# adverbial gerunds?



## Scott Rogers

Can anyone help me understand whether the _-ing _form verbs are gerunds in the examples below and if so, how would they be defined? Gerunds as adverbial complements? Are they adverbials at all? They seem to be.

He sat there _crying__._
I drove home _thinking _about what she said.
She lay on the sofa_ watching_ TV.
I stood there _not knowing_ what to say.

Thanks


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## owlman5

I think they are participles, Scott Rogers, not gerunds:  He sat there crying. =  He was crying as he sat there.
                                                                                 I drove home thinking about what she said. =  I was thinking about what she said as I drove home.

I'd say that these participles function as adjectives rather than adverbs: He sat there crying = Crying, he sat there.  (Crying modifies the subject "he" rather than the verb "sit".)

Welcome to the forum.


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## berndf

owlman5 said:


> I think they are participles, Scott Rogers, not gerunds:  He sat there crying. =  He was crying as he sat there.
> I drove home thinking about what she said. =  I was thinking about what she said as I drove home.
> 
> I'd say that these participles function as adjectives rather than adverbs: He sat there crying = Crying, he sat there.  (Crying modifies the subject "he" rather than the verb "sit".)
> 
> Welcome to the forum.


I agree with you that those are participles but there is nothing wrong with the analysis of the use as adverbial. The comma should already be enough to convince you that _crying _in _Crying, he sat there_ cannot be attributing _he_. It becomes even clearer, if you replace _he_ by _the man_:
_The man sat there crying = Crying, the man sat there._ <-- Adverb
_The crying man sat there._ <-- Adjective

Modifying the verb is only one of the three prototypical uses of adverbs or adverbial phrases:


Attributing the verb: _He walked *slowly *back home_. 
Attributing an adjective: _He was a *surprisingly *good chess player_. 
Attributing the entire sentence: _*Yesterday*, he came home late._ 
 The last of these three is the relevant prototype here.


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## Scott Rogers

berndf said:


> I agree with you that those are participles but there is nothing wrong with the analysis of the use as adverbial. The comma should already be enough to convince you that _crying _in _Crying, he sat there_ cannot be attributing _he_. It becomes even clearer, if you replace _he_ by _the man_:
> _The man sat there crying = Crying, the man sat there._ <-- Adverb
> _The crying man sat there._ <-- Adjective
> 
> Modifying the verb is only one of the three prototypical uses of adverbs or adverbial phrases:
> 
> 
> Attributing the verb: _He walked *slowly *back home_.
> Attributing an adjective: _He was a *surprisingly *good chess player_.
> Attributing the entire sentence: _*Yesterday*, he came home late._
> The last of these three is the relevant prototype here.



Thanks to both of you. I believe now that these are extraposed participle phrases. What confused me is that in researching a book I'm writing, I found structures such as these in another book (an ESL grammar book) which included them in a chapter on gerunds and infinitives. I've been straining my brain for days trying to figure out how these are gerunds, but now I see that they are not and that the book I referenced is just wrong. As participle phrases, they can be fronted too. I don't see a problem with _Crying, he sat there._ It's a bit awkward because we don't normally front single word participles, but with an adverbial modifier, it is clearly grammatical: _Crying his eyes out, he just sat there._ I really want to get this right, so if my analysis is wrong, please set me straight.


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## Cenzontle

"Gerund", in English grammar, is the "-ing" form that acts as a noun:
"*Crying *won't solve anything."


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## owlman5

Scott Rogers said:


> Thanks to both of you. I believe now that these are extraposed participle phrases. What confused me is that in researching a book I'm writing, I found structures such as these in another book (an ESL grammar book) which included them in a chapter on gerunds and infinitives. I've been straining my brain for days trying to figure out how these are gerunds, but now I see that they are not and that the book I referenced is just wrong. As participle phrases, they can be fronted too. I don't see a problem with _Crying, he sat there._ It's a bit awkward because we don't normally front single word participles, but with an adverbial modifier, it is clearly grammatical: _Crying his eyes out, he just sat there._ I really want to get this right, so if my analysis is wrong, please set me straight.


All the things you've written here make sense to me, Scott.  My position on the function of these participles is nothing new: I think they function as adjectives and as components in various verb tenses.  Looking at berndf's post, he has other ideas about them that are unfamiliar to me, but  I'm not sure I understand the points he is trying to make.  We have members who just love to analyze grammar and discuss terminology.  Maybe some of them will see your thread and respond to it.  I hope so.


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf said:


> _The man sat there crying = Crying, the man sat there._ <-- Adverb


I can't see why _crying_ should be an adverb here.
I can't see why _crying_ should be the way in which the man *sat* there.

Might we not rephrase _The man sat there crying_ by saying _The man sat there and *he* was crying_?

I suggest we consider _crying_ to be an attribute of _the man.



_


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## Loob

Why does anyone care?  It's an ING-form....


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## Schimmelreiter

Loob said:


> Why does anyone care?


Because this is the topic of the thread and the question asked in the opening post.


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## Schimmelreiter

Would you native speakers help me defend the point I tried to make in post #7, please.

When we expand the sentence, isn't it true that we might say
_The man sat there, sad and crying.

_whereas it would be wrong to say
_*The man sat there, sadly and crying.


_Doesn't this show that _crying_ is not an adverb?


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## Loob

Well, I'm not sure I understand what your point is, Schimmelreiter.
But how do you feel about _The man sat there sadly, crying?_


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## owlman5

That argument makes sense to me, Schimmelreiter.  Of course, I already agreed with you before you posted your latest comments.  If my experience is trustworthy, I suspect that people who prefer the "participles are adverbs" theories will find something wrong with your effort.


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## Loob

What are the "participles are adverbs" theories, owlman?


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## owlman5

Without naming his name, Loob, I was specifically thinking of one member who used to post in here frequently.  To him, practically everything was an adverb, and he would classify just about any participle - even one placed right in front of a noun - as an adverb that was modifying whatever verb occurred in the sentence: Yawning, the baby woke up.  He'd say that "yawning" modified "woke up" rather than "baby".

In post #3, berndf sees "crying" in this example as an adverb: _The man sat there crying = Crying, the man sat there._ <-- Adverb  

I think it is an adjective that tells me something about the man.  I don't think it's an adverb that tells me something about the way he sits.


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## srk

_The man ran, stumbling_.  "stumbling" looks like an adverb to me.
_The man sat, crying_.  "crying" does too.

berndf says that "crying" *can* be used as an adjective and shows how.

Why should it be impossible to see "stumbling" as a way to run?  "Crying" as a way to sit isn't much of a stretch.


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## PaulQ

There is a similar and recent thread to this one that I now can't find. It concerns the function of *blind *and *naked*:

Stevie Wonder was born blind.
and 
Naked, he ran through the woods.

In these, *crying* can be substituted for *blind *and *naked.*

The conclusion there was that *blind *and *naked *described the state of the person, not the action. -> adjectival.

It is possible to substitute the adverbs blindly and nakedly to see the effect.

Perhaps a clearer example is:
A: "Did you see that, John caught the rabbit! He's quick!"
B: "He was born quick."


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## e2efour

You might like to look at a previous (interesting!) thread, which discusses "adjectival participles" and "adverbial participles" (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2725235).

As I understand the term, an _adverbial participle_ means a participle occurring in an adverbial clause. That does not make the participle an adverb, however.

It seems to me that the use of the -ing form in a sentence like _The toddler hung onto her mother's legs, crying loudly_ can usefully be analysed in terms of two actions occurring at the same time.
The -ing form here modifies the toddler.

You could perhaps introduce an adverbial sense, e.g. _Crying loudly, the toddler persuaded her mother to stop.
_But it's still a participle (or rather an _-ing form_)!

Putting a preposition before a "participle" (_By crying_), of course, makes it a "gerund".


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## berndf

PaulQ said:


> Stevie Wonder was born blind.
> and
> Naked, he ran through the woods.


The two sentence have different syntactic structure. In the first sentence, _blind_ is a predicative adjective (as distinct from an attributive adjective as in _the blind man_) and _was born_ functions as a copula verb, i.e. the sentence is structurally similar to _the ball is red_.
It is the primary characteristic of the structure copula+predicative complement (as distinct from predicate+adverb or adverbial) that the predicative complement is the core of the predicate and not the verb which functions as a "linking agent" (hence the name _copula_) and the information it provides supplements the core of the predicate and isn't itself at its core. Predicative complements can be adjectives or nouns (or equivalent phrases). Examples:
_The ball is red.
He became rich.
He became mayor.
He felt bad.
This sounds good.
She seems happy.
Supplies ran low.
_etc.

Is languages like English where adjectives and adverbs are not always morphologically distinct, the separation between adverb and predicative adjective can become fuzzy. There are two heuristics that, although not being strict rules, usually help in telling one from the other:

1.
Adverbs are usually more flexible with respect to there positioning within the sentence than predicative adjectives:
_Naked, he ran through the woods. ~ He ran naked through the woods. ~ He ran through the woods naked._ -- You might prefer one version over the other but essentially all three are ok.
_Blind, Stevie Wonder was born._ ~ Stevie Wonder blind was born. ~ Stevie Wonder was born blind. -- All three are understandable but the first version sounds like Master Yoda in Star Wars and the second even worse.​ 
2.
If you remove an adverb or adverbial from a sentence, the sentence might lose important supplemental information but the information contained in what is left remains essentially unchanged. If you remove a predicative complement, the sentence as a whole loses/changes its meaning and often become nonsensical:
Adverb:
_Naked, he ran through the woods._ -> _He ran through the woods._ -- The information what he was naked is lost but the rest of the sentence still means the same.

Predicative adjective:
_Supplies ran low. -> Supplies ran._ -- _Hoo?_ Have _supplies_ suddenly got legs to run?
_He became rich. -> He became._ -- ??? What is that supposed to mean?
_This sounds good. -> This sounds._ --- So, "this" makes noises?_
Steve Wonder was born blind._ _-> Steve Wonder was born._ --- The meaning of the original sentence is that he is _blind from birth_, i.e. the core is that he is blind and that he is so from birth is supplemental. If you remove _blind_, the sentence completely changes its meaning.​ 
Applying this to our original sentence, it is obvious that _He sat there crying ~ Crying, he sat there crying_ has much more to do with _Naked, he ran through the woods_ than with _Steve Wonder was born blind._


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## e2efour

There seems to be little doubt about what is an adjective and what is an adverb, attributively or predicatively. See, for example, the following example taken from an article by Payne, Pullum and Huddleston (http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/E1750124510000486.pdf).

PREDICATIVE
(1) The passengers arrived safe.    ADJECTIVE
   (2) The passengers arrived safely.   ADVERB

ATTRIBUTIVE
(3) Weary, we made our way home.    ADJECTIVE
(3) Wearily, we made our way home. ADVERB

In the same way, in _He danced naked in the woods_ the predicative adjective _naked _clearly modifies _He_.

If you want to redefine adjectives as adverbs (and I fail to understand why you should want to do this), you will have to give examples of adjectives (or participles) following the verb which also modify the verb.

(The thread referred to by PaulQ in #16 can be found at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2710112&highlight=danced+in+the+woods.)


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## berndf

e2efour said:


> If you want to redefine adjectives as adverbs (and I fail to understand why you should want to do this)


I am a bit confused. You quote Cambridge grammar which completely breaks with grammatical traditional and you ask *me *why *I* want to redefine things?


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## Loob

I think Paul has muddied the waters  of the current thread by introducing examples where there is no ING-form.

So I'll just say that 
(1) I agree with Bernd that _
Stevie Wonder was born blind.
_and _
Naked, he ran through the woods._
are different constructions.
(2) But I have trouble seeing "was  born" as a copula; I have even more trouble seeing "arrived" as a copula  in "He arrived drunk".  Unless there's some sort of double-think going  on here, of the form: _"arrived" must be a copula because it's followed by an  adjective <> "arrived" must be followed by an adjective because  it's a copula._
(3) Bernd, did you really mean to say that "naked" in _Naked, he ran through the woods. ~ He ran naked through the woods. ~ He ran through the woods naked._ is an adverb, as opposed to an adjective playing an adverbial role in the sentence?


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## e2efour

berndf said:


> I am a bit confused. You quote Cambridge grammar which completely breaks with grammatical traditional and you ask *me *why *I* want to redefine things?



There is nothing ground-breaking about the quote that I gave, whatever the sometimes controversial views of the authors. It could have been written sixty years ago.


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## berndf

Loob said:


> But I have trouble seeing "was  born" as a copula; I have even more  trouble seeing "arrived" as a copula  in "He arrived drunk".  Unless  there's some sort of double-think going  on here, of the form: _"arrived"  must be a copula because it's followed by an  adjective <>  "arrived" must be followed by an adjective because  it's a copula._


Many authors speak of _semi-_ or _pseudo-copulas_, because they cannot be left out without changing the meaning of the predicate (Example). Please read _copula _in my previous post as _copula or semi-copula_.


Loob said:


> (3) Bernd, did you really mean to say that "naked" in _Naked, he ran through the woods. ~ He ran naked through the woods. ~ He ran through the woods naked._ is an adverb, as opposed to an adjective playing an adverbial role in the sentence?


I meant the syntactic role it plays.


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## Thomas O'Maley

I wouldn't think of the use of the -ing form in your examples in terms of word classes to begin with. It complicates matters unnecessarily and you should forget about trying to squeeze the non-finite clauses headed by the -ing verb form into the notions that either adverbs or adjectives characteristically represent. 
The -ing verbs in your examples are heads of separate clauses embedded within the matrix clause. It is best to think of them as separate predication which combines with the main predication contained in the matrix clause. The semantic relations between the matrix and subordinate -ing clause in this construction can be different and will be interpreted pragmatically. In all of your sentences the semantic relation between the sentences is one of simultaneity:

He was sitting there and he was crying. ---> simultaneous actions of sitting and crying 

This construction is often used when the situation described in the -ing clause caused the situation described in the matrix clause:

He hurt his hand trying to fix the faulty ventilation units.


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## PaulQ

berndf,

If I understand your post #18, you are saying, in basic terms that


in _Stevie Wonder was born blind_, and _Naked, he ran through the woods,_ *blind *is an adjective and *naked *is an adverb, 

I find it hard to see naked an *adverb*. He is not running in that *manner*, he is running in that *state* and the state of something (N, NP, Pron.) is described by an adjective, be it predicative or not. If we change *naked *for *alive*, it may be clearer. It is difficult to have adjectives qualify pronouns directly, and _Naked, he ran through the woods _is one way of doing it.

I looked at e2efour’s link to the Pullam reference but the author’s logic escaped me at pages 20/211 in his claim that adverbs can qualify nouns. That said, e2four’s examples of adverbs and adjectives are unassailable.



Loob said:


> I think Paul has muddied the waters  of the current  thread by introducing examples where there is no ING-form.


The  –ing form can be easily substituted, perhaps I did not make that  sufficiently clear:

_Stevie Wonder was born crying._
and
_Crying, he ran through the woods._

1 as anything by Pullam so often does.


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## berndf

Paul, taking into account what Thomas wrote in #24, we could probably resolve this by understanding _naked_ as part of an elliptic adverbial clause: _[Being] naked, he ran through the woods_. Within the sub-clause, it is an adjective, no doubt. As a clause it functions adverbially within the main sentence.


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## PaulQ

berndf said:


> Paul, taking into account what Thomas wrote in #24, we could probably resolve this by understanding _naked_ as part of an elliptic adverbial clause: _[Being] naked, he ran through the woods_. Within the sub-clause, it is an adjective, no doubt. As a clause it functions adverbially within the main sentence.


_being naked_ implies the cause of his running and this is not what the original states. If we add anything to aid understanding, it has to be "He was naked; he ran through the woods."


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf,
So, logically, any relative clause, perhaps even any clause, is adverbial, too, true?

_He, *who was naked*​, ran through the woods._


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## berndf

PaulQ said:


> _being naked_ implies the cause of his running...


I can't see any reason why it would. Taken at face value, it merely states simultaneity. Could you explain?


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## e2efour

_Being naked, he ran through the woods_ is for me the equivalent of because he was naked.


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## Schimmelreiter

It might as well be concessive in meaning: _​Although he was naked, ... _Or just relative (see #28).


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## berndf

e2efour said:


> _Being naked, he ran through the woods_ is for me the equivalent of because he was naked.


Wouldn't you agree that this is just an idiomatic fixation of this precise expression, and not inherent to the semantics of this types of participle clauses? Otherwise all of those clauses we have discussed here and which express simultaneous properties wouldn't work.


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## Thomas O'Maley

Hi Bernd, 

The crucial word in the syntactic analysis of the examples offered in this thread is "predicative" - whether we are using adjectives like "naked", as in : He ran through the woods naked, or -ing verb/clause as in: He sat there crying, or (less typically) prepositional phrase as in: In a bad temper, Max seemed intent on ruining everybody's fun (example from CGEL, p521), it is the same syntactic element in the sentence, whatever its form is. In CGEL they use the term "predicative adjunct" for this constituent, the term "predicative" indicating the fact that this constituent requires "..and overt or understood predicand" (CGEL p.530). 

The -ing clauses in the initial examples are thus predicative adjuncts (or to use alternative term "secondary predication") which I think are best to be understood as a way of economy with words - we choose not to repeat the understood subject and say: He sat there and he was crying. We could alternatively use coordination for the same purpose of using words frugaly and more elegantly: He sat there and cried.



He sat there crying.

He sat there naked.


The verb "crying" and the adjective "naked" are single words functioning as predicative adjunct but they don't have the same functional potential. The verb is the head of the clause and the most important word within the sentence, and for this reason much more easily analyzable as a clause than an adjective. Thus the fact that "crying" is a single word doesn't prevent its analysis as a clause at all. "Cry" is most often used intransitively and so we have a clause which contains only the head "crying", but it's still as easily identified as a clause as are more clause-like, expanded forms such as "crying his eyes out" or "clenching his teeth" or similar if used as predicative adjunct instead. 


The fact that we can use adjectives or prepositional phrases or some other form in the same construction doesn't make the -ing verb form adjectival or prepositional, or the other way around. Those are only different manifestations of the same syntactic function. 
In those examples from the opening thread then the -ing clauses (non-finite clause headed by the -ing verb form) function as predicative adjuncts/secondary predication within the sentence. Qualifying them as adjectival or adverbial or whatever after the names of word classes should be avoided for many reasons. The main reason is of course is that in case of -ing predicative adjuncts we are talking about a clause in its own right, not a word - a subordinate, non-finite clause with its own predication.




> I looked at e2efour’s link to the Pullam reference but the author’s logic escaped me at pages 20/211 in his claim that adverbs can qualify nouns.



In A Student's Introduction to English Grammar p123 the authors say that adverbs modify not only verbs, adjectives and other adverbs but also determinatives, prepositional phrases and noun phrases. In the footnote on the same page they note that the use of adverbs as noun modifiers is restricted to post-head position (withdrawal indefinitely, shortage of timber internationally) and subject to severe constraints. 
They say that adverbs can modify noun phrases: Possibly the best actress in the world, and only exceptionally a bare noun, which falls within the concept of prototype they use in their grammar, as they mention on page 22 of the book.


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## berndf

Thomas O'Maley said:


> In CGEL they use the term "predicative adjunct" for this constituent, the term "predicative" indicating the fact that this constituent requires "..and overt or understood predicand" (CGEL p.530).


That is CGEL terminology. My analysis is obviously in the context of traditional grammar. At this point I might have to quit the discussion as I utterly despise the attitude of CGEL and the so called "modern grammarians" to a degree that makes it impossible for me to participate in a civilized discussion.

I am the first to admit that this is a shortcoming of my emotional fabric and nobody else is to blame.


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## Thomas O'Maley

But why would you have such a strong opinion of grammatical concepts advocated in CGEL? I have read both Quirk's grammar and Cambridge Grammar and I believe that the departure the authors of CGEL made from traditional grammar is well-argumented. The part dealing with non-finite clauses is particularly well explained and illustrated with numerous examples  If you ask me CGEL is a work of geniuses and I'm really grateful that this book exists.


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## PaulQ

Thomas O'Maley said:


> Hi Bernd,
> 
> The crucial word in the syntactic analysis of the examples offered in this thread is "predicative" [...] so we have a clause which contains only the head "crying", but it's still as easily identified as a clause as are more clause-like, expanded forms such as "crying his eyes out" or "clenching his teeth" or similar if used as predicative adjunct instead.
> 
> ... In those examples from the opening thread then the -ing clauses (non-finite clause headed by the -ing verb form) function as predicative adjuncts/secondary predication within the sentence. Qualifying them as adjectival or adverbial or whatever after the names of word classes should be avoided for many reasons. The main reason is of course is that in case of -ing predicative adjuncts we are talking about a clause in its own right, not a word - a subordinate, non-finite clause with its own predication.


Thank you for that. It is very clear.





> In A Student's Introduction to English Grammar p123 the authors say that adverbs modify not only verbs, adjectives and other adverbs but also determinatives, prepositional phrases and noun phrases. In the footnote on the same page they note that the use of adverbs as noun modifiers is restricted to post-head position (withdrawal indefinitely, shortage of timber internationally) and subject to severe constraints.
> They say that adverbs can modify noun phrases: Possibly the best actress in the world, and only exceptionally a bare noun, which falls within the concept of prototype they use in their grammar, as they mention on page 22 of the book.


Yes, I saw that and was unimpressed. There are a few examples from BNC, one of which, minus the repetitions etc, is at page 20 (in the pdf) (28) Distribution (b): “Three or four of us start talking yesterday about the [attitude generally of students in the sixth form…]”

I don’t think that the sentence has been properly punctuated and suggest: “Three or four of us start talking yesterday about the [attitude, generally, of students in the sixth form…]” 

And this is an ellipsis for the parenthetical, “about the [attitude, and here I am speaking generally, of students…”

The same applies to the other examples he gives.


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## Thomas O'Maley

You are welcome PaulQ, I am glad you liked it.


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## lapdwicks

I do feel that -ing form is used as adjective.

But in this situation, it looks like an adverb rather than an adjective.

He walked all the way *limping*.

Here he hasn't done two things (walking and limping) although it seems to be different in the former example "he sat there *crying*".


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## Thomas O'Maley

Just to add a brief comment on the quoted part from Loob's post:



> So I'll just say that
> (1) I agree with Bernd that _
> Stevie Wonder was born blind.
> _and _
> Naked, he ran through the woods._
> are different constructions.




They are different in a sense that "blind" in "Stevie Wonder was born blind" is more integrated in the clause structure than "naked" is in "Naked, he ran through the woods". "Blind" in the first sentence is obligatory in the given sense, firmly integrated in the sentence structure, and thus a complement rather than an adjunct. "Naked" is, on the other hand, prosodically detached from the rest of the sentence and separated from it by comma. It is called "supplementive predicative adjunct" in CGEL.
But it still doesn't make that big a difference for me, as adjectives in both cases require the subject as a predicand and that remains the main point with the use of adjectives as sentence-level constituents this way. For example, in the sentence: Stevie Wonder left home young, adjective "young" would be analyzed as predicative adjunct but the construction is still very much alike to Stevie Wonder was born blind. 
I mean, things should simplified as much as it is possible in such a complex thing as language is. I'll repeat that, in my opinion, in the analysis of this construction the main point is to understand what concepts of "predicative" and "predicand" mean, and also to notice that the usage of non-finite (-ing and -ed) clauses and adjectives, as two main forms in this construction, is very common in English.


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## Thomas O'Maley

Hi lapdwicks,

I said in my first post in this thread that the two  actions can semantically relate differently to each other. In the  initial examples the actions are interpreted as happening  simultaneously, but such interpretation is only one of the possible  semantic relations that the two situations can stand to each other. As I  said before the interpretation will depend on the pragmatic factors,  the semantic class of the verb and other factors. As I mentioned, one  typical relation is also cause - effect, or, as in the example you gave  "He walked all the way limping", the -ing clause may be intepreted as  describing the manner in which the action in the matrix clause is  performed (He walked with a limp).
Where people go wrong in my  opinion, is that they find a single or a few examples of the use of -ing  clause in this way, and then hurry to generalize and draw conclusions  on the basis of those examples, trying to squeeze in all possible  semantic interpretations into the premise they started with. That is a  major mistake. As you can see, it is far from possible to generalize and  say that -ing clauses in this construction are "adverbials" based on  the fact that you can replace "limping" in your example with  prepositional phrase "with a limp", or adverb "unevenly"  or whatever. It is not even the most frequent interpretation in this  syntactic construction, the best you can say is that it is one of the  semantic relations between the situation described by the subordinate  -ing clause and the situation in the matrix clause. 

What is the  point here is that we can identify relatively straightforward syntactic  construction and the two outstanding forms - ing/ed clauses and  adjectives that occur in this construction. To a learner, it is  sufficient information which can help them achieve the necessary  automation in putting together their sentences. It will help if they  know that this is one and the same syntactic construction, even the  semantic relations within the sentence are different:

I am breaking my head trying to figure this out.

I am sitting in my chair, chomping on sunflower seeds.

I am trying to reboot my computer, pressing the shut down button.


I'll  repeat - the best way to look at this construction is as a way of  economy in language, avoiding redundancies and repetition.


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## Thomas O'Maley

I am currently reading "The Testament" by John Grisham and here is a sentence I've come across in the book:

Lying there in the dark, swaying with the pitch and roll, waiting for the Santa Loura to crash into the riverbank, Nate had a horrible thought.


Again, instead of thinking of the -ing clauses in this construction as "adjectival" or "adverbial" they should be thought of as additional predications. In this sentence there are three clauses tacked onto the main clause - "Nate had a horrible thought", which we can call in turn secondary, tertiary and quaternary predication or predicative adjuncts or whatever we choose - as long as the terminology we use is clear, and doesn't jumble different syntactic concepts together we can't pick any one we like best. This construction is obviously all about stacking multiple ideas together neatly, where the ideas contained in -ing clauses are syntactically and semantically subordinate to the one contained in the main clause. If we are to compare it with some other syntactic form in language, it is going to be a form of the same syntactic level, -ing clauses in this construction cannot be systematically compared to words such as adjectives or adverbs, or prepositional phrases even if we can, on occasion, rephrase them by using different syntactic form without losing much on the meaning. Coordination and subordination of clauses are basic features of any language I guess.


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## Forero

Thomas O'Maley said:


> I am currently reading "The Testament" by John Grisham and here is a sentence I've come across in the book:
> 
> Lying there in the dark, swaying with the pitch and roll, waiting for the Santa Loura to crash into the riverbank, Nate had a horrible thought.
> 
> 
> Again, instead of thinking of the -ing clauses in this construction as "adjectival" or "adverbial" they should be thought of as additional predications. In this sentence there are three clauses tacked onto the main clause - "Nate had a horrible thought", which we can call in turn secondary, tertiary and quaternary predication or predicative adjuncts or whatever we choose - as long as the terminology we use is clear, and doesn't jumble different syntactic concepts together we can't pick any one we like best. This construction is obviously all about stacking multiple ideas together neatly, where the ideas contained in -ing clauses are syntactically and semantically subordinate to the one contained in the main clause. If we are to compare it with some other syntactic form in language, it is going to be a form of the same syntactic level, -ing clauses in this construction cannot be systematically compared to words such as adjectives or adverbs, or prepositional phrases even if we can, on occasion, rephrase them by using different syntactic form without losing much on the meaning. Coordination and subordination of clauses are basic features of any language I guess.


I have only ever heard these things called participial phrases (traditionally of course). They are called that because they "modify" the nearest available noun or pronoun.

For example, if we mean it to be Nate lying there in the dark, it sounds kind of funny to say:

_Lying there in the dark, a horrible thought occurred to Nate._

(That seems to be about a horrible thought lying there in the dark.)

This is commonly called a misplaced modifier. If it we mean Nate lay there in the dark but don't mention Nate at all, it becomes what is traditionally called a dangling participle:

_Lying there in the dark, a horrible thought occurred._

The commas in the original quote, rather than making the phrases adverbial, make them parenthetical and hence nonrestrictive.


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## Thomas O'Maley

According to the grammatical model adopted in CGEL "lying there in the dark" would be analyzed as a clause not a phrase. The point is that it is not that the -ing clauses in this construction "modify" the subject in the matrix clause - they "borrow" it from the main clause.
The fact that the -ing clauses in this construction miss the subject which needs to be recovered from the main clause, and that they are always syntactically subordinate most often signals the fact that the main message is in the matrix clause. In the Grisham's sentence lying in the dark, swaying and waiting for the boat are all circumstantial to "Nate had a horrible thought". But it doesn't need to be so, we can have two concurrent actions with equal weight in the sentence. In I was lying in the dark, watching TV  I am no less lying than I am watching TV.
The fact is that -ing clause most often needs predicand in the main clause for the sentence to sound natural, as you illustrated in your example, but that it is not always so, and sometimes the understood subject of the clause is to be recovered from somewhere else. In this two Language Log posts http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001174.html Geoffrey Pullum and Arnold Zwicky elaborate on this issue, brilliantly of course.
Adjectives in this position require the predicand to be in the main clause, there is no getting around this fact in case of adjectives.


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## Forero

Thomas O'Maley said:


> According to the grammatical model adopted in CGEL "lying there in the dark" would be analyzed as a clause not a phrase. The point is that it is not that the -ing clauses in this construction "modify" the subject in the matrix clause - they "borrow" it from the main clause.
> The fact that the -ing clauses in this construction miss the subject which needs to be recovered from the main clause, and that they are always syntactically subordinate most often signals the fact that the main message is in the matrix clause. In the Grisham's sentence lying in the dark, swaying and waiting for the boat are all circumstantial to "Nate had a horrible thought". But it doesn't need to be so, we can have two concurrent actions with equal weight in the sentence. In I was lying in the dark, watching TV  I am no less lying than I am watching TV.
> The fact is that -ing clause most often needs predicand in the main clause for the sentence to sound natural, as you illustrated in your example, but that it is not always so, and sometimes the understood subject of the clause is to be recovered from somewhere else. In this two Language Log posts http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001174.html Geoffrey Pullum and Arnold Zwicky elaborate on this issue, brilliantly of course.
> Adjectives in this position require the predicand to be in the main clause, there is no getting around this fact in case of adjectives.


I call this "metalanguage":

_Without detracting from Fowler's point that the Anglo-Saxon is to be preferred to the Romance at all times, the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts is not merely "slovenly" (Partridge's word): it is downright confusing._

That is, language about how the speaker words a sentence, chooses, a word, or about how well a term fits the speaker's purposes. Clearly the speaker (or speakers if a sentence has multiple writers) must be the implied subject of _detracting_ here.

But this interesting sentence brings up another point, getting back to the question of gerund vs. participle. If we add a preposition to one of the sentences in the original post, the phrase headed by the _-ing_ form in question becomes the object of that preposition:

_I drove home *without* thinking about what she said._

And if instead we add a subordinating conjunction (or is it a preposition too?), the "gerund phrase" does seem to be some sort of clause:

_I drove home *while* thinking about what she said._

Also, this last version does seem to make the "clause" in question adverbial, whereas I would have called the _without_ version adjectival.

It seems clear to me that either we need some sort of quantum superposition of word functions or better categories than I was taught.


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