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Ask for help > I need your answers to my questions
I need your answers to my questions
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oumsalsabil
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I need your answers to my questions
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My first question is what do we mean by school-days? Does the term mean only the time (years) one spent at school as a student of course, or we can also use it to refer to the weekdays when the student has school that is to say weekends are not included? My second question is: what is the function of the -ing form of buy & increase in the two following sentences is it a verb or a noun? 1- They prefer buying organic food. 2- The eating of organic food will keep increasing. THANKS ALL FOR YOUR HELP. HAVE A GOOD NIGHT
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26 Jan 2013
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medad
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I think school days refers to the days which students go to school during the week.
buying & increasing are both verbs.
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26 Jan 2013
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yanogator
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Yes, oumsalsabil, "school days" can refer to either. Back in my school days, I hated getting up in the morning. On school days, the speed limit is 20 mph when driving past a school. This doesn �t apply on holidays and weekends. 1. "Buying" is a gerund - a form of the verb being used as a noun. 2. "increasing" is a present participle. "Will keep increasing" is the verb of the sentence. Bruce |
26 Jan 2013
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florimago
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I agree with Bruce and let me add something :Like nouns, gerunds can be the subject, object or complement of a sentence: Smoking costs a lot of money. I don �t like writing. But, like a verb, a gerund can also have an object itself. In this case, the whole expression [gerund + object] can be the subject, object or complement of the sentence. Smoking cigarettes costs a lot of money nowadays. I don �t like writing long letters. Hope it helps Flori |
26 Jan 2013
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oumsalsabil
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Ok, thank you so much flori. what you have said you and Bruce is fine and has clarified things for me except for the last sentence.Bruce is saying that "increasing" is a present participle. "Will keep increasing" is the verb of the sentence. What i don �t understand is : does "increasing" have the function of a verb or not, since in this sentence it is a present participle? And in case it is a verb what is the function of " will keep" here? Both Bruce �s reply & yours are welcome. THANK YOU AGAIN |
26 Jan 2013
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yanogator
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"Will keep increasing" is very similar to the future continuous (will be increasing). I would say that "will" and "keep" are both auxilliary verbs, and "increasing" is the main verb, in a variation of the future continuous tense. I don �t know that there �s a name for this form. Any other thoughts on this are welcome by both me and oumsalsabil. Bruce |
26 Jan 2013
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florimago
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In my opinion, "keep increasing" is a verbal periphasis , that is , the combination of two verbs where the first in declined and the second can be an infinitive or a gerund so , Bruce, I think both verbs (keep and increase) are main verbs .Anyway I must recognise my syntax is a little rusty!!! Flori |
26 Jan 2013
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yanogator
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I �ve never heard of verbal periphasis, Flori, so I �ll take your word for it. Bruce |
26 Jan 2013
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almaz
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Bruce, I think Flori means periphrasis: using separate words to express a grammatical relationship as opposed to using inflection (compare friendliest and the most friendly). Remember, we don �t actually have a �future tense � in English - we often use periphrastic constructions like will be going/going to go.
As far as the contortions over gerund and participle are concerned, we should bear in mind that both - however you want to look at them - are verb-forms with the same inflection which are functionally similar to nouns and adjectives (we also have some -ing forms which function as prepositions - � following our discussion, we decided... � etc). Because of the problems associated with maintaining a distinction between the two, many modern grammarians tend to prefer the merged category of gerund-participle. See here, for example. |
27 Jan 2013
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almaz
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Flori, your post reminded me that the Spanish word for both gerund and present participle is the same: gerundio. Saves a lot of trouble, doesn �t it?  |
27 Jan 2013
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