Re: ``Ken and I being on the radio together''

In article
<e0de7005-143a-4d8a-9154-3fe23bf04386@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Stefano MAC:GREGOR" <esperantujo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 19, 2:36 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

They are both simply the -ing-form, used
attributively in one example and nominally in
the other.

English has two ing-forms: the gerund and tha present participle.

Don't confuse form and function. Form is what it looks like; function
is what it does.

Why would you suppose that English has two completely separate -ing
forms, that just happen to be built in exactly the same way (add -ing
to the bare form of absolutely any verb you choose, even the most
irregular verbs in the language!) and have essentially the same
content?

Why not analyze it as a single form (to explain the identical
formation) that happens to have two related uses? Multi-function
forms are incredibly common in English (plural and generic nouns;
emphatic and reflexive pronouns; perfective and passive verbs;
predicative and attributive adjectives, etc.), especially because we
have lots of ways to do zero-derivation.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

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