in concept to the English verbal construction of "I am still thinking").The process of reanalysis that took place over time bleached the semantics of "stare" so that when used in combination with the gerund the form became solely a grammatical marker of subject and tense (e.g.