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Latest comment: 14 years ago15 comments8 people in discussion
Noun sense, marked uncountable. I'm wary of any noun -ing which is uncountable: is it not just the verb? I'm not saying "delete": I'm just saying we probably should, and seeking more knowledgeable/wise editors' input.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
Delete. As with almost all gerunds, there can be a plural. If we want to take that as evidence that it "is" a noun rather than that it functions like a noun sometimes, we can choose to do so, but we will be wasting our time largely duplicating what it is in the entry for the lemma of the verb. "-ing" forms can assume new meanings: consider happening in its 1960s-70s sense. I'm not sure that our entry for, say, ] is a paragon of excellence in distinguishing gerundial from novel true-noun senses, but there are some senses of reading that seem like true noun senses. I don't see that with this term. I suppose we could RfV it to give such senses a chance to show themselves. If we find one we will be lead lemming. DCDuringTALK02:12, 26 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
Keep until there is a discussion and consensus on whether what is sometimes known as gerund should be entered as a noun.
Are you people saying that you accept certain verb forms on noun-phrase positions in sentences?
A sentence fraction: "... he indulged himself with perusing it for the last time." This I would parse as "... he indulged himself with <noun-phrase>", where <noun-phrase> gets expanded to "perusing it for the last time".
The existence on "perusal" has IMHO no bearing on whether "perusing" is used as a noun. "perusal" is IMHO only a non-Germanic quasi-gerund, formed not using the native Germanic "-ing". The quasi-gerund is never used on present-participle positions, but it is used on other gerund-positions.
When "perusing" is defined as "present participle", it does not fit into the sentence "... he indulged himself with perusing it for the last time."
The search google books:"perusings" finds plural occurrences. A quotation with an article: "For those firmly rooted in a trait theory approach to human behavior, we suggest a perusing of the readings listed above."
Re "Dictionaries do not count these as nouns meriting definitions": Admittedly, MWO hosts "perusing" in "peruse", but it also hosts "perusal" in "peruse". And MWO does not have separate pages for inflected forms.
This is IMHO not a subject for RFD.
A precedent: Talk:fucking, containing a long and informative RFD on "fucking" as a noun.
We have had numerous discussions, mostly in the course of discussions of individual entries. Our most productive discussions of general principles almost always seem to arise from issues raised at individual entries.
In English all -ing forms of verbs can be used as nouns and can form plurals and can be used attributively to modify nouns. The generic senses are both uncountable (the process or activity referred to by the verb: "much snoring") and countable (instances of the process or activity" "many snorings").
Some -ing forms eventually develop senses that are not readily viewed as part of the generic senses (eg, building, housing, tailings, booking). These require Noun PoS sections with meaningful definitions. I would argue that only these kinds of meanings warrant Noun PoS sections.
Right now, "-ing form" is not a valid PoS-heading in Wiktionary. "-ing form" is not a type of position in a sentence, unlike <noun-phrase>; "-ing form" classifies a word form by how it looks (it ends in "ing") and what it is derived from (from a verb), but not by what it does or what role it plays in a sentence. The discussion archived at Talk:fucking showed there was no consensus on deleting noun sections of gerunds or -ing-forms the last time the subject was discussed. You may want to reopen that discussion. I would do it in Beer parlour, as reopening that discussion has consequences that bear on policy. The title could be "Noun sections of gerunds", "Noun sections of -ing-forms" or the like. The discussion at Talk:fucking shows the complexity of the subject, and contains some powerful arguments made by various people. --Dan Polansky11:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)Reply
I was not trying to start a controversy about the appropriateness of the "Verb" header for -ing forms. "-ing form" is a way of characterizing the form that distinguishes it from the other forms of English verbs without bringing in the baggage of particular functional roles.
If we want to have noun sections for these, why not also have adjective sections? We could probably have a bot add one sense for each of the verb senses for both of the PoSes and trans tables for each sense. This should provide ample opportunity for demonstration of bot programming and translation skills. I particularly look forward to seeing how someone will present an entry like "building", where there are some actual semantically distinct senses of the noun as well as all the redundant verb senses. We may as well throw in an attributive-use-of-the-noun sense for each the "gerund" senses as well as for each true noun sense. DCDuringTALK14:59, 13 September 2010 (UTC)Reply
We have such a way. We can call perusings a plural of perusing. We can call it a noun or a verb by arbitrary decision. We already have similar inconsistencies in English in showing hyphenated alternative forms as Adjectives whereas the unhyphenated form is a Noun. DCDuringTALK11:30, 13 September 2010 (UTC)Reply
The estimable Ruakh's view notwithstanding, I still say delete. Sticking a separate noun POS out there for every present participle would just be clutter. We should be concentrating on substantive definitions, not this sort of stuff. -- Ghost of WikiPedant15:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)Reply
