Korean Job Discussion Forums

[raewon]

Hope everyone had an enjoyable Chinese New Year's. It already seems like it was months ago.


Here's my grammar question:

Here are a few tips to make a long flight more comfortable. Place a thin facecloth over your face, and direct the air vent toward the cloth. I also like to dilute rosemary oil with water and pour it into a tiny spray bottle, then [dampening / dampen] the cloth with that.

I would choose "dampen" as the correct answer, but once again I'm at a loss when I try to explain why "dampening" can't be used. Can I use faulty parallelism as the reason?

Thanks.

[jiberish]

I would say dampen,

then dampen..
while dampening..

ahh I can't explain it either = /

[Globutron]

to me, dampening implies a continuation:

'then, dampening the cloth with a sponge, the dog will become damp.'

more of a present tense feel to it.

[kinerry]

it's a tense issue

dampen is present, dampening is present continuous

[Privateer]

It's an imperative so the simple form 'dampen' rather than the progressive form 'dampening' is used.

If you want to tell someone what to do, you can use the simple form of the verb - and perhaps add the helping verb 'do' for emphasis, not that we do that much. You would say 'Please sit over there', not 'Please sitting over there', wouldn't you? (Although I've heard Koreans use the progressive as an instruction and it always sounds very odd.)

This is leaving aside the various polite constructions used to soften imperatives into requests (e.g. 'Please could you sit over there'), but the point is the progressive form is never used.

[crossmr]

When writing instructions the only time you would use the progressive tense would be if two things were happening at the same time.

While holding the mattress up, tuck the corner underneath

[rusty1983]

Yeah it's the imperative

Boil the potatoes for twenty minutes

Open the window

Enter your bank details

It's an order, if you like

[edwardcatflap]

It's not the imperative and it's not 'the present'

It's the base form of the infinitive. The speaker says earlier "I like to dilute rosmary oil etc..' then he continues to use 'pour' and 'dampen' as part of the same structure, omitting 'to',
short for " I like to pour and I like to dampen'.

'Place' is the imperative but that comes earlier before he uses the verb 'to like' which incidently can take the infinitive or the gerund . However he uses the infinitive forst with dilute so the other verbs must take the same form

[grant gerstners]

Place a thin facecloth over your face, and direct the air vent toward the cloth.

comment: both place and direct are in the imperative.

Original: I also like to dilute rosemary oil with water and pour it into a tiny spray bottle, then [dampening / dampen] the cloth with that.


Modified as follows, to make the multiple infinitives more obvious:

I also like to dilute rosemary oil with water, to pour it into a tiny spray bottle and then to dampen the cloth with that.

[rusty1983]

Yeah I was wrong, shouldve read it properly. Should probably do that more when im teaching too!

[grant gerstners]

I also like diluting rosemary oil with water, pouring it into a tiny spray bottle, and then dampening the cloth with that.

Or, if you wanted to continue the prior imperative:

You might also like the following: dilute rosemary oil with water, pour it into a tiny spray bottle, and then dampen the cloth with that.

Either all infintives, all gerunds or all imperatives can make for tidier construction.

[edwardcatflap]

Strictly speaking the gerund doesn't really work in this example from a functional aspect. Like + gerund is normally used to describe something that gives a person pleasure, rather than here where the speaker is descibing an action that is useful or a good idea. For that function the infinitive is normally preferred