Teacher Discussion Forums

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

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.

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