User:Tony1/Mental vs behavioural verbs: to -ing or not to -ing

This is part of a series of tutorials for second-language speakers who want to edit articles on the English Wikipedia. The series covers several common issues in English grammar that are often challenging for those speakers.

The current page deals with the choice of whether to use the present (she walks) or the present in present (she's walking) tense when using two important classes of verbs: the mental and the behavioural. This is a fiddly part of the grammar, but it's ubiquitous and sounds weird unless you get it right. It's something so hard-wired into native speakers of English that they tend not to be aware of it; so it might be interesting for them, too, to become more familiar with this corner of their linguistic minds.

Every language has different ways of categorising the "goings-on"—happening, doing, sensing, meaning, and being/becoming—that we experience in the outside world and inside our minds. These processes are often treated differently in the grammar of those languages. This has a significant influence on how we "model" the world as we know it. English has evolved with six fundamental types of verb (or "process"), of which the mental and the behavioural are two of the most commonly used. Here I'm simplifying by lumping two types into the "behavioural" label (behavioural and material types); we don't need to make that distinction when learning the usage of -ing. The other three processes (relational, existential, and verbal) need not concern us here.

Behavioural processes are those of "doing" or "happening": A does something to B, or something happened to B that was caused by A:

What did the woman do ? The woman kicked the ball." What happened to the ball? It was kicked by the woman."

These are processes that go on in

Mental processes

Starting out
Let's begin with straightforward tasks. The following six examples can ... First, try to ; then hit [Show] to view the suggested solution. Please remember not to type in your answer: just think, then click.

A
xxxxxxxx.

I'm loving this city.

I'm seeing the Moon.

watching/looking

hearing/listening