Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Endre Abkarovits: The -ing form after finite verbs in the reference books of the nineties

examples while the traditional Longman English Grammar is the only one which offers relatively rich information on this issue, but as it is the earliest among the books examined, it is the most likely to follow traditional views. Still, it is not likely that the English language has changed such a lot recently that we should suppose that Alexander's lists are unreliable, as the COBUILD corpus figures of the previous table also testify to it. The Oxford dictionary has no different patterns for the two ways of expressing the logical subject of the -ing form, but it does not refuse to give examples with the possessive. It offers however the examples in a fairly inconsistent way, so the absence of the other form does not necessarily mean its non-existence. Here are some examples to show this inconsistency: recall (V. ing

) I recall seeing him there. (V.n ing) I recall her giving me the key. (A form chosen which can be either possessive or accusative.) recommend (V. ing, V.n ing) I recommended (your) meeting him at first. (Giving two patterns with one sentence and only the possessive in brackets.) remember (V. ing) I remember posting the letters. (V.n ing) I remember him objecting to the scheme. (Only the accusative example indicated.) resent (V.n ing) Does she resent me/my being here? (also V. ing) (Both forms of the logical subject indicated, basic pattern only in brackets.) tolerate (V.n ing) I will not tolerate your behaving in this way. (Only possessive without brackets.) Let's see what figures the 50 million corpus of COBUILD Direct gives for the above patterns. (Only examples where the -ing form is clearly a non-finite clause have been selected. The relative infrequency of some forms, when considering the millions of the 88