Re: "To run is good exercise"?!

In article <d4dpbb$hvi$05$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Joachim Pense <spam-snob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> asks:

>> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:426A4107.B1A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [in response to the following]:

>>>> Is it common English usage to use the words "gerund" and
>>>> "gerundive" interchangeably?

>>>> I learned in my Latin lessons that gerundium and gerundivum
>>>> are two different (and unrelated) things.

>>> Those two words don't occur much in discussions of English
>>> grammar. We call the -ing words "participles."

>That's one thing I wanted to know for some time. Do you feel a clear
>conceptual division between gerund and participle? Well, after all
>one is a noun, the other one an adjective, ...

peter daniels is urging this discussion in the right direction, which
is to separate the morphological forms in question (and the labels we
choose for them) from the uses of these forms in different syntactic
constructions (and the meanings associated with them in these
constructions).

the modern english verb form at issue here has been called the
"present participle", the "gerund participle", the "-ing form", and
various other things. the label we choose is pretty much beside the
point; all we need is a way to distinguish this form from the others
in english. we could use numbers or arbitrarily chosen letters. in
some of my work, i've called it Form:N, which is a not entirely
arbitrarily chosen letter (the N suggests -ing).

the thing about Form:N is that it is hugely multifunctional. it has
clearly verbal uses, in the progressive ("They were eating sushi") and
with aspectual verbs ("They started eating sushi at noon"), for
example. it has clearly nominal uses, in various constructions (with
somewhat differen't semantics) that are sometimes called "gerunds", as
in "I was surprised at their eating sushi" and "I was surprised at
them eating sushi" and "The eating of sushi is a delicate enterprise".
it has clearly adjectival uses, as in "Anyone having a hat on indoors
will be prosecuted". it even has a few adverbial uses, as in "Let's
go sushi-eating downtown".

this is just a small sampling of the uses of Form:N. there are
dozens, each with its own semantics. you can do *a lot* with VPs that
have Form:N head Vs.

if you like labels, then you'll need to devise them for all of the
constructions that use such VPs. but notice that the constructions
are *language-particular* pairings of form and meaning, so that the
labels for the constructions are just pointers to these pairings, not
actually semantic (or syntactic) analyses. well-chosen labels -- say,
"Wh Relative Clause", "that Relative Clause", "Poss-ing
Nominalization", "Acc-ing Nominalization" -- will suggest something
about the semantics and/or syntax of a construction, but the labels
aren't in themselves analyses; if we wanted to, we could just use
numbers.

well-chosen labels, however, will also allow you to flag relationships
between constructions in one language and constructions in another
(similarly for inflectional forms and for syntactic categories) -- to
signal rough comparability in form and meaning between constructions
in two languages. this is how people get into using "gerund" for
constructions (and inflectional forms) in english, in comparison to
constructions (and inflectional form s) in latin. but the
comparability is only rough, virtually never perfect, and often
languages carve up the space of form-meaning pairings in very
different ways. (everybody knows this about the lexicon, but it's
true of syntax as well.)

the larger point is that there's no substantive issue about what the
"right" labels are for a particular language. arguing about whether
"running" in "Running is good exercise" is or is not a "gerund" is a
waste of time. in particular, the labeling decision predicts
absolutely nothing about the syntax of such expressions in english.
now, there are real questions about their syntax, but that's something
we have to discover by looking at data. putting a label on "running"
or "to run" gets us nowhere.

and now we're back to where all of this started, with the status of
things like "To run is good exercise". i find this particular
example decidedly odd, as have other contributors to this thread. i
do not, in fact, know what the relevant generalizations about english,
or at least my english, are, but this is something that can be
investigated. and labels won't play a role in this investigation.

arnold



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Celtic substrates in English grammar
    ... washed the hair". ... question of a) why Old English seems so far ahead of ... the dominate language, i. e. ... word and its use in causative constructions as an explanation for the rise of periphrasis, I beg to differ that the source is irrelevant. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Globalization
    ... I'm working on a multilingual CMS. ... labels that are generated based on the number of languages the CMS ... The issue arises as the language names are stored in English ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp)
  • Globalization
    ... I'm working on a multilingual CMS. ... labels that are generated based on the number of languages the CMS ... The issue arises as the language names are stored in English ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet)
  • Re: Globalization
    ... Language names are not "translated" automatically. ... You can either use a resource file or your own resource ... labels that are generated based on the number of languages the CMS ... The issue arises as the language names are stored in English ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet)
  • Re: OT: after the grammar of the lost legs merkin news article comes this...
    ... My comment about it being a "horrible abortion of English" still ... I don't disagree that language evolves, ... these features or constructions themselves: ... an account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these ...
    (uk.rec.motorcycles)