Gerund Or Present Participle?

gerund as noun object.

LcwangDo you consider 'fishing' in the following sentence a gerund or a present participle?

I’ll go fishing on the weekend.

For explanation purpose, I expanded your sentence as follows:

I am going fishing with my friends this weekend

I am going- where ? Fishing with my friends this weekend. – clause describing where and when. So to me, Fishing is a present participle being used as an adverbial clause to modify the sentence, not a gerund. Whereas, “I’ve decided on going fishing this weekend” where “fishing” is in this case a gerund.

Goodman

Lcwang
Do you consider 'fishing' in the following sentence a gerund or a present participle?

I’ll go fishing on the weekend.

For explanation purpose, I expanded your sentence as follows:

I am going fishing with my friends this weekend

I am going- where ? Fishing with my friends this weekend. – clause describing where and when. So to me, Fishing is a present participle being used as an adverbial clause to modify the sentence, not a gerund. Whereas, “I’ve decided on going fishing this weekend” where “fishing” is in this case a gerund.

And what about?

"What are you doing this weekend?"

"I'm going fishing."

Or:

"What will you do this weekend?"

"I'll go fishing, I think."

I believe the older (OE) form of this structure was e.g.

1. I'll go on fishing.

This survives in the jocular or deliberately archaic form

2. I'll go a-fishing.

where the "a-" is a worn-down version of the OE preposition "an/on". (It also features as the prefix in words such as "abed", "asleep", "alive", etc.)

Thus the earlier version was "go" + preposition + ing-form; which means the latter is a noun (i.e. a gerund).

(It's difficult not to feel it as a participle, though.)

MrP

Milky

Goodman

Lcwang
Do you consider 'fishing' in the following sentence a gerund or a present participle?

I’ll go fishing on the weekend.

For explanation purpose, I expanded your sentence as follows:

I am going fishing with my friends this weekend

I am going- where ? Fishing with my friends this weekend. – clause describing where and when. So to me, Fishing is a present participle being used as an adverbial clause to modify the sentence, not a gerund. Whereas, “I’ve decided on going fishing this weekend” where “fishing” is in this case a gerund.

And what about?

"What are you doing this weekend?"

"I'm going fishing."

Or:

"What will you do this weekend?"

"I'll go fishing, I think."

Milky,

For both questions, I am certain the asnwer is "participle".

LcwangDo you consider 'fishing' in the following sentence a gerund or a present participle?

I’ll go fishing on the weekend. I think "fishing" is a gerund, because people say #1 rather than #2.
[1.] I'll go trout fishing on the weekend.
[2.] I'll go fishing trout on the weekend.

The construct "noun (object) -ing" is a noun phrase in English.

paco

What you say is true, Paco, but the major problem I have with accepting fishing as a gerund is that -- if we take 'gerund' to mean (some kind of) 'noun' -- it makes go transitive.

I'm inclined to agree to a certain extent with Goodman that it's like go home, where home looks a lot like a noun, but is an adverb.

Doesn't the same puzzle occur with all catenatives where the second verb is an -ing form?

CJ

Hello CJ

Yes, you are right. You can understand the "fishing" is a gerund and the gerund functions syntactically as an adverb to modify "go". It is a tradition of the English language you use often a noun phrase as an adverbial, isn’t it? Actually this "go fishing" was originally "go on fishing" as told by MrP. It is important to recognize that this "fishing" is a noun phrase, because otherwise we cannot understand why you say "I'll go fishing in the river" instead of "I'll go fishing to the river". "Fishing in the river" as a whole is a gerund and it works as an adverbial to "go".

paco