Re: Settle a Bet

> >A couple of people said something like this, and I feel like I should
> >contradict.  From a hyper-traditional grammar this may be true--nouns
> >don't have transitivity, so neither does a gerund like "eating."  But
> >that's absurd--"eating" in "She is eating" doesn't function like a
> noun,
>
>
> I always saw the "is <gerund>" construction in English as a
> "continuative tense", myself.
Exactly right.  The formal term is "progressive tense" or "progressive
aspect."

> >I argue that even in a sentence like "Eating makes me fat," the word
> >"eating" is a verb.  That's because you can freely add an object:
> "Eating
>
> "Eating makes me fat." == "The act of eating makes me fat."  "Eating"
> is the name of a specific type of activity.  "Eating X makes me fat."
> may very well be a different grammatical form, even if the
> orthographic and spoken forms might be identical.  They certainly
> fulfill different functions.
If "eating" is the name of a specific type of activity, then surely
"eating ice cream" is also a kind of activity.  I don't see any semantic
difference, other than that inherent in the difference between transitive
and intransitive uses of the verb.  Further evidence that "eating" is a
verb:

Negation:  "No food makes me hungry" vs. "Not eating makes me hungry";
"Not eating ice cream makes me hungry"
Articles: "This food is great" vs ?* "This eating is great"; * "This
eating ice cream is great"
Tenses: "Having eaten ice cream is great,"


Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax@ juno.com
"Skin and tragedy always attract a crowd."
    --Pedro the Lion