ransacking and ransacked

Question

Hi teachers,He arrived home to find the house ransacked.A ransacking house.What's the difference between them?  Shouldn't the second sentence 'a ransacked house'?ThanksTN

Doctor D · Accepted Answer

Yes, the correct phrase is "a ransacked house."
A ransacking house, if it means anything, means a house where ransackers live.

CalifJim · Answer

tinanam0102 Shouldn't the second sentence be 'a ransacked house'?

It's not a sentence; it's just a phrase. In any case, yes, it should be "a ransacked house".

Someone is ransacking the house. (active)
The house is being ransacked. (passive)

CJ

Tinanam0102 · Answer

Hi CalifJim, hi Doctor D,

Thanks for your help. I wonder if this is a typo in this sentence below.

So terrified was Jennifer that cops had to slide their badges under the door to coax her out. Her story supported what happened. A ransacking upstairs. A violent shooting downstairs.

Thanks
TN

CalifJim · Answer

tinanam0102 I wonder if this is a typo

No. In that case you have two gerunds. A ransacking and a shooting. These -ing words do not modify the words that follow them, if that's what you're thinking. In other words, 'ransacking' does not describe a certain kind of 'upstairs'.

Try paraphrasing these as follows, and see if that helps:

The action of ransacking had occurred upstairs. The action of shooting (violently) had occurred downstairs.

You would need a passive construction to use 'ransacked' and 'shot'.

The upstairs had been ransacked. The downstairs had been violently shot up.

CJ

Grammarfreak · Answer

tinanam0102So terrified was Jennifer that cops had to slide their badges under the door to coax her out. Her story supported what happened. A ransacking upstairs. A violent shooting downstairs.

I see CJ and Dr D already commented on your questions. For what it is worth, here is my extra 2 cents....

This appeared to be something written by someone who hasn't yet possessed a solid command on English.
The blue underlined looks like an inverted " that clause" with a flavor of a pseudo-cleft sentence which I feel is Ok for a novel. But not in this sentence.
The red underlined, as explained by CJ, ransacking - could not be used as a present participle adjective.
A ransacked house is a house which has been ransacked (by intruders). Ransacked - is a past participle adjective.
The intruders were ransacking the house for valuables while the owners were on a get-away weekend.

Ransacking - is not an adjective. But it could be a present participle.

Both red underlined are not grammatically legal structures as there were no verbs

Anonymous · Answer

The passage you quoted is correct, no typos. Maybe what's confusing you is that there are very elliptical constructions in it (words left out and understood from the context). A more complete version of the passage would be: "...supported what happened: There had been a ransacking upstairs, and a violent shooting downstairs." The words "ransacking" and "shooting" function as nouns here.

The phrase, "a ransacking house," is theoretically possible grammatically, but would not be used in English.

Grammarfreak · Answer

Anonymous Maybe what's confusing you is that there are very elliptical constructions in it (words left out and understood from the context). A more complete version of the passage would be: "...supported what happened: There had been a ransacking upstairs, and a violent shooting downstairs." The words "ransacking" and "shooting" function as nouns here.

Anon,

Your version didn't make it any more grammatical from the original. There had been a ransacking upstairs,- is not natural English. The only thing I will agree with you is, ransacking and shoot are indeed gerund nouns in your version.
By the way, "shooting " by nature is violent. There is no need to say "violent shooting ".

Polar bear 123 · Answer

Is there a word Ramsacked

Polar bear 123 · Answer

He arrived home to find the house had been ransacked

ransacking and ransacked

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