23
votes
Accepted
Stress pattern in "Little Red Riding Hood"
In "running water" and your other examples, the first word is an adjective. By contrast, in "riding hood", "riding" is an adjunct specifying the kind of hood. Such ...
- 5,376
7
votes
Accepted
In modern grammar, why are gerunds and participles grouped?
From Language Log
...I was happy when Geoffrey Pullum and Rodney Huddleston, in
the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, presented a clear and
compelling argument that "A distinction ...
- 11.1k
7
votes
In "experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that", is "experience" a noun adjunct?
"...but experience, (while) teaching this over a number of years, convinced me..."
"Teaching" is merely part of a subordinate adjectival clause, qualifying "experience".
The "while" has been ...
- 64.9k
6
votes
Stress pattern in "Little Red Riding Hood"
The basic rule for compound nouns is that the first element takes stress and the second doesn't (and it doesn't matter whether the compound noun is written as one word or two). Consider:
'stepping ...
- 48.7k
5
votes
Stress pattern in "Little Red Riding Hood"
Running water is water that runs; talking heads are heads that talk; a falling star is a star that falls. But a riding hood is not a hood that rides; it is a hood for riding.
Suppose you are a runner, ...
- 3,674
5
votes
Accepted
In "experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that", is "experience" a noun adjunct?
My original purpose was to write an undergraduate text on digital communication, but experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that I could not write an honest exposition ...
- 84.5k
4
votes
An article before gerunds
Why can't I say "He was expelled for the killing of the birds?"
You actually can say that. It isn't grammatically incorrect and it makes perfect sense. It does make it somewhat less ...
- 19.6k
4
votes
Gerunds are always in singular
The ‘gerund’ for the English language is a problematic idea. I have already written about it in other answers on this site. And my view of gerunds is one with which many would disagree.
First, the ...
- 11.4k
4
votes
"Employees, including young ones who profess to caring about DEI…" Why "caring"?
Good question. Unfortunately this isn't one we can answer. By all appearances, it's a mistake. The correct expression would either use "care" or omit the word "to".
- 3,671
3
votes
In "experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that", is "experience" a noun adjunct?
Experience is just a noun here. Insert my in front of it to get a better read:
. . . but my experience teaching this material convinced me . . .
Teaching this material over a number of years is a ...
- 19.7k
3
votes
What is the correct past-participle inflection of the verb ‘weightlifting’ – and why?
Weightlifting is most often a noun, and nouns don't have past participles. The corresponding verb is usually expressed not by a single word, but by the phrase "to lift weights". I haven't ...
- 84.5k
3
votes
Accepted
Why is "message receiving processing" so jarring?
There is an associated phenomenon called the 'double -ing constraint', which has been covered on ELU before [F.E.'s Answer]:
Some verbs that license gerund-participial complements cannot
themselves ...
- 87.2k
3
votes
Accepted
-ing word as modifier of a noun: Verb or attributive/deverbal Noun?
Those are all attributive nouns, not adjectives let alone verbs.
You can tell because:
They cannot be used predicatively without changing the meaning. The water isn't drinking, the computer isn't ...
- 137k
3
votes
Accepted
Possessive pronoun + gerund confusion
The sentence in question
I can't prevent your being offended.
is certainly grammatical, and, as @Billj points out, it's grammatical whether or not the subject of being offended is you or your. So ...
- 109k
3
votes
What is a gerund? A noun or a verb? 'His smoking upset me’
Since you mentioned Huddleston and Pullum, this answer will be based on the terminology that they use. Huddleston and Pullum use the term "gerund-participle" instead of "gerund" because they reject ...
- 84.5k
2
votes
Is the word "moving" here a gerund or a present participle?
Gerund are like nouns, and participles are like adjectives. You can replace moving with a noun and keep the structure of the sentence as it is:
The 5 stages of [a move] to a brand new place
One of ...
2
votes
Dangling Participle and Gerund
I would say it's ambiguous. The problem is that we're not dealing with a full sentence, but rather with a fragment of one. Such fragments are common for slogans, bumper stickers, etc., but can't be ...
- 338
2
votes
-ing word as modifier of a noun: Verb or attributive/deverbal Noun?
Let's compare these examples:
(1) popularity contest
(2) popular contest
Clearly, "popularity" is a noun that modifies "contest", whereas "popular" is an adjective that ...
- 7,316
2
votes
What is the correct past-participle inflection of the verb ‘weightlifting’ – and why?
Despite the existence of the verb-derived gerund weightlifting, the "base form" to weightlift doesn't exist (it's not in the full Oxford English Dictionary, Collins, or Merriam-Webster, for ...
- 142k
1
vote
Why is "message receiving processing" so jarring?
It’s a little bumpy, but it seems perfectly natural in context:
A classical command and control system mainly consists of the
following parts:
Message receiving processing: to receive all kinds of ...
- 19.7k
1
vote
What is the correct past-participle inflection of the verb ‘weightlifting’ – and why?
Weightlift, and weight-lift are both in use as verbs informally, and seeing as how they're rather rare and there don't appear to be any authoritative dictionary entries, both forms are on the table as ...
- 11.1k
1
vote
Accepted
Ambiguity between present participle, ing-adjectives, and gerund
In a comment, John Lawler wrote:
Like Schrödinger's cat, the -ing word in the example sentence is in an unknown state, since the sentence doesn't have sufficient context to distinguish between the ...
1
vote
Is “using” a gerund in this sentence?
No it's not. A gerund is supposed to function as a noun in the sentence.
A: He likes running.
B: He likes it.
A: He was saved using ...
B: He was saved it ... (doesn't make sense)
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1
vote
I was happy playing the piano (gerund or participle?)
I was happy [playing the piano].
Trad grammar would probably call "playing" a present participle, but modern grammar doesn't distinguish gerunds and present participles, simply lumping them together ...
- 13.5k
1
vote
In "experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that", is "experience" a noun adjunct?
... but (experience (teaching this material) over a number of years) convinced me that ...
- 27.6k
1
vote
Gerunds are always in singular
If we think the front part of this sentence to be a gerund phrase, the word "People" seems to miss " 's ". A gerund is a noun with verb properties, so it is called verbal noun. It can have its object ...
- 55
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