Talk:abandoning

rfd-sense: Noun. The act of abandoning. Sense included in participle form. Usexes for participle include one for such use. DCDuring TALK 01:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Isn't the second example sentence a use of the gerund rather than the present participle. I thought that the present participle could only act as an adjective, not a noun - but maybe I'm too old-fashioned. SemperBlotto 07:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I had labeled it as "gerund" on the right of the usex. Perhaps I should insert the tag on the left, but we don't normally have any tags for usage examples.
 * I am trying to get at how this ought to be presented. CGEL insists that there is no reason in current English to make a lexical distinction between gerund and participle and they make a pretty good case. But calling it a "gerund-participle" seems ugly. Quirk et al in the other grammar also seem to not find merit in a lexical distinction, but I don't own that one so I can't check. I am not sure how long before Quirk et al. (1985) the gerund/participle terms started to diminish in favor. I do not think that the vocabulary of gerund and participle is as deeply ingrained among users as the parts of speech vocabulary so I am inclined not to take it too seriously. I am open to discussion on this and don't see why wiktionary should be on the bleeding edge of terminology change. This just doesn't seem like the bleeding edge to me. DCDuring TALK 18:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I was gonna say RFV, but it's already cited in the article. May as well keep it now. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)