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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