# He will not spend ＄5 studying English



## Kawagucchan

"Half-gerund" might be a pompous label. It refers to the ing seen in the sentence below:

He will not spend ＄5 studying English

Q: Can "NOT" in the sentence above modify only "studying English"?

e.g., He will not spend ＄5 studying English, but buying lottery tickets.

＄5 is too cheap to study English(^-^; He might buy a cheap English book.


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## Uncle Jack

Kawagucchan said:


> Q: Can "NOT" in the sentence above modify only "studying English"?


No. It can only modify "spend" (or, if you prefer, "spend studying English").

It is no different from "He will not spend $5 on books". This says nothing at all about what he might spend on anything else, and there is no suggestion that he would spend $5 on some other thing.


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## Kawagucchan

Uncle Jack, in "Tom did not spend his youth dating with a lot of girl" , it seems that "not" negates only "dating...".
Time is automatically consumed. It can't be negated, I think
Do the original sentence and this sentence have different stories?


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## Hermione Golightly

Well, 'not' does not modify only dating. It modifies 'spend'. 'Spend time doing something' vs 'not spend time doing something'.


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## lingobingo

Kawagucchan said:


> "Half-gerund" might be a pompous label. It refers to the ing seen in the sentence below:
> 
> He will not spend ＄5 studying English
> 
> Q: Can "NOT" in the sentence above modify only "studying English"?
> 
> e.g., He will not spend ＄5 studying English, but buying lottery tickets.


In “He will not spend $5”, it’s the modal (*will*) that’s negated by *not* – which applies whatever the infinitive that follows it.

He *will* spend (positive) / He *will not* spend (negative)​
The verb statement as a whole can apply to more than one object, but your example is not very idiomatic. It’s anyway better style to negate the object rather than the verb.

He does not spend his money [on] feeding his family but [on] buying lottery tickets. ​He spends his money not on feeding his family but on buying lottery tickets. ​
However, none of this has much to do with the term *half-gerund*, which was coined by Henry Sweet in the late 19th century and relates mainly to the function of the present participle in constructions such as “I hate *him* wasting money” rather than “I hate *his* wasting money”.


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## Rover_KE

Kawagucchan said:


> "Half-gerund" might be a pompous label. It refers to the ing seen in the sentence below:
> 
> He will not spend ＄5 studying English.


I'd call it a _participle_.


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## Kawagucchan

lingobingo said:


> In “He will not spend $5”, it’s the modal (*will*) that’s negated by *not* – which applies whatever the infinitive that follows it.
> 
> He *will* spend (positive) / He *will not* spend (negative)​
> The verb statement as a whole can apply to more than one object, but your example is not very idiomatic. It’s anyway better style to negate the object rather than the verb.
> 
> He does not spend his money [on] feeding his family but [on] buying lottery tickets. ​He spends his money not on feeding his family but on buying lottery tickets. ​
> However, none of this has much to do with the term *half-gerund*, which was coined by Henry Sweet in the late 19th century and relates mainly to the function of the present participle in constructions such as “I hate *him* wasting money” rather than “I hate *his* wasting money”.



Do you think I need to add "on" before "buying"?
・He will not spend spend  (on) 5 dollars, but (on) buying lottery tickets.
The string "not...but..." without "on" does not make sense due to not being idiomatic? Of course, "He will not spend 5 dollars, but will spend 100 dollars buying lottery tickets" (= the whole sentence negated)seems plausible to me.


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## Uncle Jack

Kawagucchan said:


> He will not spend ＄5 studying English





Kawagucchan said:


> Do you think I need to add "on" before "buying"?


Really, all of these sentences should have "on" (the gerund forms part of an adverbial), but "on" and other prepositions are often omitted with this use of "spend". I think the reason for this is that we are so used to using a participle phrase as an object complement when spending time (I spent three hours buying clothes), that we forget that the same construction cannot really be used with spending money (I spent $100 buying clothes). At least, I don't think it can. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.


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## Kawagucchan

Linguists believe that some preposition before ing forms was historically dropped.
In half-gerunds, "in" was dropped, according to a paper. However, it seems that
in half-gerunds with a proce, what was dropped seems "on", potentially suggesting that
half gerund constructions roughly have two sources: in drop and on drop.


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## Uncle Jack

I haven't come across the tern "half-gerund" at all. I recognise the use lingobingo mentions in post #5, although I was not aware of any particular term to describe it, but it is clearly different from what you are asking about here. What examples are given using "in"? I am not at all sure that this particular usage of -ing words with the verb "spend" has any connection with anything else.


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## Kawagucchan

Samuel Johnson spent his life (in) writing the monumental dictionary.
Tom spent ＄5 (?in/on) studying English.

It seems that the on is preferred to in in the latter sentence.


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## Uncle Jack

Spending time doing something is ordinary English. "Doing" is a participle and "doing something" is an object complement. However, if the focus of the sentence is not on the thing that the subject did, but that the subject was occupied and did not do other things for a period of time, then using a participle phrase as an object complement conveys the wrong meaning, so a  prepositional phrase is used instead. This difference in focus is subtle and I cannot think of a good example (except to say that using "in" in your Samuel Johnson example appears to be wrong), but these are both correct uses, one using an -ing word as a participle and the other as a gerund.

However, with spending money rather than time, I don't think it is possible to use a participle phrase as an object complement, and a prepositional phrase is needed. But because people are used to using using the form "spend time doing something", they might be misled into using "spend money doing something" rather than "spend money on doing something". I don't think the term "half-gerund" makes any sense here. You can call it an error (using a participle phrase instead of a prepositional phrase), or you can say that the preposition has been omitted (which makes little sense really, since we don't omit prepositions with other verbs).

The problem, as I have said, appears to be the verb "spend". Do you have any examples with other verbs?


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## Kawagucchan

＞The problem, as I have said, appears to be the verb "spend". Do you have any examples with other verbs?

As far as I've worked out, the omission of a preposition after several verbal phrases has been frequently reported:
be busy (in) ing, have a difficulty (in) doing etc. On the other hand, there are some verbal phrases which mandatorily require the presence of "in": succeed in ing.

The verb spend seems to have a very interesting disposition, in the sense that it can be accompanied not only by "in" but also by "on".

I also referred to a dictionary, which is considered to be the most authoritative in Japan.
There is an example below recorded:

She spend a lot of money traveling.


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## Uncle Jack

You do realise that using a participle phrase as an object complement is standard English. No preposition is omitted, and the -ing word is a participle not a gerund. This usage only exists with certain verbs, and in some cases, such as with "spend", only with certain meanings of the verb.



Kawagucchan said:


> The verb spend seems to have a very interesting disposition, in the sense that it can be accompanied not only by "in" but also by "on".


This is not at all unusual. Prepositions convey meaning, so different meanings often use different prepositions.



Kawagucchan said:


> On the other hand, there are some verbal phrases which mandatorily require the presence of "in": succeed in ing.


Prepositional phrases can be used in all sorts of circumstances. Since you appear to be looking at possible confusion between prepositional phrases and participle phrases as object complements, it does not seem to make any sense to look at intransitive verbs.


Kawagucchan said:


> I also referred to a dictionary, which is considered to be the most authoritative in Japan.
> There is an example below recorded:
> 
> She spend a lot of money traveling.


This use appears to be legitimate, referring to spending money in general. It is when the object of "spend" is a particular sum of money that I don't think a participle phrase really works, whereas when the object of "spend" is a particular period of time, it is fine.


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## Kawagucchan

Uncle Jack said:


> No preposition is omitted



Contemporary native speakers might not have the syntactic structure: (preposition) v-ing.
That is, the slot for inserting a preposition before a v-ing had already disappeared for some reason. 
But in middle English, the slot did exist in several participial structures.

・We went (on>a>∮)hunting.

A linguist reports that in the "spend time ing" string, the employment of "in" declined as the time went. This thread is not for 
discussing the matter from the philological standpoint, so I will not treat the philological matters in depth, though.


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## Uncle Jack

If you want to talk about Middle English, then say so. It is four or five centuries since Middle English was spoken, and the language has changed considerably since then.

In twenty-first century English, the use of participle phrases as object complements is well established. This is nothing new, and here is an example from _The Sign of the Four_ by Arthur Conan Doyle from 1890:
But it does seem a queer thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I who have a fair claim to nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor."​


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## Kawagucchan

Thanks for showing me the interesting example.
This thread now contains a lot of information, so it might deviate from the main topic of this thread.
I would like to close the discussion. I would like to express my gratitude to all the members who gave me 
beneficial advices.


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