# What we saw <were/was> police...



## JungKim

This news article titled "Disability Rights Protesters Arrested At Portman's Office In Columbus" has this:


> Protestors asked Portman to vote "no" on the Senate’s new health care bill, which they say would take away coverage from those who need it most.
> 
> "*What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety*," says Ken Eno, who came from New York to support family members with disabilities. "At one point, two or three police came through one side of the doorway and that’s when everything kind of started going downhill."


I understand "police" here is a plural noun. For example, it's "Police are pulling people out of their wheelchairs", not "Police is pulling...", which is ungrammatical.

And I also understand that if a plural noun (such as _police_) is used as a predicative complement of "What we saw", that "were" as well as "was" is correct. Now, in the quoted sentence above, the predicative complement of "What we saw" is not the plural noun (_police_) but the act of police pulling people out of their wheelchairs. And I think that an act is treated as singular when it comes to the verb conjugation. 

So, I wonder if native speakers here agree with the use of "were" instead of "was" in the above quote.
If indeed "were" is not incorrect or a typo, could someone tell me why that is?


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## MilkyBarKid

"*What we saw was the police pulling people...
"What we saw were police pulling people...*


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## lingobingo

I think you could use either *were* or *was* in that sentence, depending on how you "read" it:

(a) as the police being what was seen – with the rest of the sentence describing what they were doing
_What we saw were police 
pulling people out of their wheelchairs…_

(b) as the action as a whole being what was seen
_What we saw was 
police pulling people out of their wheelchairs…_


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## JungKim

But in context I don't know how you can read it like (a). I for one can only read it like (b).


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## lingobingo

Your original quote is from an actual news report, so obviously that way of writing it was deemed acceptable.

Maybe it's more understandable if you turn things around:  
What was it you saw? — The police were what we saw. / The police was what we saw.


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## PaulQ

JungKim said:


> Now, in the quoted sentence above, the predicative complement of "What we saw" is not the plural noun (_police_)


It means *individual policemen/members of the police force* who were pulling..." That explains the plural.


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## Hermione Golightly

What did you see? We saw police. What we saw was police officers.

The subject is (What we saw) and using the singular verb 'was' seems very reasonable to me since 'what' has no number, rather like 'it'.

_We heard a terrible banging in the early hours.
What was it?
It was the police conducting a dawn raid and breaking down the door of a house._

'Police' is the object followed by a complementing participle phrase, as happens after a 'perception' verb like 'see'.


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> This news article titled "Disability Rights Protesters Arrested At Portman's Office In Columbus" has this:
> 
> I understand "police" here is a plural noun. For example, it's "Police are pulling people out of their wheelchairs", not "Police is pulling...", which is ungrammatical.
> 
> And I also understand that if a plural noun (such as _police_) is used as a predicative complement of "What we saw", that "were" as well as "was" is correct. Now, in the quoted sentence above, the predicative complement of "What we saw" is not the plural noun (_police_) but the act of police pulling people out of their wheelchairs. And I think that an act is treated as singular when it comes to the verb conjugation.
> 
> So, I wonder if native speakers here agree with the use of "were" instead of "was" in the above quote.
> If indeed "were" is not incorrect or a typo, could someone tell me why that is?


I know you already know that "police" is not the subject here, and that "what I saw" is allowed to be plural when it refers to multiple people and/or things:

_What I saw was their pulling people out.
What I saw were their pulling people out.
What I saw was them pulling people out._ [I wouldn't use _were_ in this sentence.]
_What I saw were police pulling people out._ [It seems to make a difference that they are referred to by a plural noun, especially one that "looks" singular.]

Cleft and pseudocleft sentences sometimes look quite incongruous, with _what_ sometimes referring to people or to things and people together, _who_, _whom_, and _what_ sometimes being plural, and _it_, which is always singular, sometimes referring to more than one person or thing:

_It is clear explanations that are most crucial.
What are most crucial is clear explanations._


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

"What I saw was police officers pulling..." makes it clear, but you're right: "the police" is used with the plural form of verbs in English (as opposed to some other languages). 

Also, this is an ambiguous sentence; it obviously means "...without regard to the safety of the people they (the police) were pulling out of wheelchairs", but strictly speaking, it could be misread as "...without regard for their (the police's) own safety". Oh, those heroic cops  !


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## Loob

Like Hermione, I'd use "was" for both options. The subject is singular.


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## JungKim

lingobingo said:


> Your original quote is from an actual news report, so obviously that way of writing it was deemed acceptable.


It's a direct quote, so I don't think it has anything to do with the writing style of a news report but everything to do with the English the speaker used, unless of course the writer "edited" what the speaker said and still put it in quotes.


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## JungKim

lingobingo said:


> Maybe it's more understandable if you turn things around:
> What was it you saw? — The police were what we saw. / The police was what we saw.





Hermione Golightly said:


> What did you see? We saw police. What we saw was police officers..



This is where I'm most confused.
_We saw police pulling people out of their wheelchairs.
We saw police who are pulling people out of their wheelchairs._
I don't think that these two sentences mean the same thing.
So, I don't understand how "What we saw were..." is possible.


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> This is where I'm most confused.
> _We saw police pulling people out of their wheelchairs.
> We saw police who are pulling people out of their wheelchairs._
> I don't think that these two sentences mean the same thing.
> So, I don't understand how "What we saw were..." is possible.


"Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" can be interpreted multiple ways:

_Police as they pulled people out of their wheelchairs
Police in the act of pulling people out of their wheelchairs
Police that pulled people out of their wheelchairs
Police who are pulling people out of their wheelchairs
Police who have been pulling people out of their wheelchairs_
etc.

But the _were_ tells us that we saw "police", plural, in particular "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs". This is "pulling" the participle, not "pulling" the gerund:

_What we saw were police ready to go to work._ [adjective]
_What we saw were police tired of being careful._ [adjective / participle]
_What we saw were police acting strangely._ [participle]

_What we saw was the police's rash action._ [noun]
_What we saw was the police's acting rashly due to their having worked such long hours._ [gerund]

_What we saw was the police acting._ [participle, gerund, or noun, possibly, with different meanings]


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

JungKim #12 & Forero #13, I'd've said "What we saw was police (officers) who *were* pulling..."


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## Forero

I see these constructions as having similar but usually different meanings:

_I saw police officers pull ...._ [I saw them complete the act.]
_I saw police officers pulling ...._ [I saw them in the act.]
_I saw police officers who were pulling ...._ [I saw some who ....]
_I saw police officers' pulling ...._ [I saw part or all of the act.]


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> "Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" can be interpreted multiple ways:


Only if you don't have any context to determine which way to interpret the phrase.
But the OP has plenty of context. No?



Forero said:


> But the _were_ tells us that we saw "police", plural, in particular "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs". This is "pulling" the participle, not "pulling" the gerund:


Somehow, you seem to be assuming that "were" is correct, and only based on that assumption, you conclude that "pulling" is the participle. But is that assumption in line with the article's context? Because the very reason I started this thread was that I couldn't parse "pulling" as the participle in context.



Forero said:


> I see these constructions as having similar but usually different meanings:
> 
> _I saw police officers pull ...._ [I saw them complete the act.]
> _I saw police officers pulling ...._ [I saw them in the act.]
> _I saw police officers who were pulling ...._ [I saw some who ....]
> _I saw police officers' pulling ...._ [I saw part or all of the act.]


So you clearly distinguish the meaning difference between the second and third.
And I honestly think, based on context, that the speaker, Ken Eno, must have meant the second and cannot have meant the third when he said the quote in the OP. But you apparently don't agree with me on this, do you?


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## lingobingo

"*What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety*," says Ken Eno, who came from New York to support family members with disabilities.

Going back to this original quote, yes, there's a valid argument for saying that this man was "wrong" in that he should have said "What we saw was" no matter how he was then going to go on to describe what he had seen.

But he didn't. He said "were police", not "was police" – and even just isolating those two words goes a long way towards explaining why. It sounds right. So much so that very few people would look at that quote and say, "Hang on, that's wrong. You can't say that." 

So whether it's seen as right or wrong has much more to do with perception and usage than strict rules. "What we saw were police" is still perfectly understandable, it's easier to say, and it doesn't even sound wrong (except to a few purists). What's not to like?


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## JungKim

lingobingo said:


> But he didn't. He said "were police", not "was police" – and even just isolating those two words goes a long way towards explaining why. It sounds right. So much so that very few people would look at that quote and say, "Hang on, that's wrong. You can't say that."
> 
> So whether it's seen as right or wrong has much more to do with perception and usage than strict rules. "What we saw were police" is still perfectly understandable, it's easier to say, and it doesn't even sound wrong (except to a few purists). What's not to like?


Are you saying that that the question of whether technically "pulling" is a participle or a gerund is a moot point, because native speakers would instinctively think "were" sounds right even before you get to the word "pulling" itself?


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## lingobingo

JungKim said:


> Are you saying that that the question of whether technically "pulling" is a participle or a gerund is a moot point, because native speakers would instinctively think "were" sounds right even before you get to the word "pulling" itself?



"*What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety*," says Ken Eno, who came from New York to support family members with disabilities.

The word _pulling_ is not acting as a noun.


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## JungKim

lingobingo said:


> "*What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety*," says Ken Eno, who came from New York to support family members with disabilities.
> 
> The word _pulling_ is not acting as a noun.


Maybe you're right that "pulling" is not acting as a noun. That is, it's not a gerund but a participle.
But then, I just remember CGEL (by Pullum) advising against distinguishing a gerund and a participle, and this might be another example why we need to pay attention to such advice. In post #16, however, I somehow managed to make the mistake of perhaps erroneously distinguishing the two while responding to Forero's post.  Oh well...


JungKim said:


> Forero said:
> 
> 
> 
> But the _were_ tells us that we saw "police", plural, in particular "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs". This is "pulling" the participle, not "pulling" the gerund:
> 
> 
> 
> Somehow, you seem to be assuming that "were" is correct, and only based on that assumption, you conclude that "pulling" is the participle. But is that assumption in line with the article's context? Because the very reason I started this thread was that I couldn't parse "pulling" as the participle in context.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. It's not about whether "pulling" is a gerund or a participle. It's about whether what you saw was an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) or only the agent ("police") doing an act of "pulling people". And I still think it was an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) that you saw.


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> Only if you don't have any context to determine which way to interpret the phrase.
> But the OP has plenty of context. No?


It does not have enough context to resolve the ambiguity, but does it need to?





> Somehow, you seem to be assuming that "were" is correct, and only based on that assumption, you conclude that "pulling" is the participle. But is that assumption in line with the article's context? Because the very reason I started this thread was that I couldn't parse "pulling" as the participle in context.


I assume a speaker says what they mean when I can. To me (this is an observation, not an assumption), "were" sounds right in this sentence, and the most likely meaning I imagine for it (another observation) makes "pulling" a participle. Those two observations suggest to me that "were" sounds right because "pulling" is a participle.

As a test, I thought about changing _police pulling_ to _police's pulling_ and _pulling by police_. Both ways, the change makes _were_ sound wrong to me, so I am convinced that the participle vs. gerund distinction is important for this sentence.





> So you clearly distinguish the meaning difference between the second and third.
> And I honestly think, based on context, that the speaker, Ken Eno, must have meant the second and cannot have meant the third when he said the quote in the OP. But you apparently don't agree with me on this, do you?


I do agree. For the first meaning I imagine for the original sentence, "pulling" means "in the act of pulling", not "who were pulling". In other words, "pulling" is a modifier (like the prepositional phrase "in the act of pulling") but is not equivalent to a restrictive relative clause.

To make sure I understood the relationship between "police" and "pulling" correctly, I came up with the sentence "What we saw were police ready to go to work", using the adjective _ready_. My grammatical instinct tells me that _ready_ in this example plays the same role with regard to the preceding words as _pulling_ does in the original sentence. It tells the status/state/condition/circumstances of the police when I saw them.

So I am convinced that _were_ sounds right to me in the original sentence because, to me, "pulling ..." here behaves more like an adjective than like a noun.


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## siares

JungKim said:


> It's about whether what you saw was an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) or only the agent ("police") doing an act of "pulling people". And I still think it was an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) that you saw.


I think one emphasizes the act, the other the people doing the act.
_What we saw was not thugs, not criminals, but the police! pulling people out of wheelchairs. _I think 'were' would sound better here.



Forero said:


> What I saw was their pulling people out.


Interesting, to me the possessive doesn't sound good, if in this form: _I saw his/police's pulling her out._
(Lots of discussion around these here: when the possessive is NOT possible before a gerund)



Forero said:


> "what I saw" is allowed to be plural when it refers to multiple people and/or things:


Why is it specific for 'see', what if there is a different verb, one where the noun/noun + ing form can be its object?
_What the reporter described were/was police pulling people out.
What I drew was/were police pulling people out._

I had a look at cleft sentences threads but they are all on _what is adjective...is/are._
Thank you.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> As a test, I thought about changing _police pulling_ to _police's pulling_ and _pulling by police_. Both ways, the change makes _were_ sound wrong to me, so I am convinced that the participle vs. gerund distinction is important for this sentence.


How about this sentence as a test?
_Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw.
Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._
Which one do you think sounds right and why?



Forero said:


> I do agree. For the first meaning I imagine for the original sentence, "pulling" means "in the act of pulling", not "who were pulling". In other words, "pulling" is a modifier (like the prepositional phrase "in the act of pulling") but is not equivalent to a restrictive relative clause.


 Agreed.



Forero said:


> To make sure I understood the relationship between "police" and "pulling" correctly, I came up with the sentence "What we saw were police ready to go to work", using the adjective _ready_. My grammatical instinct tells me that _ready_ in this example plays the same role with regard to the preceding words as _pulling_ does in the original sentence. It tells the status/state/condition/circumstances of the police when I saw them.
> 
> So I am convinced that _were_ sounds right to me in the original sentence because, to me, "pulling ..." here behaves more like an adjective than like a noun.


Now I'm confused. Earlier, you said, "pulling people..." is not equivalent to a restrictive relative clause "who were pulling people..." But the adjective phrase "ready to go to work" that you came up with as an equivalent to "pulling people..." is, I think, more like a restrictive relative clause than anything else, because a restrictive relative clause is also known as an adjective clause in traditional grammar.


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## e2efour

Since both _was_ and _were_ are possible in the original sentence, I don't see the point of arguing about whether we are talking about an act (_pulling people_) or a plural noun (_police officers who were _...). You can't say _I saw police's pulling people_ by any stretch of imagination.

You are right in saying that when _what_ is the object of the _what-c_lause and when there is a plural noun in the predicate, _are/were_ tend to be used (one authority has estimated the plural as more likely than the singular by 3:1). In other cases the singular is the norm, except when the predicate clause consist of two or more plural nouns (_What impresses them are planes, divisions and ships_).

Your sentences starting with _Police pulling ... was/were what I saw_ are both acceptable (act or plural noun). Whether they sound natural is debatable.


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## lingobingo

e2efour said:


> Since both _was_ and _were_ are possible in the original sentence, I don't see the point of arguing about whether we are talking about an act (_pulling people_) or a plural noun (_police officers who were _...). You can't say _I saw police's pulling people_ by any stretch of imagination.
> 
> You are right in saying that when _what_ is the object of the _what-c_lause and when there is a plural noun in the predicate, _are/were_ tend to be used (one authority has estimated the plural as more likely than the singular by 3:1). In other cases the singular is the norm, except when the predicate clause consist of two or more plural nouns (_What impresses them are planes, divisions and ships_).
> 
> Your sentences starting with _Police pulling ... was/were what I saw_ are both acceptable (act or plural noun). Whether they sound natural is debatable.



That was post #24. See #3.


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## Forero

siares said:


> Interesting, to me the possessive doesn't sound good, if in this form: _I saw his/police's pulling her out._
> (Lots of discussion around these here: when the possessive is NOT possible before a gerund)


"Police's" is funny sounding, but "his" and "their" sound fine to me. My point is that they would change the meaning.





> Why is it specific for 'see', what if there is a different verb, one where the noun/noun + ing form can be its object?
> _What the reporter described were/was police pulling people out.
> What I drew was/were police pulling people out._


I did not say it was specific to "see", but I see "drew" a little differently than "saw" because we see people but draw pictures of people, not the people themselves really.





JungKim said:


> How about this sentence as a test?
> _Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw.
> Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._
> Which one do you think sounds right and why?


They both sound right, but they mean different things.





> Now I'm confused. Earlier, you said, "pulling people..." is not equivalent to a restrictive relative clause "who were pulling people..." But the adjective phrase "ready to go to work" that you came up with as an equivalent to "pulling people..." is, I think, more like a restrictive relative clause than anything else, because a restrictive relative clause is also known as an adjective clause in traditional grammar.


A relative clause can be an adjective clause, and an adjective clause is a kind of adjective phrase, but not all adjective phrases equate to relative clauses, and not all post-noun modifiers not separated by commas restrict.

"Police who were pulling" is a subset of "police", but in the original sentence as I read it, "pulling ..." does not restrict the meaning of "police" to a subset but instead describes the already identified "police" and restricts only two times (with respect to each other): the time the police took the action and the time I saw the police.

Consider the difference between "I saw children who were killed" and "I saw children killed". The former sentence says that the children I saw were the ones killed but it says nothing about whether I saw them before or after they were killed. The latter sentence, on the other hand, says I saw them as they were killed and they were not yet "children who were killed" before I saw them.

Adding "who were" in front of "pulling" makes a smaller difference than adding it in front of "killed", because "pulling" is more active while "killed" is more passive, but it makes the same type of difference. "Who were" in these examples changes a circumstantial modifier to a restrictive one.


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## JungKim

e2efour said:


> Since both _was_ and _were_ are possible in the original sentence, I don't see the point of arguing about whether we are talking about an act (_pulling people_) or a plural noun (_police officers who were _...).


My question originally was twofold.


JungKim said:


> So, I wonder if native speakers here agree with the use of "were" instead of "was" in the above quote.
> If indeed "were" is not incorrect or a typo, could someone tell me why that is?


Now the first part was answered. "Were" is not incorrect or a typo.
But the second part was why "were" would be possible.



e2efour said:


> You are right in saying that when _what_ is the object of the _what-c_lause and when there is a plural noun in the predicate, _are/were_ tend to be used (one authority has estimated the plural as more likely than the singular by 3:1). In other cases the singular is the norm, except when the predicate clause consist of two or more plural nouns (_What impresses them are planes, divisions and ships_).


Agreed. But this has yet to answer the second part of my original question.

The predicate clause here is not simply "police" (a noun phrase with a plural noun as its head) but "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety". If you parse this as a noun phrase with a plural noun ("police") as its head, the reason why "were" is possible is because the whole predicate is a noun phrase with a plural noun as its head, i.e., the same thing as having only "police" as the predicate.

But if you parse this as a clause, the head of the clause is not its subject "police" but its verb "pulling". And I have suspected all along that only this latter parsing is correct. And Forero seems to be agreeing with me on this point as follows:



Forero said:


> "Police who were pulling" is a subset of "police", but in the original sentence as I read it, "pulling ..." does not restrict the meaning of "police" to a subset but instead describes the already identified "police" and restricts only two times (with respect to each other): the time the police took the action and the time I saw the police.
> 
> Consider the difference between "I saw children who were killed" and "I saw children killed". The former sentence says that the children I saw were the ones killed but it says nothing about whether I saw them before or after they were killed. The latter sentence, on the other hand, says I saw them as they were killed and they were not yet "children who were killed" before I saw them.
> 
> Adding "who were" in front of "pulling" makes a smaller difference than adding it in front of "killed", because "pulling" is more active while "killed" is more passive, but it makes the same type of difference. "Who were" in these examples changes a circumstantial modifier to a restrictive one.



So, if "pulling" is the head of the predicate "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety", the fact that "police" is a plural noun theoretically shouldn't affect the form of the verb "were"/"was". Theoretically, it should be "was" because the head "pulling" (an action) is always treated as singular regardless of the subject being singular or plural.

So the second part of my question essentially is why "were" sounds right to native speakers despite all this?


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## JungKim

Now, regarding these sentences:


JungKim said:


> _Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw.
> Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._
> Which one do you think sounds right and why?


These are responses I got.


e2efour said:


> Your sentences starting with _Police pulling ... was/were what I saw_ are both acceptable (act or plural noun). Whether they sound natural is debatable.





Forero said:


> They both sound right, but they mean different things.



Let me first assume these are grammatically correct and tell you what I think about the above sentences and please let me know if I'm right or wrong.
_Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw._
Here, since "was" is the correct verb, the subject (_Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs_) should be singular. There's no way "Police" can be singular, so "Police" is not the head of the subject. The head of the subject is "pulling", and the entire subject describes an act with "Police" as simply the agent of the act.

Let's turn to the other sentence:
_Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._
Here, since "were" is the correct verb, the subject (Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs) should be plural. There's no way "pulling" can be plural, so "Police" is the head of the subject, not "pulling", and the entire subject is essentially a noun phrase with "Police" as its head.

Am I right about these analyses?


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> The predicate clause here is not simply "police" (a noun phrase with a plural noun as its head) but "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs without any regard for their safety". If you parse this as a noun phrase with a plural noun ("police") as its head, the reason why "were" is possible is because the whole predicate is a noun phrase with a plural noun as its head, i.e., the same thing as having only "police" as the predicate.


I agree with this. "Were" sounds right because the plural noun "police" is the head of the phrase. After "police" comes a participial phrase, a modifier, not a gerund phrase, a noun.

It is also not a relative clause, which would also be a modifier but would have tense, mood, and aspect, and a different meaning.





> But if you parse this as a clause


I learned in school that a clause is a phrase with a subject and finite verb. That means that neither a gerund phrase nor a participial phrase is a clause. Lately I have been hearing some phrases with nonfinite verb forms being called clauses, but I don't remember which ones and I don't really know why the terminology has changed.





> , the head of the clause is not its subject "police" but its verb "pulling". And I have suspected all along that only this latter parsing is correct. And Forero seems to be agreeing with me on this point as follows:


I do not agree with you on this point.

What we saw were police. Those police that we saw were, at the time, pulling people out of wheelchairs.

The difference I see between a participial phrase and a relative clause is minor compared to the difference between "police" as the head of the phrase and "pulling" as the head of the phrase.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> It is also not a relative clause, which would also be a modifier but would have tense, mood, and aspect, and a different meaning.I learned in school that a clause is a phrase with a subject and finite verb. That means that neither a gerund phrase nor a participial phrase is a clause. Lately I have been hearing some phrases with nonfinite verb forms being called clauses, but I don't remember which ones and I don't really know why the terminology has changed.I do not agree with you on this point.


For what it's worth, Forero, a clause having a subject and a finite verb is called a "finite clause." And a clause having a subject and no finite verb but only a non-finite verb is called "non-finite clause." And I know it's been like decades since linguists adopted the concept of "non-finite clause".

Now why do they use the term "clause" when there's no finite verb? Because even the non-finite verbs such as "pulling" (in the OP) and "killed" (in your "I saw children killed" example) do function as the head of the entire phrase ("killed" is the head of the phrase "children killed", etc).


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> What we saw were police. Those police that we saw were, at the time, pulling people out of wheelchairs.


I respectfully disagree.
Of course you saw "police" not because "police" is the head of the whole predicate but because there's no way of you having seen the "pulling" act without seeing the agent ("police").

If you change "saw" to "heard", can you say that what you heard was "police"?
_What we heard were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs..._
I don't think you can, because if what you heard was "police" then it could only mean that you heard what they said, never what they did such as "pulling people out of their wheelchairs".

Does this mean we should treat "see" and "hear" differently? I don't know how to justify such differentiation.


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> For what it's worth, Forero, a clause having a subject and a finite verb is called a "finite clause." And a clause having a subject and no finite verb but only a non-finite verb is called "non-finite clause." And I know it's been like decades since linguists adopted the concept of "non-finite clause".


Thank you for the explanation. What if a gerund phrase has no subject (e.g. "Swimming in cold water is exhilarating")? Is it still called a clause?





> ..."killed" is the head of the phrase "children killed", etc).


I find this bizarre. "Killed" is a partciple, a modifier, not a candidate for the direct object of "saw".

In "We saw children killed", as in "We saw children asleep in their beds", the head of the direct object of "saw" is "children".





JungKim said:


> I respectfully disagree.
> Of course you saw "police" not because "police" is the head of the whole predicate but because there's no way of you having seen the "pulling" act without seeing the agent ("police").
> 
> If you change "saw" to "heard", can you say that what you heard was "police"?
> _What we heard were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs..._


Yes, we can. We can hear them, and we can hear them doing something, whether we hear what they are doing or not.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> What if a gerund phrase has no subject (e.g. "Swimming in cold water is exhilarating")? Is it still called a clause?


Yes, it is. Because the gerund 'Swimming' is still acting as a verb by having the prepositional phrase "in cold water" and the head of the gerund phrase is the verb 'Swimming'. FYI, what makes a clause a clause is not the presence of a subject but the presence of a predicate, which in most cases includes a verb, be it finite or non-finite. This is basically the very reason the predicate, not the subject, is considered the head of a clause.



Forero said:


> I find this bizarre. "Killed" is a partciple, a modifier, not a candidate for the direct object of "saw".
> 
> In "We saw children killed", as in "We saw children asleep in their beds", the head of the direct object of "saw" is "children".


You're right that "killed" is not the direct object of "saw", because the direct object is undeniably "children". The direct object of the main verb doesn't have to be the head of the sub-clause "children killed". If you parsed "children" as the head, you'd be saying that "We saw children killed" is equivalent in meaning to "We saw children who were killed". But you unequivocally said earlier that these two mean two different things.

Now, I'm not sure about how to parse the other sentence "We saw children asleep in their beds". But let's not go there yet because it already is complicated enough for us.



Forero said:


> Yes, we can. We can hear them, and we can hear them doing something, whether we hear what they are doing or not.


But "What we heard were police" without the rest of the sentence can only mean that we heard police saying something, not that we heard them doing something. So the verb "hear" doesn't mean the same thing depending on whether you have the "pulling..." part or not.

EDIT: For example, if I say, "I heard you.", all it can mean is "I heard you saying/talking". I don't think it can ever mean "I heard you pulling those people" even if the "pulling those people" was retrievable from context.

A: Did you hear police pulling those people out of their wheelchairs?
B: Yes, I heard them.

Is B's response natural?


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## e2efour

JungKim said:


> EDIT: For example, if I say, "I heard you.", all it can mean is "I heard you saying/talking". I don't think it can ever mean "I heard you pulling those people" even if the "pulling those people" was retrievable from context.
> 
> A: Did you hear police pulling those people out of their wheelchairs?
> B: Yes, I heard them.
> 
> Is B's response natural?


Of course it is, although in practice you normally see them. What you are saying is that you cannot describe a noise. 

If a burglar creeps up the stairs in your house, you can say _I heard someone. _Talking/saying does not follow from _heard._


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> It's about whether *what you saw was* an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) or only *the agent* ("police") *doing an act* of "pulling people". And I still think it was an act of "pulling people" by the agent ("police) that you saw.


Look at how you express the meaning (in *blue*) that you are rejecting.

This is the construction we are talking about, and the plural verb in the original sentence confirms the speaker was thinking of this meaning. If the other meaning were intended, the verb would have to be _was_.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> Look at how you express the meaning (in *blue*) that you are rejecting.


I have never said that you can't interpret the predicate "the agent doing an act" of "what you saw was the agent doing an act" as a noun phrase with "the agent" as its head. All I've been saying throughout this thread is that the OP's context doesn't seem to allow "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" to be interpreted as a noun phrase with "police" as its head, and therefore that "were" doesn't seem like a logical choice.


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## JungKim

e2efour said:


> Of course it is, although in practice you normally see them. What you are saying is that you cannot describe a noise.
> 
> If a burglar creeps up the stairs in your house, you can say _I heard someone. _Talking/saying does not follow from _heard._


Good point. Thanks.


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> I have never said that you can't interpret the predicate "the agent doing an act" of "what you saw was the agent doing an act" as a noun phrase with "the agent" as its head. All I've been saying throughout this thread is that the OP's context doesn't seem to allow "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" to be interpreted as a noun phrase with "police" as its head, and therefore that "were" doesn't seem like a logical choice.


What about the context seems to you not to allow the idea of seeing police? If you spell out your logic, maybe we can find the flaw (in either ours or yours).


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> What about the context seems to you not to allow the idea of seeing police? If you spell out your logic, maybe we can find the flaw (in either ours or yours).


Let's first look at this pair:
_What we saw *were *police pulling people out of their wheelchair. 
What we saw *were *people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police. _
I believe that these two sentences mean the same thing.
Would you still think that "were" in the second sentence is justified by the plural noun "police"? Or now by "people"?

Now, let's change "people" into "a man" and "their wheelchairs" into "his wheelchair", and rewrite the above pair as follows.
_What we saw *were *police pulling a man out of his wheelchair. 
What we saw *were *a man being pulled out of his wheelchair by police. _

Now, I'm pretty sure that "were" is incorrect in the second sentence. Don't you agree?
But the funny thing is, you did see "police" in the second sentence but that doesn't justify the use of "were".

(Also, I'd like someone to answer my question in post #28.)


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> Let's first look at this pair:
> _What we saw *were *police pulling people out of their wheelchair*s*.
> What we saw *were *people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police. _
> I believe that these two sentences mean the same thing.


Almost the same thing, but not exactly the same thing.





> Would you still think that "were" in the second sentence is justified by the plural noun "police"? Or now by "people"?


By "people".





> Now, let's change "people" into "a man" and "their wheelchairs" into "his wheelchair", and rewrite the above pair as follows.
> _What we saw *were *police pulling a man out of his wheelchair.
> What we saw *were *a man being pulled out of his wheelchair by police. _
> 
> Now, I'm pretty sure that "were" is incorrect in the second sentence. Don't you agree?


Yes.





> But the funny thing is, you did see "police" in the second sentence but that doesn't justify the use of "were".
> 
> (Also, I'd like someone to answer my question in post #28.)





JungKim said:


> Am I right about these analyses?


I think so.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> Almost the same thing, but not exactly the same thing.


Could you tell me what _the difference in meaning_ would be?



Forero said:


> By "people".


Are you conceding that the fact that you saw "police" in "What we saw were people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police" doesn't affect the verb conjugation "was"/"were"?

If so, why should the fact that you saw "people" in "What we saw were people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police" should affect the verb conjugation? By the same token, why should the fact that you saw "police" in "What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" should affect the verb conjugation?



Forero said:


> Yes.I think so.


_Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw.
Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._
Here, semantically, you did see both "police" and "people". But what you semantically saw doesn't affect the verb conjugation at all. The only thing that determines the verb conjugation is what the syntactic head is. When the syntactic head is "police", only "were" is correct. And when the syntactic head is "pulling", only "was" is correct.

And I wonder why the _semantic _meaning of what you saw should ever determine the verb conjugation in "What we saw *was/were* police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" or in "What we saw *was *a man being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police"?


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> Could you tell me what _the difference in meaning_ would be?


In the first one, we saw police; in the second, people.





> Are you conceding that the fact that you saw "police" in "What we saw were people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police" doesn't affect the verb conjugation "was"/"were"?


It does not say we saw police.





> If so, why should the fact that you saw "people" in "What we saw were people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police" should affect the verb conjugation? By the same token, why should the fact that you saw "police" in "What we saw were police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" should affect the verb conjugation?
> 
> 
> _Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *was *what we saw._


This says we saw police, but it does not say we saw people.





> _Police pulling people out of their wheelchairs *were *what we saw._


This says we saw people, but it does not say we saw police.





> Here, semantically, you did see both "police" and "people". But what you semantically saw doesn't affect the verb conjugation at all. The only thing that determines the verb conjugation is what the syntactic head is. When the syntactic head is "police", only "were" is correct. And when the syntactic head is "pulling", only "was" is correct.


I think _was_ is correct enough for anything of which "What I saw" is the subject. The fact that _were_ seems to work better in some cases is what is interesting, I think.





> And I wonder why the _semantic _meaning of what you saw should ever determine the verb conjugation in "What we saw *was/were* police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" or in "What we saw *was *a man being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police"?


I think part of the motivation for _were_ is to make clear that we saw police, not just an action taken by police. In "What we saw was police", I prefer "was" over "were"; but with the added participial phrase, I prefer "were" over "was".

I can see why another native speaker might not share my preferences, but my preferences make sense to me.

In English, a verb usually agrees in form with the semantic number of the subject:

_A lot of people report our dog to the police._ [Here "a lot of" means "many".]
_A number of people were in the hall._ [Here "a number of" means something like "several".]
_The number of people in the hall was over a hundred._ [Here "the number" really means the number, so it is singular.]
_What are most crucial is clear explanations._ [Here "What are most crucial" means something like "the answer to the question of what are most crucial", so it is singular.]
_It is clear explanations that are most crucial._ [This sentence means practically the same as the previous one. _It_ is always singular.]


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> In the first one, we saw police; in the second, people.It does not say we saw police.


Really?? How could you possibly say that you didn't see "people" in the first one, and that we didn't see "police" in the second one?
You'd have to see both "police" and "people" in order to see either "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" or "people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police".

If you somehow decides to regard only the object of the verb as what you saw, you should instead say that "police" is the object of the verb in the first one, and that "people" is the object of the verb in the second, which is a syntactic thing rather than a semantic thing.

And here's an example of how you cannot see the object of the verb "see": _I can't see there being an end to this discussion._
Do you see "there"? No, you don't. But "there" is technically the object of the verb "see".


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> Really?? How could you possibly say that you didn't see "people" in the first one, and that we didn't see "police" in the second one?
> You'd have to see both "police" and "people" in order to see either "police pulling people out of their wheelchairs" or "people being pulled out of their wheelchairs by police".


The question was what the sentence says, not what we can deduce or surmise from it.





> If you somehow decides to regard only the object of the verb as what you saw, you should instead say that "police" is the object of the verb in the first one, and that "people" is the object of the verb in the second, which is a syntactic thing rather than a semantic thing.
> 
> And here's an example of how you cannot see the object of the verb "see": _I can't see there being an end to this discussion._
> Do you see "there"? No, you don't. But "there" is technically the object of the verb "see".


No. In this case, I see "being" as the gerund, not the participle, and "see" with a different meaning ("understand"/"justify"):

_What I can't see is there being police involved.
What I can't see are there being police involved.
_


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> The question was what the sentence says, not what we can deduce or surmise from it.


If anyone's been deducing and surmising, it's not me. I'm the one who've been analyzing the syntax trying to find what the head of the predicate is, trying not to rely solely on semantics, which I've been trying to prove to be potentially misleading.



Forero said:


> No. In this case, I see "being" as the gerund, not the participle, and "see" with a different meaning ("understand"/"justify"):
> 
> _What I can't see is there being police involved.
> What I can't see are there being police involved._


_I can't see there *being* an end to this discussion._
_I can't see there *be* an end to this discussion._
If the "being" is not a participle but a gerund, how come you can use the bare infinitive "be" instead of "being"?
(Like I said earlier in post #20, CGEL says there's no point in distinguishing between a gerund and a participle, and I agree. But since you've brought it up, I had to ask.)


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> If anyone's been deducing and surmising, it's not me. I'm the one who've been analyzing the syntax trying to find what the head of the predicate is, trying not to rely solely on semantics, which I've been trying to prove to be potentially misleading.


You seem to be calling me wrong no matter how I explain myself. All I can say without mentioning semantics is that educated native speakers can use _were_ or _was_ in a formal setting in what is otherwise the same sentence. But a full answer to your question has to include the fact that such speakers indicate a semantic difference by the verb form chosen.





> _I can't see there *being* an end to this discussion.
> I can't see there *be* an end to this discussion._
> If the "being" is not a participle but a gerund, how come you can use the bare infinitive "be" instead of "being"?


This is a different issue. The "be" sentence sounds quite odd, but that has nothing to do with the function of "being" in the other sentence.





> (Like I said earlier in post #20, CGEL says there's no point in distinguishing between a gerund and a participle, and I agree. But since you've brought it up, I had to ask.)


There is more to the story than a strict dichotomy between gerund and participle, but I have to disagree with the assertion that such a distinction is always completely worthless.

_Flying airplanes is dangerous.
Flying airplanes are dangerous._

Different meanings, obviously.

Is it possible to see with one's own eyes the machines that the second sentence refers to? Of course. Do they have to be seen to be dangerous? No.

Are the machines mentioned in the first sentence invisible? Probably not. Could they be invisible? Yes. Does that make either sentence ungrammatical? No. Does that make either sentence necessarily false? No.

Could the machines mentioned in the first sentence be dangerous? Yes, but that is not quite what the first sentence says.

Could the action of the machines mentioned in the second sentence be dangerous? Yes, but that is not quite what the second sentence says.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> You seem to be calling me wrong no matter how I explain myself.


I hope you know that's not true. I also hope that's why you didn't say "You are calling me wrong no matter how I explain myself". 



Forero said:


> This is a different issue. The "be" sentence sounds quite odd, but that has nothing to do with the function of "being" in the other sentence.


No, this has everything to do with the function of "being" in the other sentence.

_I can't see there *being* an end to this discussion.
I can't see there *be* an end to this discussion._

That's because this pair shows that 'being' is not a gerund, because if it is you have no role assigned for 'there', which is considered a pronoun in CGEL. And syntactically 'there' acts like a subject when it leads a sentence:
_*
There* is an end to this discussion.
Is *there* an end to this discussion? _[subject-auxiliary inversion]

Even if you stick to traditional grammar and consider 'there' to be an adverb, 'being' still cannot be a gerund, because the verb 'see' simply does not allow a gerund as its direct object.
_
We saw pulling people out of their wheelchairs._
_What we saw was/were pulling people out of their wheelchairs._

And if the 'there' example is confusing, there can be other examples:
_
I saw it raining this afternoon.
I saw it rain this afternoon._

Here, "it" is undeniably a pronoun and is used as the direct object of the verb "saw". But nobody could see "it".



Forero said:


> There is more to the story than a strict dichotomy between gerund and participle, but I have to disagree with the assertion that such a distinction is always completely worthless.
> 
> _Flying airplanes is dangerous.
> Flying airplanes are dangerous._
> 
> Different meanings, obviously.
> 
> Is it possible to see with one's own eyes the machines that the second sentence refers to? Of course. Do they have to be seen to be dangerous? No.
> 
> Are the machines mentioned in the first sentence invisible? Probably not. Could they be invisible? Yes. Does that make either sentence ungrammatical? No. Does that make either sentence necessarily false? No.
> 
> Could the machines mentioned in the first sentence be dangerous? Yes, but that is not quite what the first sentence says.
> 
> Could the action of the machines mentioned in the second sentence be dangerous? Yes, but that is not quite what the second sentence says.



Wow, thanks for the inspiration.
_What we saw in the video *were *the U.S. drones killing terror suspects. _
This sentence, which I just made up, has virtually the same structure as the OP's, and I guess that "were" sounds fine to you and some other native speakers. But here, "we" didn't see "the U.S. drones" at all, because the video, recorded by at least one of the drones, only showed the killing of the targets.


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## e2efour

_I can't see there *be* an end to this discussion._


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## JungKim

e2efour said:


> _I can't see there *be* an end to this discussion._


Here, it says "be" is not entirely excluded if the main clause contains "negation, a modal, or certain adverbs of modality". See examples in (86) of that book.

But regardless of whether the "be" sentence works or not, I think I've clearly shown in post #47 that "being" is not a gerund in the following sentence if we're to determine whether it's a gerund or a participle: _I can't see there *being* an end to this discussion._


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## grassy

JungKim said:


> if we're to determine whether it's a gerund or a participle: _I can't see there *being* an end to this discussion._



This sentence reminds of me of "possessives with gerunds" as in "Do you mind my sitting here?". So to me it's a gerund.


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## e2efour

These are the sentences quoted. Perhaps a speaker of AE could comment.


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## JungKim

grassy said:


> This sentence reminds of me of "possessives with gerunds" as in "Do you mind my sitting here?". So to me it's a gerund.


Are you confusing "there" with "their"? Otherwise, how can that sentence possibly remind you of "Do you mind my sitting here?"?


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## grassy

No, of course not. I am just saying that to me the grammar of both sentences is similar.


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## Hermione Golightly

It's a perfectly common use of a participle after verbs of perception modifying the object of the verb. In the foreign languages I know, this idea is expressed by a relative clause, as if we had to say 'I saw the police who pulled ...'. Or by using a phrase such as 'as they pulled' or 'in the middle of pull'.
In other words, it's an idiom, a way of expressing an idea unique to English. The question of the participle being called a 'gerund' and maybe allowing the use of a possessive of some sort doesn't arise.

_I saw the cliff falling into the sea._ In an inflected language, the ending change would indicate that the cliff is the object of the verb.
_My boyfriend observed him picking my pocket._ 'Him' is one of the few inflections left in English.


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## Forero

grassy said:


> This sentence reminds of me of "possessives with gerunds" as in "Do you mind my sitting here?". So to me it's a gerund.


It is a gerund to me too.





JungKim said:


> No, this has everything to do with the function of "being" in the other sentence.


No.

This does not work: "What there can't do is be an end to this discussion."

It is grammatical, but "being" is not doing anything. Ditto for "I can't see there be an end to this discussion" because, at least to me, it suggests "be" is an action. Besides, "there" is not semantically the subject (as can be seen by the agreement of the verb).





> That's because this pair shows that 'being' is not a gerund, because if it is you have no role assigned for 'there', which is considered a pronoun in CGEL. And syntactically 'there' acts like a subject when it leads a sentence


Yes, "there" does act like a subject when it leads a sentence, but "I can't see there being an end to this discussion" means "I can't see (that) there is or will be an end to this discussion."





> Even if you stick to traditional grammar and consider 'there' to be an adverb, 'being' still cannot be a gerund, because the verb 'see' simply does not allow a gerund as its direct object.


This seems to contradict what you have been claiming as well as being wrong, in my view. In traditional grammar, this _there_ is an expletive, not an adverb.





> _
> We saw pulling people out of their wheelchairs._
> _What we saw was/were pulling people out of their wheelchairs._
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with these Xs. This makes the case for "pulling" to be a participle since it does not work without something to modify.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And if the 'there' example is confusing, there can be other examples:
> _
> I saw it raining this afternoon.
> I saw it rain this afternoon._
> 
> Here, "it" is undeniably a pronoun and is used as the direct object of the verb "saw". But nobody could see "it".
Click to expand...

Right. So this "raining" is a gerund. "It" here is an impersonal subject, but still semantically a subject, not a placeholder.





> Wow, thanks for the inspiration.
> _What we saw in the video *were *the U.S. drones killing terror suspects. _
> This sentence, which I just made up, has virtually the same structure as the OP's, and I guess that "were" sounds fine to you and some other native speakers. But here, "we" didn't see "the U.S. drones" at all, because the video, recorded by at least one of the drones, only showed the killing of the targets.


It does sound fine to me. According to this sentence, the speaker and somebody else did see the drones.


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## JungKim

Even if I grant you that you're right on all the other points, I cannot grant you that you're right on these two points.



Forero said:


> Right. So this "raining" is a gerund. "It" here is an impersonal subject, but still semantically a subject, not a placeholder.


_
I saw it raining this afternoon.
I saw it rain this afternoon._

Here, how can you possibly say "raining" is a gerund when you admit that "it" is a pronoun???

'Placeholder' is defined as "an element of a sentence that is required by syntactic constraints but carries little or no semantic information".
Therefore, the fact that "it" is a placeholder does not mean that you can ignore its syntactic significance. That's why removing "it" would make the sentences wrong:
_
I saw raining this afternoon.
I saw rain this afternoon._

So it's abundantly clear that "it" is a pronoun and functions in the sentence as the object of the verb "saw".
Now, if you insist that "raining" is a gerund, that should make the verb "saw" take two object, which is never right.



Forero said:


> It does sound fine to me. According to this sentence, the speaker and somebody else did see the drones.


_What we saw in the video *were *the U.S. drones killing terror suspects. _

I'll give you the intended context here. The _we_ here just saw a video transmitted from one of the drones that had flown over _terror suspects_. In that video, you saw only some terror suspects moving in their vehicle on the ground and killed by some bullets *presumably *fired from the drones. You didn't see any part of the drones at all in the video. 

That is, I specifically designed the context so that nobody could see the drones in the video. But the above sentence still works.


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## Forero

Hermione Golightly said:


> It's a perfectly common use of a participle after verbs of perception modifying the object of the verb. In the foreign languages I know, this idea is expressed by a relative clause, as if we had to say 'I saw the police who pulled ...'. Or by using a phrase such as 'as they pulled' or 'in the middle of pull'.
> In other words, it's an idiom, a way of expressing an idea unique to English. The question of the participle being called a 'gerund' and maybe allowing the use of a possessive of some sort doesn't arise.
> 
> _I saw the cliff falling into the sea._ In an inflected language, the ending change would indicate that the cliff is the object of the verb.
> _My boyfriend observed him picking my pocket._ 'Him' is one of the few inflections left in English.





JungKim said:


> _What we saw in the video *were *the U.S. drones killing terror suspects. _
> 
> I'll give you the intended context here. The _we_ here just saw a video transmitted from one of the drones that had flown over _terror suspects_. In that video, you saw only some terror suspects moving in their vehicle on the ground and killed by some bullets *presumably *fired from the drones. You didn't see any part of the drones at all in the video.
> 
> That is, I specifically designed the context so that nobody could see the drones in the video. But the above sentence still works.


The sentence says that we saw the drones. If the context says we did not see the drones, then the sentence does not fit the context.


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## JungKim

Forero said:


> If the context says we did not see the drones, then the sentence does not fit the context.



Oh really?
Then, in the context I've presented, does this work?
_What we saw in the video were terror suspects being killed by the U.S. drones. _


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## Forero

JungKim said:


> Oh really?
> Then, in the context I've presented, does this work?
> _What we saw in the video were terror suspects being killed by the U.S. drones. _


Yes, and here you could insert "who were" between "suspects" and "being" with minimal effect on the meaning.


----------

