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

On 2008-01-26, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Would you go so far as to say that the infinitive and the present
tense forms (apart from the third-person singular) are the same thing
(except for _be_, of course)?

In English grammar, those two terms don't serve much purpose. English
verbs have five forms, and one of them serves as both a verbal noun
("infinitive") and a simple non-3sg timeless verb.

Are homonyms the same word too?


I had in mind not only EFL but also teaching English grammar (in a
moderately prescriptive sense) and writing skills to native speakers
in high school.  It's useful to distinguish verbal nouns from verbal
adjectives functionally, even if they have the same surface form.

Why? They already _know_ the difference between "him eating" and "his
eating," because they know the language. There's no reason to label
them with labels from 2000 years ago.

Maybe we should stop teaching English in high schools, abolish usage
guides, and just tell everyone to transcribe whatever comes out
naturally!

http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20080125.html

;-)


--
Unix is a user-friendly operating system. It's just very choosy about
its friends.
.

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