1. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    Grammar Using 'ing' in past tense

    Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by Bone2pick, Oct 29, 2018.

    Tense is one of the many components of grammar I've yet to master. Here's an example sentence that made me pause:

    The alarm blared throughout the barracks triggering a groan from the Lieutenant.

    Is that incorrect? It sounds okay to my ears—not that that means much, because they aren't finely tuned. I checked with this website first https://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html but I couldn't find a similar example.
     
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  2. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    That is not a past tense but a gerund. That is a good construction for that type of sentence, though I would use a comma after "barracks", and I try to use that frequently. It eliminates repetitive "ands" or "that's" (the barracks and triggered... or the barracks that triggered)
     
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  3. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    ORIGINAL - The alarm blared throughout the barracks triggering a groan from the Lieutenant.

    My preferred 1

    The alarm blared throughout the barracks and triggered a groan from the Lieutenant.

    Rubs jaw

    The alarm blared throughout the barracks. Lieutenant Percy groaned from the ...

    My belief is that the reading becomes tiresome if we are led to every consequence.

    I try not to use gerunds. As the sentence structuring becomes more complicated in my drafting I would accept the ing-ending maybe at the third verb? That's only me. Again, with drafting I would take out as many commas as humanly possible. When the write, is fresh, all this, kind of thing, appears so, jus' right. Believe me, look at the write a month later they can all go. Let the reader decide where to breathe. I want his/her eye to sweep humming down the page. No comma. I achieve this state of affairs very most infrequently :(

    [grammar police...they're not always called gerunds..okay] I can't remember, anyway telescopingprinciple of the ...ing
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2018
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  4. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I don't think this is a gerund - a gerund is a verb used as a noun - like... "He loves triggering her."

    That said, I'm not sure what the verb tense from the OP is called. Past progressive, maybe? It's grammatically acceptable, but I don't know the label. @Wreybies can probably tell us.
     
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  5. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Damn.
     
  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, in the OP's example, it's past progressive, not a gerund. A gerund is when you turn a verb into a noun via the -ing.

    I was reading that book. Past progressive.

    Reading is essential for comprehension. Gerund.

    ETA: I could be wrong, though. There's no explicit copula in the original sentence, and we're relying instead on the tense of blared as a substitute. I might be wrong.
     
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  7. Iain Sparrow

    Iain Sparrow Banned Contributor

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    Whenever possible, I eliminate words ending in 'ed' and 'ing'.

    The alarm rang throughout the barracks, prompting a groan from the Lieutenant.
     
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  8. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    Nope. Looked it up, a gerund is usually but not always a noun, used to be called present participle when used in the OPs sense (not a noun), but that term is following out of use. That is an gerund clause, separate from the past tense. As @matwoolf noted, that can be written several different ways, but it is not a tense as written. It's a separate clause describing something that happened as a result of the blaring.
     
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  9. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Your structure is syntactically identical to the original.
     
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  10. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Heh heh
     
  11. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    The alarm throughout the barracks! A groan from the Lieutnant.
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2018
  12. Iain Sparrow

    Iain Sparrow Banned Contributor

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    No, actually.
    I replaced blared, with rang.

    I would need to know more about the Lieutenant to rewrite what comes after the comma.
     
  13. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Who are you "nope"-ing? And where did you look it up?

    I just googled and don't know the reliability of the site, but http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/gerundphrase.htm matches my understanding of the situation.

    Their example is "Jamming too much clothing into a washing machine will result in disaster." = gerund phrase, while "Jamming too much clothing into the washing machine, Aamir saved $1.25 but had to tolerate the curious stares of other laundry patrons as his machine bucked and rumbled with the heavy load." = present participle phrase
     
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  14. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    That's the same syntax. You're still using a participle phrase, or whatever we're calling it, after the comma. There's no grammatical change between "triggering" and "prompting".
     
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  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Nor one between blared and rang, both being simple past tense and the point of origin for the question concerning concordance

    To the OP @Bone2pick: before we get too lost in what is and isn't a gerund, your original phrasing was fine.
     
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  16. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Totally correct. I tend to try to reduce the use of past progressive tense, converting it to simple past, but not because it's grammatically incorrect--it's not. I try to avoid it because it sometimes has a vibe of trying to get one more piece of functionality out of a sentence, and sometimes it's the same sentence structure too many times.

    Eating her cereal and yawning, Jane read her assignment. Steaming merrily, and occasionally bubbling, the pot held more porridge. Running frantically and shouting, Joe chased the dog in the back yard.

    But your example is, IMO, dandy.
     

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