Gerund or present participle

[Andrew Patterson]

Is the -ing word in "gone fishing," a gerund or the present participle?

[lolwhites]

I've always thought of a gerund as taking the place of a noun e.g. Tobacco is bad for you or Smoking is bad for you. As you can't replace the -ing form with a noun in He's gone fishing I suppose it's more present participle than gerund.

I usually just stick to the term -ing form and leave the terminology to Mr Spock. Given that so much of the terminology comes from Latin, and English is a Germanic language, it's pretty much inevitable that it will prove inadequate sometimes. The most important thing is that we all understand the phrase.

[Andrew Patterson]

Thanks Lowhites, that seems to confirm what others have said. It is interesting to note, however, that there are only a limited number of intransitive verbs that seem to be followed by the present participle:

"Be" obviously, "come", "go", "get", are all that I've found. This sugests that these verbs are semi-auxiliaries.

The existance of an object seems to force the -ing form into being a present participle. It doesn't seem to matter if the object comes before or after the -ing form.

Can anyone think of any more intransitive verbs that take the present participle?

This was discussed on developing teachers.com before the thread went dead. Although, there was a lot more to say IMO. Maybe some people just don't like catenatives.

http://www.forum.developingteachers.com ... 5&start=15