Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Abkarovits, Endre: Contradictions in Describing and Using the -ing Form as Object. (Complement)

- 15these functions in these popular dictionaries, (e.g, appreciate, deserve, forgive, mention, understa

nd - the latter two are mentioned only by Hornby) When I began to examine the verbs followed by the -ing form I was prepared to find a lot of contradictions in the different books by reason of my earlier experience. After completing the table I have to admit that the situation is not as bad as all that. Especially if you have a look at the whole group of patterns offered for the same verb by different books, you can judge quite definitively which forms are permitted after a given verb. (It might be true however that just one or two books would not suffice.) In spite of this general conclusion it is necessary to call attention to some contradictions in the table. (The differing figures do not always contradict each other. E.g. the pattern 2ci can coexist with pattern because not all books find it important to indicate that besides the more common gerund we can sometimes have object + to be / to hav

e after the given verb. In some places another figure is given in brackets showing that the other form can also occur, but less frequently. Another reason for differing figures may be that one book enumerates the possible patterns in all the different meanings of the verb, another separates these according to the different meanings and function. And now let us see some concrete examples where differing patterns are offered by the authors. (Can't) bea

r and (

will, won't) bea

r are not separated in some books although the gerund after the latter has a passive meaning, so it is not guite justified to put them into the same pattern. In the case of avoid, consider, delay, enjo

y Corder and Scheuerweghs claim that only the possessive pronoun or the genitive case of the noun is acceptable before the gerund, while in Allan's list only 3 (

deny, postpone, risk

) are mentioned to be the ones which do not accept the accusative, the former four not. I think this is rather the result of some inattention because none of the examples contains an accusative. Another surprising example is the verb have

, this is however illustrated by an example too: 'I won't have you

r writing homework in pencil'. (EES: 190) Corder also gives a similar example (IEP: 64), out in both sentences have is used in the meaning 'permit', I have not found any example with the possessive in the more common causative sense of the word.