lightning

[Beverly Flanigan]

I've always said "It's lightning"; "there's lightning" sounds strange,
unless something like "in the sky tonight" is added.

At 02:33 PM 3/24/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>My first-year German text gives equivalents for It's thundering, It's
>raining, It's snowing, and There's lightning. Does everyone get around the
>participle this way to avoid the double -ing-ing (i.e.*It's lightninging)?
>Do other polysyllabic -ing verbs come to mind that are treated that way?
>(Monosyllabic Bring, Ring, Sing, etc. seem to be OK.)
>
>Something of this sort seems to be taking place in Swiss German, which has
>an -ik equivalent of the Standard German noun suffix -ung unless the
>previous syllable was <-ig>, i.e.:
>         Standard German         but     Swiss German
>         Ordnung                         [ortnik]
>         Sammlung                        [samlik]
>         Entschuldigung                  Entschuldigung
>         Beendigung                      Beendigung
>
>Peter R.