Re: USAGE: "Laughingly":What part of speech is it?

Robin Turner wrote:

> I once started writing an article call "Taming the Wild Gerund" but gave up on
> it, as the gerund proved to be too wild to be tamed.  A gerund certainly isn't
> an adverb, otherwise there wouldn't be a film called "The Shining".  In
> English, at any rate, adding -ing just seems to make it a rather vague part of
> speech whose behaviour depends on syntactic and semantic context e.g.
Well, if you look at it, that just makes it a noun, right? I mean, if it serves
nosyntactic function, then it could only serve to change the part of speech :
the gerund nominalizes the verb, a deverbitive noun (yes, that term is actually
used in the literature).

> They objected to my laughing - verb-like noun
> I am laughing - adjective-like verb
This is not a gerund -- this is the present participle being used as partof the
progressive aspect verb formation.

> A laughing hyena - verb-like adjective-like compound noun ?!
Again, the present participle.

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"Ille se profecisse sciat cui Cicero valde placebit."
   - poster found on professor's door.
========================================================