Hi MG, The issue was on the use of, existence of, Gerunds. If you looked up in your dictionary the word "FATHER" it would appear as a NOUN. It is in fact representing someone FATHERING, TO FATHER, and as such FATHER objectifies a process. This dynamic of verb->noun is nominalisation and is a property of language in general, more so a property of your brain structure/dynamic in general where precision favours nominalisation. It is this objectification, and so universalisation, that can upset things in that a person can be fathering, loving, parenting, policing etc etc but the objectification removes all of these 'doings' to make 'beings'. As such one does not consider one's Father as anything other than 'father' - where in some contexts it could be useful to 'denominalise' for the sake of communication issues etc. (IOW it could be easier to shift focus to talking to 'Chris' rather than to 'Dad' in certain contexts) I can denominalise (?) and talk of the verb 'to Granet' which could represent, for example, your style of prose or expression (to Granetise?) - or 'to Lofting' which would cover giving someone a real hard time which they did not expect/anticipate! ;-) Chris. ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************