An odd construction

Jim Parish jparish at SIUE.EDU
Sun Oct 22 15:10:43 UTC 2006


Last week, on entering my classroom, I found a worksheet, apparently
prepared by one of our Speech & Communication instructors. In it
appeared the following (elision and emphasis mine):

"You're fed up with a neighbor who acts decidedly unneighborly...
*borrowing things they rarely remember returning*"

The intended meaning of the asterisked phrase is clear, but the
construction seems decidedly odd to me. Has anyone else run into
similar substitutions of "V-ing" for "to V"?

Jim Parish

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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