atw: Re: Time for another debate?

I think this thread will be exhausting people's patience, so I'll try to be
brief for the sake of anyone who feels they still need to read it.

If you think that the assumption that 'entering transactions' is a noun
phrase automatically entails that 'entering' must be a noun (and I'm not
disputing that, just sidestepping it as uninteresting), then I'd say there's
nothing more to argue about, because I just can't see any reason to
doubt the premise. I didn't offer any evidence for it because to me it's
blatantly obvious. What else could it be other than a noun phrase? It would
be very unusual to have a title that isn't a noun phrase (well, I can think
of a couple of fictional titles - 'Put out more flags' and 'Keep the
aspidistra flying' - that are verb phrases, and 'On the beach' and 'For the
term of his natural life' would traditionally be called adverbial phrases,
but these stand out as being unusual. Imagine similar titles in a user
manual!). Also, as I said, 'entering transactions' is obviously a noun
phrase in a sentence like 'entering transactions is a breeze'. What if the
title were a single word, like say 'Compiling', which could occur in a
programming context? Would you still say it's an adjective?

Howard

2009/5/25 Geoffrey Marnell <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>  Hi Howard,
>
> I could be wrong, but I think you are assuming what you want to prove by
> claiming that "entering transactions" is a noun phrase. A  noun phrase has a
> noun as its head word ("entering" in this case, as you have interpreted it),
> but isn't that the very thing we are arguing about, namely, is "entering" a
> noun or a present participle in a chapter title such as "Entering
> transactions"?
>
>  In the sentence "Last week she was entering transactions; this week she is
> deleting them", "entering transactions" is hardly a noun phrase. It is part
> of a verb phrase. "Entering" here is clearly a present participle. And it is
> not being used adjectivally. We are not in any way describing, defining or
> evaluating transactions.
>
> Of course, if you interpret the sentence as meaning "Last week, she was
> engaged in the entering of transactions;..." (an ugly nominalisation) then
> "entering would be a noun (a good old gerund, in fact).  But now you have
> radically changed the sentence. The original is clearly about the *action*of 
> entering; the latter is about the
> *function* of entering.
>
> Maybe when you see a chapter title like "Entering transactions" you
> automatically interpret it as saying "The entering of transactions". I
> don't. I interpret "entering" as having to do with actions, not having to do
> with an abstract noun. And this interpretation seems to tie in with the
> conventional wisdom (I use the term loosely) in our profession that suggests
> that a chapter a title should include a word that indicates that the chapter
> is about doing things. Which is exactly the the issue I raised at the start
> this thread. It seems that many in our profession interpret "Entering" in
> "Entering transactions" as a having to do with doing. That's why they want
> it in the title.  My side gripe, apart from the superfluousness of the word,
> was that folk in our profession like to call these introductory words
> gerunds. A gerund, as we all agree is a noun. So something has to give.
> Either "Entering transactions" fails the requirement of indicating action
> (since "entering" is a gerund and hence a noun"). Or "entering" is not a
> gerund (since it is not a noun but an action word). We can't have it both
> ways.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Geoffrey Marnell
> Principal Consultant
> Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
> T: +61 3 9596 3456
> F: +61 3 9596 3625
> W: www.abelard.com.au
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>  *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Howard Silcock
> *Sent:* Monday, May 25, 2009 2:18 PM
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: Time for another debate?
>
>  Oh sorry, I obviously read your original post a bit carelessly (and I
> wasn't even drinking claret).
>
> On the topic of gerunds, etc, I'm a bit reluctant to get into detailed
> discussion as this isn't a linguistics list, but since you ask I'll have a
> go. It'd probably be more accurate to say that 'entering transactions' is a
> noun phrase. It can be used as the subject of a verb (e.g. in 'entering
> transactions is a key activity') or in many other ways just like a noun.
> However, you can also analyse the internal structure of the phrase and it's
> clear from the meaning that 'transactions' is the direct object of
> 'entering', which is a non-finite form of the verb 'enter' and can have
> objects like a regular (finite) verb. If 'entering' were adjectival (which
> is what's usually implied when the term 'present participle' is used), then
> it would modify the meaning of 'transactions' and the whole phrase would be
> about transactions rather than the process of entering them. (This
> interpretation might be appropriate, for example, if you were using the
> phrase to distinguish transactions going into a system (the entering
> transactions) from those going out, say.)
>
> So just as you can form a noun (the gerund 'entering') from the verb
> 'enter', you can form a noun phrase from the phrase 'enter transactions', by
> again adding the -ing and importing the direct object unchanged. You can
> also form a noun phrase from something much more complicated, such as
> 'enter complex transactions received from an external system', in the same
> way.
>
> Traditional grammar of the sort I learnt at school seems to try always to
> bring everything down to the level of individual words, but in practice
> language doesn't work like that. We naturally construct sentences out of
> whole phrases just as much as we do out of words, and sentences are often
> better analysed into phrases first. Another well-known example is a phrase
> like 'the man next door's dog' - here the 's needs to be viewed as an
> inflection applied to the whole phrase 'man next door', as the dog obviously
> doesn't belong to the door.
> So do I consider the word 'entering' in 'entering transactions' a noun?
> That was your question and I haven't answered it. I'm not sure if I can, but
> I hope what I've said indicates that I think it's of little interest in
> analysing the structure of the sentence.
>
> Does all this have anything to do with your original question? Well,
> probably not.
>
> But at least you got a debate - of sorts.
>
> Howard
>
>

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