Re: USAGE: "Laughingly":What part of speech is it?
| From: | Orjan Johansen <oerjan@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, October 5, 1998, 16:42 |
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On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
> Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
>=20
> > > I am laughing - adjective-like verb
> >
> > progressive verb
>=20
> Though note that a progressive verb is synthetically an auxiliary
> verbplus a present participle.
I seem to have read somewhere that it actually descends from a gerundive,
however - it used to be "I am at laughing", which became "I am
a-laughing", and then it was reanalyzed as a participle, and the "a-"
dropped/deprecated.
Greetings,
=D8rjan.
--=20
'What Einstein called "the happiest thought of my life" was his
realization that gravity and acceleration are both made of orange
Jello.' - from a non-crackpot sci.physics.relativity posting