WHY THING IS NOT THE –ING FORM OF THE?

WHY THING IS NOT THE –ING FORM OF THE?

Perkić, Lidija
Joldić, Dženita

Knowing that the progressive aspect adds the morpheme –ing to the verb's base, why is it that it needs to be further complicated by the fact that there are verbs which in their very base form already have this morpheme (bring, fling, etc.)? Why is it that nouns and verbs can look like building, and yet we may be completely baffled when we see that word at the very beginning of a sentence? How do we know when such words act as gerunds, which are, mind you, basically nouns? As if this were not enough, English has created more ways in which to confuse its learner: adjectives in –ing may be interesting, and adverbs may be surprisingly frequent too, but wait till we mention the power of prepositions, such as during, according to which we cannot fail to mention subordinators, either! This paper leaves nothing to chance, as nearly two thousand examples have been analyzed in order to try to describe as many –ing forms of the English language as possible. Specifically, we address the basic principles of word formation and discuss why morphology alone is not sufficient for a proper understanding of the syntactic roles of this morpheme in a sentence. The paper shall also offer some of the most efficient ways in which to avoid getting stuck in this "gridlock" of –ing words, which may be implemented immediately for a variety of purposes.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3461