Mountain climbing, bicycle riding

Question

How do we describe the function of these words; I went mountain climbing. (mountain, climbing) He is bicycle riding. (bicycle, riding)  Thanks in advance.

EnglishFanatic · Accepted Answer

Please English guru correct me.

In this case I'll write

I went to mountain climbing. (I went to hiking) Mountain climbing means where or for what so neet 'to'.

He is a bicycle rider. Because of 'he' it will be rider, not riding.

I also interesting in the right variations.

Thanks.

Buggah · Answer

As far as I know, just like 'mountain climbing', 'bicycle riding' (or 'bike riding') is a noun, and it means the activity of riding a bicycle. Then, the correct is:

- I went mountain climbing.
- I went bicycle riding.
- He is riding his bicycle.

Rommie · Answer

Okay.

"I went to mountain climbing" should be "I went mountain climbing".

EXPLANATION:
"I went to Switzerland" is correct. "I went to the top of Mount Everest" is correct, but, alas, "I went to mountain climbing" is not. The reason is that "went" requires an ADVERB. Now, the phrase "mountain climbing" is a participle - something which is DERIVED from a verb, but which is not itself a verb. (It's derived from the verb phrase "to climb mountains"). Participles are normally adjectives, but they can also be adverbs sometimes, as in this case.

More simply, "I went to mountain climbing" is wrong for the same reason that "I went to there" is wrong. (Should be "I went there").

"He is a bicycle rider". Correct - but because of the "a", not because of the "he". "He is bicycle riding" would also be correct (but would mean something different). "He is a bicycle rider" means "He is someone who regularly or habitually rides bicycles", where as "He is bicycle riding" means "He is in the act of riding a bicycle RIGHT NOW".

Incidently, we would normally say "cyclist" instead of "bicycle rider", and "cycling" instead of "bicycle riding".

EnglishFanatic · Answer

Hi Rommie!

Thank you for your good explanation.

About bicycle all is clear for me. I hope so. Another words the reason is a difference between Present Simple and Present Continuous Tense. Am I right?

About part that relatives with 'went'.

I went mounting climbing.
S + V + O
Subject - I
Verb - went (go)
O - mounting climbing (possible adverb, participate, adjective)

Now I decided that we need use 'to' when we talking about direction of moving (or location).
So, I went to Switzeland, I went to the top of Mount Everest.

I went mounting climbing. In this case I went to do something, (not concentrate on location or direction so doesn't need 'to').

Confuse with I went there. It should be so, but why? 'There' is not adjective, not participle, not adverb.

Maybe all that I wrote above is wrong, sorry. Please help. Thanks.

Have a nice day!

Buggah · Answer

In the sentence 'I went there', 'there' works as an adverb meaning 'to or toward that place', that's why it doesn't take 'to'. Just like in 'I went downtown'. The word 'downtown', in this case, is acting as an adverb and it means 'toward the lower or central part of town'.

Guest · Answer

So, in "mountain climbing" how should we describe the function of the word 'mountain'? Adjective? Adverb? Noun?
'climbing' gerund noun?

Rommie · Answer

"mountain" is a noun, however the wider sentence does not (cannot) treat this word in isolation, or as part of its OWN syntax. It's just like in math, when you say: 1+***, you have to parse (***) FIRST before you can parse the rest, which then becomes 1+6. If you parse things in the wrong order, you'll get the wrong answer.

In normal usage, "mountain" would be a count noun. Therefore we say "one mountain, two mountains", and so on. In this usage, we may construct the clause "I climb mountains" (in which "mountains" takes the plural form). But now comes the sneaky bit - we take the phrase "climb mountains", and then simultaneously (1) change the word order, and (2) treat "mountain" as though it were a mass noun, to give us the phrase "mountain climbing" (not "mountains climbing"). Now we have a phrase which acts like a verb. Changing the word order is essential because that is what makes it possible for the phrase to have a verb ending, so now we can tweak it like we can tweak any other verb - "I mountain-climb; you mountain-climb; she mountain-climbs, etc". The hyphen is optional, but in this case it makes things clearer. So - given that we accept "to mountain-climb" as a verb, just as though it were a single word, it follows that we can form the participle "mountain-climbing" (which functions as an adjective or as an adverb depending on the requirements of a sentence).

The word "mountain" plays no real part in the wider sentence "I went mountain climbing", in exactly the same way that the "2" in "1+***" plays no part in the addition. By the time you get to the interpretation of the outer sentence, the word "mountain" has already been "consumed". The inner phrase "mountain climbing" must be parsed FIRST, which leaves the outer sentence reading "I went ".

Rommie

Rommie · Answer

In response to: "Confuse with I went there. It should be so, but why? 'There' is not adjective, not participle, not adverb".

A lot of people are confused about the words "where" and "there". Even native English speakers do not follow the "rules". Consider the following fragment of conversations:

FIRST PERSON: "I went to France last weekend"
SECOND PERSON: "You went to WHERE?"

Technically, this is wrong, but you'll still hear a lot of people say this, and here's why: What Second Person is looking for is an interrogative pronoun which can substitute for the word "France". Unfortunately, "France" is a proper noun, and a proper noun is a type of noun, so the correct interrogative pronoun should be "what". However, since the word "France" describes a place, not a thing, most people don't feel entirely comfortable with substituting "what" for "France" - "You went to WHAT?" just doesn't sound right - so they use "where" instead. In this example, they are treating "where" as an interrogative pronoun substituting for the name of a place. Formal English does not permit such usage, so the usage in technically wrong. Technically correct usage would be:

SECOND PERSON: "You went WHERE?"

without the "to". Here, "where" functions as an adverb, not an interrogative pronoun, and all is well.

The clarification of the mystery is that the "question words" are NOT ALL THE SAME as each other. Here's how it goes:

WHO and WHAT behave like nouns (sort of)
WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW behave like adverbs (sort of)

However - if you catch anyone treating "when", "where", "why" or "how" in a noun-like way, don't be too hard on them. Informally, people do it all the time.

Rommie

Guest · Answer

Rommie, fabulous posts man!! Thanks for the excellent help!!! I'm blown away.
A little difficult to decipher, but I guess sometimes there is no easy way.

Thanks again - VERY MUCH!

EnglishFanatic · Answer

2 Rommie:

Thanks a lot, it was a brilliant explonation.

I'll try to use it right in practice.

Mountain climbing, bicycle riding

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