| A témához tartozó oldalak: < [1 2 3] | “The” before a gerund Téma indítója: Vaddy Peters
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Ty Kendall 
Egyesült Királyság
Local time: 09:57
héber - angol
| Too many ings | Apr 9, 2012 |
@ Neil
Thanks, I got lost amongst all the ings.
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Very interesting and useful discussion!
| | | | Oliver Walter
Egyesült Királyság
Local time: 09:57
német - angol
+ ...
| "Kissing" can be a noun | Apr 9, 2012 |
Steven Hanley wrote:
"Swimming," on the other hand, is a noun, as is "skating," but "kissing" is not.
I think "kissing" can also be a noun:
Constantine Fitzgibbon wrote a book with the title "When the kissing had to stop".
My "The Times English Dictionary" says a gerund is "A noun formed from a verb, denoting an action or state." - more or less the same as Neil's quote from Wikipedia.
Oliver
| | | | Neil Coffey
Egyesült Királyság
Local time: 09:57
francia - angol
+ ...
| Wikipedia def | Apr 9, 2012 |
Oliver Walter wrote:
My "The Times English Dictionary" says a gerund is "A noun formed from a verb, denoting an action or state." - more or less the same as Neil's quote from Wikipedia.
I just wanted to say -- I wasn't the person originally quoting from Wikipedia. I actually think the Wikipedia definition (itself taken from Webster's dictionary) is misleading for the reasons I've already stated: in the most canonical cases of 'gerundive', the -ing form shows predominantly verbal, rather than nominal, features (though it and the phrase it heads fill *structural* positions in a sentence that would generally be filled by noun phrases).
Again, saying that a gerund is a "noun formed from a verb" is really not very helpful as a formal definition, and glosses over the important syntactic features of gerunds. (Also note that words like "renewal", "commitment", "arrival" etc are also nouns formed from verbs, but not usually classed as gerunds.)
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Oliver Walter
Egyesült Királyság
Local time: 09:57
német - angol
+ ...
| Part of the definition | Apr 9, 2012 |
Neil Coffey wrote:
Again, saying that a gerund is a "noun formed from a verb" is really not very helpful as a formal definition, and glosses over the important syntactic features of gerunds. (Also note that words like "renewal", "commitment", "arrival" etc are also nouns formed from verbs, but not usually classed as gerunds.)
Yes, I omitted the next part of the definition in that dictionary: "In English the gerund, like the present participle, is formed in -ing: the living is easy.
Oliver
| | | | neilmac
Spanyolország
Local time: 10:57
spanyol - angol
+ ...
| Context / Need to know | Apr 10, 2012 |
Steven Hanley wrote:
"The running of John" makes no sense to me - it sound like it is a transitive verb, as in, "I was watching the running of the business," but that's a different "run."
However,"the running of the bulls"* at Pamplona makes sense to us, as we are more familiar with it.
I really think that the debate of what a gerund is (or is not) is pretty much a waste of time nowadays, both for translators and teachers. Language teaching should not be grammar-bound and rule centred but reality-focused. How many native speakers do you know who can tell the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs? I suppose the answer will be only those who need to know. The rest get by without.
* (The Running of the Bulls (in Spanish encierro, from the verb encerrar, to lock/shut up, to pen)[1] is a practice that involves running in front of a small group (typically a dozen) of bulls that have been let loose, on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town's streets).
| | | | | John suggested the asking of Bill. | Apr 10, 2012 |
Russell Jones wrote: This is of course very unnatural English; colloquial usage would be "John suggested asking Bill" and the written version perhaps "John suggested that Bill be asked".
In my humble view the article here - used to stress that "asking" is not a participle - transforms the gerund into a verbal noun. Otherwise we erase the line between the two. Which, of course, adds ambiguity.
| | | | | "Skating" is not a gerund | Apr 10, 2012 |
Steven Hanley wrote:
In the sentence you object to:
"“She was watching the skating of two girls she had never seen there before.”
"Skating" is not a gerund; it as noun.
[Edited at 2012-04-08 20:01 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-04-08 20:05 GMT]
Fully agree with you, sir, as does a thick Oxford dictionary, listing it as such.
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| beating a dead horse | Apr 10, 2012 |
Oliver Walter wrote:
My "The Times English Dictionary" says a gerund is "A noun formed from a verb, denoting an action or state." - more or less the same as Neil's quote from Wikipedia. Oliver
To wind up all that controvercy I have worked out my own formula:
As soon as we add an article to what we see as a gerund - or make it plural, or modify it with an adjective - we automatically tramsform it into a verbal noun. And there is no sense in beating a dead horse anymore.
| | | | Phil Hand
Kína
Local time: 16:57
kínai - angol
| Silence of the lambs | Apr 10, 2012 |
I knew there was a famous quote with this form, so I did some searching (see what I did there?) and finally managed to dig it up:
"You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs."
Completely agree with Neil that what we choose to call these things - whether one -ing verb is a gerund or not - is irrelevant.
What is important is that we should recognise:
1) It's pretty complicated
2) Native speakers don't always give you the right jud... See more I knew there was a famous quote with this form, so I did some searching (see what I did there?) and finally managed to dig it up:
"You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs."
Completely agree with Neil that what we choose to call these things - whether one -ing verb is a gerund or not - is irrelevant.
What is important is that we should recognise:
1) It's pretty complicated
2) Native speakers don't always give you the right judgments on acceptability, but native speakers will generally produce acceptable sentences.
3) Non-native speaker judgments are very unlikely to capture the complexity of the system. ▲ Collapse
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Funny enough, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines the Gerund as; "a noun in the form of the present PATICIPLE (sic.) of a verb, (that is ending in -ing)." If it is "a noun" than what's all the fuss about?
Still, those –ing words are sometimes pretty confusing. King, starling, seedling – nouns, Gooding, Vikings – proper nouns, easy-going, interesting – adjectives, shortcomings, sayings – verbal nouns, listening, seeing – participles, swimming, jogging – gerunds, suppo... See more Funny enough, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines the Gerund as; "a noun in the form of the present PATICIPLE (sic.) of a verb, (that is ending in -ing)." If it is "a noun" than what's all the fuss about?
Still, those –ing words are sometimes pretty confusing. King, starling, seedling – nouns, Gooding, Vikings – proper nouns, easy-going, interesting – adjectives, shortcomings, sayings – verbal nouns, listening, seeing – participles, swimming, jogging – gerunds, supposing, considering (that) – conjunctions, notwithstanding, following – prepositions. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Giles Watson
Olaszország
Local time: 10:57
olasz - angol
Az Ő emlékére: | Form and function | May 18, 2012 |
Vaddy Peters wrote:
Steven Hanley wrote:
In the sentence you object to:
"“She was watching the skating of two girls she had never seen there before.”
"Skating" is not a gerund; it as noun.
Fully agree with you, sir, as does a thick Oxford dictionary, listing it as such.
Me, too.
Word forms in English can have multiple functions, as Vaddy points out (to say the "-ing" form is "sometimes pretty confusing" is putting it mildly!) and in Steven's example, "skating" is indeed used as a noun.
However, if the subject had gone on to say about the two girls: "Their skating the lake this late in spring was very risky", she would have been using "skating" as a gerund. In the second case, "skating" functions in the same way as a verb (it has a direct object - "the lake") whereas in Steven's example it is used as a true noun with a prepositional post-modifying phrase ("of the two girls") that an Italian might refer to as a "complemento di specificazione".
FWIW
[Edited at 2012-05-18 15:28 GMT]
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Neil Coffey
Egyesült Királyság
Local time: 09:57
francia - angol
+ ...
Vaddy Peters wrote:
If it is "a noun" than what's all the fuss about?
Because, as I've explained above, it has syntactic features that aren't noun-like.
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