An odd construction

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:10 AM -0500 10/22/06, Jim Parish wrote:
>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"?
>
That is curious.  As stated, this act seems more Alzheimery (I not
infrequently borrow things and then forget having returned them, or
lend things and then forget others returning them) than unneighborly.

LH

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