Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 January 29

= January 29 =

Infinitive-like gerund?!
Hi there, I thought about those 2 sentences, and I realized that both are correct:

(1)I saw her talking.

(2)I saw her talk.

While in 1, the adverb (correct me if it isn't) is gerund,

I can't classify the adverb in the 2nd sentence.

I mean, I realize that the first is much more progressive action, and the 2nd is more completed?

But I can't classify it, I mean if it were infinitive it would look like:

I saw her to talk*

And it doesn't make any sense.

01:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exx8 (talk • contribs)
 * It's a bare infinitive. See the coverage on the topic in the Wikipedia article on the use of English verb forms. --108.36.120.196 (talk) 02:26, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the above is right - bare infinitive. But I don't think the first is technically a gerund. I think in your first example "talking" is a present participle acting adjectivally, as described at Gerund. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * SM's right. "Talking to him is exasperating" would be an example of a gerundial use of talk.  English used to have separate forms, but they merged to -ing after Chaucer.  German retains the difference: Bedutung "meaning" comes from the gerund, and bedeutend "meaningful" is the participial form.  English has lost the -end form and merged the two under -ing. μηδείς (talk) 18:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * There is no adverb in either sentence.


 * Although there is an aspectual distinction between "was talking" and "talked", there isn't such a distinction between the two clauses that you contrast.


 * Descriptive grammar doesn't stand still; it advances as the study of language advances. Dictionaries don't reflect these advances, grammar books intended for language learners may not, and prescriptive grammar books (largely written by silly people for nervous people) probably don't either, but good descriptive grammars do reflect them. Although people can disagree with particular parts of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), taken as a whole, it has no serious rival. CGEL presents a reasoned rejection of any division between "gerund" and "present participle", instead calling the thing a "gerund-participle". It also presents a reasoned rejection of the "infinitive". It calls both "her talking" and "her talk" non-finite clauses, and internal complements of "saw". They're different subspecies of non-finite clauses: "her talking" is a "gerund-participial clause" and "her talk" is an "infinitival clause". (Yes, though "infinitive" has been done away with, "infinitival" has not.)


 * WP's article "Gerund", cited above, is pretty bad. (Which is not surprising, as it doesn't cite a single solid, recent book about grammar.) Example:
 * For example, consider the sentence "Eating this cake is easy." Here the gerund is the verb eating, which takes an object this cake. The entire clause eating this cake is then used as a noun, which in this case serves as the subject of the larger sentence.
 * (This particular factoid is not attributed to any source.) Why a noun phrase, let alone a noun? (Tip: although a subject more often than not is a noun phrase, it doesn't have to be.)


 * Although CGEL is necessarily large, complex and expensive, a second book by its primary authors, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (SIEG), is not. I highly recommend it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Schools in my country teach the grammar like this: The present participle replaces active relative clauses, while the past participle replaces passive relative clauses. So the first sentence could be "I saw her(, who was) talking" compared to "I saw her(, who was) arrested by the police". The second sentence with the infinitive only works because "to see" is a "verb of perception". And the difference between the two is aspect. The sentence with the present participle stresses the duration (long action, the speaker only observed one part of this action), while the sentence with the infinitive stresses the result (brief action, so the speaker observed the whole situation, could've also seen the person doing something else like "I saw her talk to XY, buy some food and meet YZ"). Don't know if this is real grammar though. --2.245.131.73 (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert, but one objection to it as "real grammar" might be that "I saw her, who was talking" and "I saw her, who was arrested" aren't natural English sentences, and they don't seem to suggest the same meanings as "I saw her talking" and "I saw her arrested".  However, if they're effective ways of teaching English in your country, I can see why they're used.  Certainly any English grammar has to say in some way that "see" is one of a few special verbs relating to perception that participate in constructions such as "I saw her talk". &mdash;JerryFriedman  (Talk) 15:23, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hoary, aren't you talking about differences in terminology? In one system of nomenclature, the subject of a sentence is always a noun phrase, whose head (I believe that's the term) can be a noun, a pronoun, an -ing verb, or an infinitive with "to", or it can be certain kinds of clause, or maybe other things.  In another system, a noun phrase is a phrase whose head is a noun, and the subject of the sentence can be a noun phrase, or certain kinds of verb phrase, etc.  These are different ways of using words to describe the same facts.  In other words, I'm suggesting that your tip could have have been, "Although a subject more often than not is the kind of phrase that CGEL calls a noun phrase, it doesn't have to be."
 * Twenty years from now, when a new comprehensive grammar is available, will you be giving people tips that contradict your present tip in either terminology or content? If so, that might affect the phrasing of your tips.
 * Of course, the article "Gerund" has the same problem. &mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 15:18, 4 February 2015 (UTC)