minor irritants

[javasaurus]

Grammar whining:

alot (should be a lot)
noone (should be no one)
unowned gerunds really (and quite illogically) upset me


I know: whine, whine, whine...

Comments

[wilhelmina-d.livejournal.com]

So what is an unowned gerund? I know what a gerund is, but not an unowned one.

Also, I'm so with you on grammar pet peeves. There/their/they're is one of my biggest. Its/It's as well, though I do sometimes do that when I'm typing too fast. To/Too. Etc. :)

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

"unowned gerunds"
Consider the following sentence: "The teacher didn't like the boy sitting in her chair." This could mean that the teacher doesn't like the boy at all, and "sitting in her chair" is used to distinguish him from another boy who is sitting in the floor. It may indicate nothing about the teacher's feelings towards the boy in general, only that she is upset by the fact that he is in her chair. So is it the boy she doesn't like, or the sitting?

If "sitting" is the object of the teacher's dislike, then it is a gerund, and "boy" should really be "boy's" -- the possessive. Gerunds, being nouns, take possessives in such cases. If "boy" is left as a noun, then it becomes the object, and "sitting" is not a gerund, but some sort of active verbal type of speech whose name I cannot recall. The meaning, however, is that the teacher does not like the boy, and "sitting" describes the boy.

"Unowned gerunds" refers to the inappropriate use of a noun rather than a possessive to describe a gerund.

Dwayne hated George's laughing at the joke.
My drinking Jane's milk upset her.

[wilhelmina-d.livejournal.com]

Ach, so. Interesting. Thanks for the info. I'll have to watch that I don't do that in my writing!