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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I just found this to me very instructive site for English grammar, LinKbut when I read in this article that a def./ undef. article is no longer a def./ undef.article it seems like a waste of time to do some catching up.
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Joined: Sep 2009
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 95 |
I found this might help. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index2.htmEnglish is my language and I must admit I still get confused. In this case however, it is not just the word ending but how it is used with modifiers and punctuation that makes the difference between the gerund and the participle
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thank you, I added it to favs. I never knew there is so much of the stuff. I followed the thread because my grandson last autumn started highschool with a.o. English and Latin and likes to share all the new things. I have no Latin and noticed how much I forgot about English grammar. I rather like to really understand what he talks about.
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Joined: Jan 2008
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member
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member
Joined: Jan 2008
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Except that when it's a gerund it's not a verb anymore. It's a noun. It has some properties of a verb (it can have a subject and object), and it has some properties of a noun (it can function as a subject or object). For instance I enjoy eating cakes. eating has an object, cakes, and nouns don't have objects, verbs do. Also, if eating was a noun here, then I should be able to replace it with another noun. But I can't. *I enjoy consumption cakes.
Last edited by goofy; 04/21/10 04:49 AM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Except that when it's a gerund it's not a verb anymore. It's a noun. It has some properties of a verb (it can have a subject and object), and it has some properties of a noun (it can function as a subject or object). For instance I enjoy eating cakes. eating has an object, cakes, and nouns don't have objects, verbs do. Also, if eating was a noun here, then I should be able to replace it with another noun. But I can't. *I enjoy consumption cakes. But eating cakes is the object of the verb enjoy and verbs don't take verbs as their object.
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Joined: Jan 2008
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member
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member
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But eating cakes is the object of the verb enjoy and verbs don't take verbs as their object. No, they take clauses, and eating functions as a verb in the clause eating cakes.
Last edited by goofy; 04/21/10 01:46 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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they take clauses, and eating functions as a verb in the clause eating cakes.
I agree with goofy. It may simply be a matter of terminology. Parts-of-speech-hood (aka syntactic categories) has always have always been a messy thing, but Greek and Roman grammarians did recognize participles as a distinct category from nouns and verbs. Like verbs they could have subjects or objects and like nouns they had number, gender, and case. In the '40s Zelig Harris, Chomsky's advisor, tried to get away from using terms like noun and verb altogether, and wanted to use more abstract classes like A, B, or Q. Most linguists these days follow, as does goofy here, a slot-replacement kind of approach to parts of speech. For example, what kind of syntactic slot does eating fill? It can be used as a noun:
1. Eating pleases me.
2. I like eating.
But it also sometimes fills the slot that looks more like a verb phrase:
3. Eating cakes pleases me.
4. I like eating cakes.
Somehow the nounness of eating is not quite the same as the nounness of meal.
5. Meals please me.
3. *Meals cakes please me.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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