“Compounding", gerund or present participle?
Hello, everyone!
For one difficult sentence in following paragraph I’m wondering about its sentence structure;
“Compounding the difficulty, now more than ever, is what ergonomists call information overload”
How do you analysize the normal sentence of above before inversion or clefting, while I am assuming it as follows?;
1. before reversed pseudo clefting with ‘what’; “Ergonomists call compounding the difficulty information overload.” (S+V+O+C, ‘compounding’ as a gerund),
or
2. before inversion; “What they call information overload is compounding the difficulty.” (‘compounding’ as a present participle)
“Clarity is often a difficult thing for a leader to obtain. Concerns of the present tend to seem larger than potentially greater concerns that lie farther away. Some decisions by their nature present great complexity, whose many variables must come together a certain way for the leader to succeed. Compounding the difficulty, now more than ever, is what ergonomists call information overload, where a leader is overrun with inputs ? via e-mails, meetings, and phone calls ? that only distract and confuse her thinking. Alternatively, the leader’s information might be only fragmentary, which might cause her to fill in the gaps with assumptions ? sometimes without recognizing them as such. And the merits of a leader’s most important decisions, by their nature, typically are not clear-cut. Instead those decisions involve a process of assigning weights to competing interests, and then determining, based upon some criterion, which one predominates. The result is one of judgment, of shades of gray; like saying that Beethoven is a better composer than Brahms.”
* source;
Would wait for your various clarifications,
Thanks and best RGDS,
Top answer
This is a bit tricky. I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. In particular, “Ergonomists call compounding the difficulty information overload” has got you off track.
- This is a bit tricky.
- I think you have got the wrong end of the stick.
- In particular, “Ergonomists call compounding the difficulty information overload” has got you off track.
- Information overload, as ergonomists call it, is compounding the difficulty (now more than ever) .
- (is making the difficulty worse) ~ Information overload, which it what ergonomists call it, is compounding the difficulty.
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This is a bit tricky. I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. In particular, “Ergonomists call compounding the difficulty information overload” has got you off track.
Information overload, as ergonomists call it, is compounding the difficulty (now more than ever).
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