Safire on participles and gerunds

[Dennis R. Preston]

Although I bet arnold will admit to its being an ambiguous noun-noun
compound, the latter a verb-derived gerund and the former the plain
old noun Arnold wrote of earlier.

Ingredients for the stuffing (the stuff).
Ingredients to be used in the activity (the stuffing of the bird)

dInIs


>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Safire on participles and gerunds
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Dec 24, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Joel Berson wrote:
>
>>  Thanks, Arnold.  I am fortunately constrained in submitting to the
>>  OED to decide only between verb, adjective, and noun.
>>
>>  I do have one quibble, though.  What about the adjectival use, in
>>  "The stuffing ingredients are bread crumbs [etc.]"?  Or should I wait
>>  'til next November to raise this issue?
>
>no need to wait.  "stuffing ingredients" is a noun-noun compound (like
>"pie ingredients").  its first element is of the category N, with the
>function Adjectival.  (noun-noun compounds are one case among many in
>which it's important to distinguish category and function.)
>
>arnold
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-353-4736
preston at msu.edu

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