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14 votes

Is "solutioning" a correct word?

First, this is a specialist term. Much like vocabulary in medicine, engineering, math and sciences, software development, etc. The same term may be used across these domains with radically different ...
Quaternion's user avatar
10 votes

Is "running" a gerund or a participial adjective?

In your examples, "enlightening" is best seen as an adjective and "running" as a VP comprising a gerund-participle form of the verb as head. Taking "running" first: it fails the usual tests for ...
BillJ's user avatar
  • 11.5k
9 votes
Accepted

Are these parts of speech correct?

It's much easier to do parts of speech if we don't confuse them with grammatical relations/syntactic functions , and if we don't get distracted by inflections. A verb is still a verb, regardless of ...
Araucaria - Not here any more.'s user avatar
9 votes

Is "running" a gerund or a participial adjective?

tl;dr Despite running being in origin the -ING inflection of the verb to run, in your “a running experiment” example, it is no longer a verb and therefore ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ be either a gerund or a participle ...
tchrist's user avatar
  • 133k
8 votes

Is the sentence "Queueing is so thoughtful of you." grammatically correct?

Nothing wrong with that sentence, 'Queueing' here is a gerund, essentially a noun. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gerund
Lee Leon's user avatar
  • 1,757
8 votes

"Sending off a balloon": verb or noun?

This form of the verb is conventionally called a gerund. From the outside, a gerund works partly like a noun, because it can be the object of a verb, just like a normal noun: Agnes suggested sending ...
Cerberus - Reinstate Monica's user avatar
7 votes

When must a gerund be preceded by a possessive pronoun as opposed to an accusative one?

To take the last question first: no, the forms in the examples in the question here are not gerunds. They are verbal nouns. Morphologically speaking, gerunds and verbal nouns are indistinguishable in ...
Janus Bahs Jacquet's user avatar
7 votes

The "to~" infinitive always implies the future, except for preference Like and Love

I think your colleague is wrong. Somebody has noticed a partial pattern and has elevated it to rulehood. The use of infinitive (with and without to) vs gerund is purely syntactic, depending on the ...
Colin Fine's user avatar
  • 76.1k
7 votes

Why 'doing' after 'look forward to'?

The key to understanding this usage is the preposition “to” which comes after the expression “look forward:” Look forward to something means to be pleased or excited that it is going to happen. ...
user 66974's user avatar
  • 65.7k
7 votes
Accepted

When to use a gerund or an infinitive after "is"?

Unfortunately, the linked answer is very vague, and not correct. It does point out correctly that gerunds are more common as subjects than infinitives. But it certainly doesn't provide any rule that ...
John Lawler's user avatar
7 votes

How many parts of speech can a word be at the same time?

Yes There are constructions called zeugmas (after Greek ζεῦγμα, 'a yoking') where a word or phrase is intentionally made to apply to two or more others in a sentence despite functioning differently ...
lly's user avatar
  • 10k
7 votes

"I hate Jill singing those songs." = "I hate Jill when she is singing those songs."?

I would interpret them differently. "I hate Jill singing those songs" implies that you hate her actions (singing) when she sings those songs. Whereas "I hate Jill when she is singing those songs" ...
S.Frogile's user avatar
  • 134
7 votes

Possessives with gerunds

You're tripping up on terminology, which is understandable since it's hard to find reliable information about English grammar, especially online. Everybody uses their own terms, with whatever meanings ...
John Lawler's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Difference between gerund and present participle

The distinction between a participle and a gerund is troublesome. It looks as if the difference is to do with parts of speech or something similar. In fact, the real distinction has to do with the ...
Araucaria - Not here any more.'s user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Is "programming" not a noun?

I never used the terms "gerund" and "participle" when I was learning syntax, nor when I was teaching it, so I think we could easily do without those terms. However, on the other hand, I don't see a ...
Greg Lee's user avatar
  • 17.1k
6 votes
Accepted

When double "l" is considered American English?

You have to keep in mind that <l> and <ll> are both extremely common in English, regardless of region. For example, bill is always spelled <bill>, and nil is always spelled <nil&...
ruakh's user avatar
  • 14.4k
6 votes

How many parts of speech can a word be at the same time?

How about "splashing is forbidden?" Splashing seems to function as either a noun or a verb. It could be modified by an adverb to fit the verb test: Loudly splashing is forbidden. Or it could ...
RaceYouAnytime's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

How many parts of speech can a word be at the same time?

ᴛʟ;ᴅʀ Is it ever possible for a sentence to have a word in it that is simultaneously more than one single part of speech in that sentence, under the same parse and meaning? So, if a ...
John Lawler's user avatar
6 votes

Confusion with pronouns proceeding gerunds

So we took our time getting back, [him telling me how glad he was that he'd been able to give the woman what she deserved]. The verb "telling" is non-finite so it's a subordinate clause, ...
BillJ's user avatar
  • 11.5k
5 votes
Accepted

Indirect objects that answer the question "by whom"

Your English teacher should cut wood but not teach English. There are two special verb constructions with accusative (= direct object in English) + a verb form. (Actually there are more but I don't ...
rogermue's user avatar
  • 13.8k
5 votes

How many parts of speech can a word be at the same time?

Since the same words can be adjectives and adverbs, sentences could be constructed where the word modifies a noun and a verb: She is and runs fast. While others cheat, my children are and play ...
DavePhD's user avatar
  • 10.5k
5 votes

"can't do anything except eating" vs. "can't do anything except eat"

It seems the answer (in part) is found in the modal verb can; modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would) accept only bare infinitive verbs.     A. My dog ...
Mari-Lou A's user avatar
  • 88.6k
5 votes

Is "Illegal dumping" a gerund or a noun? What about "occasional flooding"?

No, "dumping" is not a gerund. As @BillJ says in his comment above, in your example "dumping" is a noun. I would call it a "derived nominal" from the verb "dump". It is shown to be a noun in your ...
Greg Lee's user avatar
  • 17.1k
5 votes

Use of gerunds after subjects

"A man sitting next to you" itself is a noun phrase. The word "man" is the head noun, with 'sitting next to you' functioning as its post-modifier. In terms of grammatical form, 'sitting next to you' ...
Qiandi Liu's user avatar
4 votes

Problem with gerunds

The gerund can't be modified by an adjective (use an adverb for that), but it can be followed by a noun. So this should be either automatically creating tasks or automatic creation of tasks
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 14.4k
4 votes

Is there a form and/or synonym of "spelling" that can be put into an adverb position such as that of "grammatically"?

orthographically-inept (or challenged) comes to mind An orthography is the methodology of writing a language. It includes rules of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and ...
mplungjan's user avatar
  • 29.7k
4 votes

Do these two sentences use the possessive case of gerunds properly?

The version "my playing chess" has the gerund "playing" and the direct object "chess". This is okay, since a gerund is a verb, and a transitive verb like "play" can take a direct object. The second ...
Greg Lee's user avatar
  • 17.1k
4 votes

Why 'doing' after 'look forward to'?

"look forward to" takes a noun. "drink" is a verb. So we take gerund "drinking", which acts as a noun.
Acccumulation's user avatar
4 votes

Using gerund while listing actions in the past

The boys had been bulling her again -- they, hid her things and dumped her backpack into a muddy puddle just outside school grounds. I hope your editor didn't return it like that. It's rubbish. Apart ...
chasly - supports Monica's user avatar

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