Search results for 'tag:Sentence structures tag:Gerunds' matching tags 'Sentence structures' and 'Gerunds'

Re: Headquartered

Clive — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:23:16 GMT

Hi,

To whom it may concern

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Canonical Ltd is a global organisation headquartered in the Isle of Man committed to the development, distribution and promotion of open source software products, and to providing tools and support to the open source community.

Canonical's projects include the Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu operating systems. All of those products are developed as free and open source software and can be used , modified, and redistributed without permisson and completely free of charge. As part of promoting ...

............................................................

[The above was written on a package which I received today. In order not to pay custom duties, the sender has written the above. The sender is an organisation which promotes open source. They don't have any intention of making money. I know it very well. They just post to anybody on request.]

I don't think it is correct to write 'providing tools and support to the open source communinty'.

It should be 'provide tools and support to the open source community'. No, the way it is written is better. The sentence structure needs a noun or a noun-like word, ie a gerund. committed to the development, distribution and promotion . . .and to providing . . .

You could use the noun 'provision' instead of the gerund 'providing'.

Furthermore to write 'organisation headquartered in the Isle of Man' sounds strange. Is it correct to write 'headquartered' ?

The word headquarter is not a verb. Is it a verb too? It's not at all unusual for business writers to use nouns as verbs.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Two question about "where"

Goodman — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:49:04 GMT

<<<<Such concepts as tense, gerund, participle, clause (and classification thereof) are wihtout a slightest doubt useful and sometimes even essential to the learning of English (at least, this is so for me).

<<<Furthermore, I try to undrstand things logically and find explanations for every problem so that I won't have to simply memorize things! - I agree with you. However, I see room for tone and structure improvements!

Without taking side, I would like to share my 2 cents' worth. I always feel that if one is not born an English speaking native and his ultimate goal is to be able to write and speak English like a master, he is in for a long-agonizing journey. I have been at it for 20 years and still painfully working on getting it perfect. I realize that I often made careless errors, such as missing an "s" here and there and misspellong word etc. That, I think is something I have to work on but is tolerable to myself, as long as I know my speech and sentence structure are gramamtically sound and the meaning is getting across. For learners, it's extremely benifitial to possess a good understanding on all aspect of English, but in real life I dare say, many are not in that category, including natives. Frankly, more than a few don't even know and could care less what "past perfect tense" is. I don't mean to antagonize anyone. That's how I see it. That's said, learners must in time learn to develop a balance in learning. By that, I mean learning the fundanentals and applying them gramamtically correct in their writing without suffering from the"unnatural" sound. What I see is, many learners are too focused on the grammatical aspects and neglected on structure and tone, or vise vera. Ultimately, their writing is often compromised. I have been there. Believe me!

Re: Gerund=past vs Infinitive=present or future

Goodman — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:57:20 GMT

Miche wrote:
Hi, JT.
I can see you don't like rules much and I agree with you. Rules are too restrictive, hamper one's "feeling" the language and deprive him/her of the pleasure of speaking the language. That is a major problem with English learners in my country - they can recite mile-long lists of rules but they simply cannot speak. That's because they start thinking of rules whenever they try to say something. However, non-native speakers need guidelines to learn a language. Probably balance is the key.
As for Seyfihoca's "rule", I think it is very interesting. I've never thought about that. I'm just tempted - linguistically - to think of more such words. And if we are to elaborate on Seyfihoca's assumption, I think we can place Mr. M's four examples in a third group - verbs followed by other verbs that express simultaneous actions.

I agree with you with the highlighted points

I think there are several stages of English learning one must go through before he can express thoughts and idea fluently at will. Without question, stage 1 is to learn the grammar. We need to establish that as a foundation so that more learning can be built on it. At that stage, most learners rely on grammar and text books. Whatever the book says, it must be true and for the most part, it is. But once we pass beyond the basics, more and more questions will surface as our English knowledge gradually builds and accumulates on what we learned.

Next level is to build and expand our vocabulary. Many learners depend on the translation of dictionary in their mother tongue, which can be a problem because what the translated meaning means in their mother tongue often donât carry same weight in meaning in English, or even gone completely off âcourse. This can be frustrating as they learn from time to time they are using words incorrectly.

Speaking from experience, this is the time when one has to be ânaturalizedâ, or âimmersedâ in a constant English speaking environment with natives where he can learn speech patterns, sentence structure, how natural English sounds, and proper word usage; if he is motivated to leap to the next level. This process can take years to refine and many learners will develop a feeling of being stuck at the same spot. Unfortunately many learners are satisfied to just have learned these skills to get by and probably reluctant to the take the next level which is to develop an ability to think, to process logic and to make reasonable arguments in English. This will require all of our mental capacity and the acquired English skill we have learned, and stored in our brain, which is actually a lot harder than just talking about it.

Well I hope you guys donât think I am crazy!

Noun, Gerund?

MIA6 — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:54:23 GMT

1.The definition of a Gerund is the name given to the -ing form of the verb when it serves as a noun. But my question is how about if this verb also can be noun? LIke the word "play" , it can be a verb, but also can be a noun. So when it serves as a noun, do we still need to add -ing after that verb? As in, Playing/Play is pretty fun. Strolling through stores can exhaust the hardiest shopper. As we can see, stroll is a verb, but also can be a noun. so do we still need to add "ing" to "stroll"? Can we say "Stroll through..... "?

2.Jobs paying well are hard to find. I don't understand this sentence structure. Can you analyze it for me? Why there is no word between "Jobs" and "Paying"? Jobs paying well here is a single object as a subject?

THanks for replying.

Re: Why '-ing' in these sentences.

Goodman — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:58:35 GMT

Tobias wrote:
I have a question about two sentences.

Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars.
The outer layer is removed, resulting in white rice.

Why do the highlighted verbs here need to be gerunds? Thanks very much for your comments.

T.

Tobias,

This type of sentence structure with verb+ing as present participle is very common. I agree with others that they were written in an odd tone.

For your questions, since they are similar, I will take the first one and rewrite it as follows just for explanation purpose.

Example Question: Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars.
Revised: Half the students had bad behaviors, which include drinking and visiting karaoke bars.

Present participle sometimes can be used to link a preceding context, action, noun and pronoun to a definitive statement. Example:

As John arrived home and opened the front door, he was completely stunned to have found a trail of his belongings scattering from his front door all the way to the end of the hallway where his bedroom was.

He stood at the door for a few minutes, seemingly feeling unsure what to do, and pondering on whether he should go into his bedroom to investigate. Finally, being concerned with his own safety, he reached in his pocket for the cellphone, deciding to call the police.

In this passage, I used this structure repeatedly for demonstration purpose so that you can get a sense of the usage. Hope that helps.

Re: gerund? participle? adverb? - comments and questions

Goodman — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:44:18 GMT

I had a similar discussion with a teacher on line regarding this type of sentence structure sometime ago.

If I said âHe has saved for year hoping to start his own businessâ. Would you say this is a similar sentence structure as âHe spent years training himself to writeâ?

If you agree, then I believe âhopeâ and âtrainingâ are not used as gerunds but as present participle to describe the action.

If I ask the following questions, can you comment ?

The board of directors met for hours trying desperately to work out a budget, but still no decision. Present participle ?

Despite hours of trying, there is no decision/ Gerund ?

Re: quick one!

Philip — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:39:04 GMT

NaOH wrote:
" we really appreciate you coming down here." i kind of have a feeling that instead of using 'you' we can use 'your' as well. a quick remark on the sentence structure will also be very helpful.

In this sentence, the gerund 'coming' is used as a noun and requires a possessive adjective, 'your'.

Re: Bad sentence?

whl626 — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 01:22:31 GMT

There are two types of sentence structure here.

1. Our commitment is to .....

2. We are committed to .....

For the 1.

After the verb to be ' is ' is supposed to be a noun, so ' to improve ' fits in well. Since ' to + infinitive ' form a noun phrase.

For the 2.

" to " is a preposition, so it is supposed to be followed by a noun, but ' improve ' is a verb, so to turn it into a noun. We add ing to it to make it a gerund and gerund is a noun in action. So it will become

eg. We are committed to improving .....

Re: 'To' followed by Gerund or Infinitive

whl626 — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:55:34 GMT

I know Troy I just meant to say ' I am accustomed to the cold ' is right whereas ... to being cold is not.

Because based on the sentence structure we either use ' noun ' or ' gerund ' after accustomed to but while ' being ' is used it serves as a gerund in the passive form followed by a past participle. Hope it clears the air