Walk past, look over

Hi,

Please, tell me what's the meaning of:

1) 'Walk past'. Example: An old man walked past the church where he got married 35 years ago. It just means eg he was walking along the street, he arrived in front of the church, and continued walking. He didn't go in.

2) 'Look over'. <<< do you mean 'go over'? Example: He sees an old friend of him on the corner of the street where he lives, and goes over to talk to that man. He walked over the ground, the distance, between him and the man. He approached the man.

Best wishes, Clive

Hi, Clive!

                                                                       Thank you!

 Yes, sorry! In fact I  was thinking (about) 'go over' and wrote 'look over'. By the way what's the meaning of look over?

For example: "He looked over to the hospital when he saw a patient escaping from it".

Another question : Why can 't we say : She began understanding the lesson? (only: She began to understand the lesson).

Thanks again,

Tamil

Hi, Marius Hancu!

   Thank you very much for your help.

   Best regards,

   tamil

Hi,

Thanks again for your attention . Concerning to the sentence "She began to understand the lessons", I only asked you why we couldn't use: "She began understanding the lessons, because I saw a book saying that when we have verbs of beginning, continuing, and ending such as begin,start,cease, continue, and these verbs are followed by verbs of knowing/understanding, infinitive is usually used usually, yes because these verbs involve states and are normally used in the progressive. I think you mean 'not normally used in the progressive'.

Example: You can begin writing now (or) You can begin to write now. 

But then the book continues by saying afterwards, that in an example like this one: "He began to understand", that there's no alternative.    

 Can you help once more with it, please?! (even a friend of mine that is studying together with me, also sent a message about it today, which title is" The -ING Form. He said that only one replied him, but didn't give an explanation. So if you could take a look at that message  You want me to look at something outside this post? Where is it?and help us , we will be very grateful!

Michael Swan addresses this point in his book 'Practical English Usage'. ( Section on "-ing form or infinitive" ) Let me try to summarize a bit. He says some interesting things, although finally he suppports your original thought and I find myself disagreeing with him!

In 'He started smoking', 'smoking' is not a progressive tense. It is what Swan calls an '-ing form' because he says that grammarians often differ in various cases over whether words like 'smoking' here are a present participle or a gerund. 

Let's focus on begin/start. Swan notes that these verbs can be followed by either the infinitive or the -ing form of most verbs, usually with no difference in meaning. He says the -ing is perhaps more common when we want to suggest the beginning of a long activity. eg At the age of eight, he began learning English. He notes that the -ing form is not used after the progressive tense of begin/start, eg don't say 'He was beginning learning English'.

But he gos on to say that after begin/start, the verb 'understand' does not take the -ing form. eg she began to understand what he really wanted, not she began understanding what he really wanted. Hmmmm. He's Michael Swan and I'm not. All I can say that is that the latter example sounds acceptable to me, because of what Swan himself said earlier about to "suggest the beginning of a long activity", ie it would take her a long time to finish understanding what he really wanted. To try and support my opinion, I offer the fact that Google seems to give a rough count of 61,400 hits for "begin understanding", 110,000 hits for "start understanding".

Sorry these comments got a bit lengthy.

Best wishes, Clive