Squeeze up against

anonymous

You are dragging me into the deep end of grammar where I don't belong. I hope one of the resident grammarians is reading this.

It's only the "-ing" forms that present a problem, I think.

As for "were", you misunderstand. I will try to explain. Again ignoring the "-ing" problem, the sentence in question is "The children were terrified and standing squeezing up against each other." There are two clauses; simplified, "the children were terrified" and "{the children) were standing". The subject, "the children" is shared by the two clauses across "and". So far so good. The problem is that "were" in the first clause is the main verb, "to be", a copulative with its predicate adjective "terrified". It is sometimes hard to tell whether we have that or the past continuous, but not this time. The second clause, "the children were standing", needs "were" as the auxiliary verb for the past continuous, but it is not there, There is a sort of phantom "were" from the first clause, but that one is all used up already, it being the main verb there.

This might sound like a fine point of grammar, but I assure you it is not. I and many others hear discord in cases like this. Imagine the sentence had been "The children acted terrified and standing squeezing up against each other." That's what it sounds like to me.

"Were" can, of course, bridge across "and" when it has the same role on both sides: "The children were crying and squeezing up against each other." or "The children were terrified and confused."

Thank you again very much. I understand now.