Groups

[Dar Scott]

On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 03:55 PM, Dar Scott wrote:

> On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 03:34 PM, miscdas at boxfrog.com wrote:
>
>> Gerund?  Where? Gerunds are nouns that always end in -ing.
>
> Like dingaling?

Yikes!  That looks like it could be read as name-calling.  I intended 
only to come up with a silly counter example for fun.  Some others:

"Reading" as in "Which is larger, Reading, Pennsylvania, or Reading, 
Ohio?"
"bee sting" as in "When did you get that bee sting?"
"_The_Joy_of_Singing_" as in "How long did it take you to write 
_The_Joy_of_Singing_?"
"boing" as in "Where did you here the boing?"

I understood the original reference to gerund as a loose reference to 
processes in which verbs become part of a noun.  I didn't read it to 
have a sense that a language arts teacher might use.

I think the particular problem here, related to verbs, is an ambiguity 
in referring to an aggregate or to multiple individual instances.

Dar Scott