Level: beginner
We can use the -ing form of a verb:
- as a noun:
I love swimming.
Swimming is very good for your health.
You can get fit by swimming regularly.
- as an adjective:
The main problem today is rising prices.
That programme was really boring.
He saw a woman lying on the floor.
-ing forms as nouns
-ing nouns are nearly always uncount nouns. They can be used:
- as the subject of a verb:
Learning English is not easy.
- as the object of a verb:
We enjoy learning English.
Common verbs followed by an -ing object are:
admit like hate start avoid suggest enjoy dislike begin finish
- as the object of a preposition :
Some people are not interested in learning English.
- -ing form as a noun
-ing forms as adjectives
The -ing adjective can come:
- in front of a noun:
I read an interesting article in the newspaper today.
We saw a really exciting match on Sunday.
- after a link verb like be, look or sound:
Your new book sounds very interesting.
The children can be really annoying.
- after a noun:
Who is that man standing over there?
The boy talking to Angela is her younger brother
- especially after verbs of the senses like see, watch, hear, smell, etc.:
I heard someone playing the piano.
I can smell something burning.
The commonest -ing adjectives are:
amusing boring disappointing |
interesting surprising tiring |
worrying exciting frightening |
shocking terrifying annoying |
- -ing form as an adjective
Patterns with -ing forms
Because an -ing noun or adjective is formed from a verb, it can have any of the patterns which follow a verb. For example:
- it can have an object:
I like playing tennis.
I saw a dog chasing a cat.
- it can be followed by a clause:
I heard someone saying that he saw you.
- -ing form as a noun or adjective 1
- -ing form as a noun or adjective 2
Hello Ykilic34,
First, a comment on sentence 1: I think you can say both deny doing and deny having done without any difference in meaning, but I think deny doing is much more common. After all, the use of deny (or denied) already establishes the fact that the action is in the past, so the perfect form is superfluous.
Sentence 2, as it stands, has a more general meaning. It tells us about the person's normal behaviour. If you put the definite article in, then it becomes specific:
Now, the meaning is the same as the first sentence. Like the first sentence, you could use a perfect form (...had stolen...) without changing the meaning.
Sentences 3 and 4 differ only in style, with sentence 3 being much more formal.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Shoaib50,
2 is correct -- it's an infinitive of purpose. We don't use 'for' + '-ing' forms to talk about the purpose of an action (in this case, 'is studying').
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
I'm afraid we can't answer questions about texts from other websites, but at a glance, it looks to me as if they are using 'would' to speak about a hypothetical situation here.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
The text appears to shift from present to past tense in a rather illogical manner and I would not say that it is a good model.
Generally, we avoid commenting on texts from other sources, or providing answers to tasks from other sites. It's not our role to assess them in this way, particularly as some of them may simply not be well written. If you have a question about a text like this from another site then I would suggest you ask that site and see what they have to say.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Emmanuel,
The first one is correct! After allow with an object (e.g. him), it needs to + infinitive verb (e.g. to work).
You can use the -ing form after allow, but without an object. For example:
Does that make sense?
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
There are many situations in which we use gerunds, but essentially they are nominalised verbs -- in other words, they are formed from a verb, but act as a noun in a sentence.
I'm afraid what exactly 'talking about an action in an abstract way' means. If you have any more details about that, or an example, we can try to help you more.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Parikenan,
I'm glad that you feel my comment helped you, though really I don't think I can take any credit!
Best wishes,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
Even though what most English textbooks teach is the second one, which is often called a second conditional form, both of them are correct.
The difference is that in the first sentence, the speaker considers the action of calling the teacher 'mom' more realistic in some way. Perhaps the people he or she is speaking with have already said they plan to call their teachers 'mom' and he or she is asking what they think would happen if they really did this.
In the second one, this same action is much more hypothetical. Perhaps it's the first time they've even considered this idea. This is the meaning that the past subjunctive form lends in this and many other situations.
Does that make sense?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
Your sentence is not quite right. The phrase is 'understand something to mean' (without 'that'). The phrase is just another way to say 'means'. For example:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Parikenan,
This sentence is not correct. It's not clear who the relative pronoun refers to and the structure is not clear and is not natural English.
This sentence is correct grammatically, but it no longer includes any reference to the particular sentence the policeman is saying, so it's more general now.
The second sentence :
Here, you need to change the sentence as follows:
Or in my short sentence,
This is grammatical, but it is more general as it does not tell us how the person understands this, only that they do understand it.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
Sentence 1 is correct and 2 is not. In 1, 'telling how ...' is a participle phrase acting as a reduced relative clause -- it means the same as 'which tell how often ...'. Although our participle clauses page doesn't discuss reduced relative clauses much, it's a similar idea that I think you might find useful.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
They do have the same meaning, but I'd recommend you use the first one because it sounds more natural.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
I'm afraid you can't omit 'that' in this case. This is because the antecedent of 'that' is the subject of the verb 'happened' in the relative clause. In a case like this, the relative pronoun cannot be omitted.
When 'that' is the object of the verb (rather than the subject), then it can usually be omitted. For example: 'Laura likes the book that I got for her' can also be said or written as 'Laura likes the book I got for her' because 'that' is the object of the verb phrase 'I got'.
Does that make sense?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Parikenan,
It is certainly grammatically possible to use the possessive here, but it is a form which is slowly disappearing from modern English and I think in this context it is quite unlikely to be used.
I don't have any frequency analyis to support this, but my sense is that the possessive form in such constructions is very rare with indefinite pronouns (somebody, anybody etc).
I noted that you reposted your question. Please post questions once only. It may take us a few days to answer as we are a small team here but please be patient. Posting the same question more than once only delays the process as we have to check and delete the repeat post.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Alexandre,
Traditionally, begin to do is used when describing a particular action:
Begin doing is tradionally used with a more general meaning:
However, this distinction is disappearing in modern English. I think most people today use the two forms interchangeably. In your example I don't think there is any difference between them.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Sakura30,
Here the idea is that since Bob's child has been kidnapped, he must have found something significant in the brush. In other words, the kidnapping doesn't make sense if Bob really found nothing in the brush.
So here 'justify somebody kidnapping your child' means something like 'explain why somebody would kidnap your child'.
Does that make sense?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Sakura30,
I'm afraid it's difficult for me to say which one is meant without knowing more about the film, but what I understood when I first read it was the first explanation.
I don't get the sense that anyone is justified (in the sense of being right) here. I think 'justify' means something like 'give a reasonable explanation for' in this case. In other words, the kidnappers had a reasonable reason for kidnapping Gibson's child (assuming that they are more concerned about their self-interest than Gibson's or his child's), but this doesn't mean it was justified -- it is, after all, a crime.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello sejal thakur
This means 'to be intended to'. If you look at the third entry (INTEND) for 'mean' in the Cambridge Dictionary (follow the link), you'll see a light blue box with this definition and some example sentences. There's also another explanation on this grammar page.
Best wishes
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello ryuo,
In your examples, there is a big difference in meaning:
visiting parents means people are coming in order to visit their parents. You might say this if the parents are in hospital, for example.
visiting of parents suggests that it is the parents who are doing the visiting. You might say this if the parents have a child in hospital, for example.
More generally, the phrase with of shows a possessive relationship, while in the phrase without of we have a direct object. Which is the better option really depends upon the particular example, the context and the speaker's intention.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team