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Hans51 Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

"This is Tom speaking."

"This is Tom speaking."

Is the structure of Tom speaking in the sentence the same as that of me using in "Do you mind me using it?"?

Tom here functions as a subject in meaning and speaking functions as a verb in meaning like me and using in the sentence?

I do not like Tom / Tom's coming here.

And then can we not say, "This is Tom's speaking."? Or "This is Tom speaking." is a short version of "This is Tom and speaking"?

What do you native English speakers think? Thank you so much in advance
  

Top answer

Outwardly speaking and using are an analogous usage, agreeing with your comment. ". I'd suggest an important thing is where the common emphasis is (in bold) below: This is Tom speaking Do you mind me using it The difference between the others is what is handed out as the subject (bold) to whatever follows This is Tom's speaking (, converted to electrons and broadcast to the nation) This is Tom speaking (, standing in the rain) d

— Meteorquake

  • Outwardly speaking and using are an analogous usage, agreeing with your comment.
  • ".
  • I'd suggest an important thing is where the common emphasis is (in bold) below: This is Tom speaking Do you mind me using it The difference between the others is what is handed out as the subject (bold) to whatever follows This is Tom's speaking (, converted to electrons and broadcast to the nation) This is Tom speaking (, standing in the rain) d
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7 Answers
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Outwardly speaking and using are an analogous usage, agreeing with your comment.
One could of course debate whether the second is "Do you mind me, using it?" or "Do you mind me-using-it?".
I'd suggest an important thing is where the common emphasis is (in bold) below:
This is Tom speaking
Do you mind me using it

The difference between the others
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It's interesting that "Do you mind my using it?" is correct while "This is Tom's speaking" is incorrect (or at best a strained way of saying something different). I'm not sure whether this points to a fundamental difference in the grammar or not.
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Maybe having a special word for it (speech) makes it less desirable. But perhaps it becomes suitable when we want to resolve the ambiguity of the word speech (which can mean the act of speaking or the thing spoken); eg -
Tom's speaking was quite out of place under the circumstances
d
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Hans51Is the structure of Tom speaking in the sentence the same as that of me using in "Do you mind me using it?"?
Tom here functions as a subject in meaning and speaking functions as a verb in meaning like me and using in the sentence?
No, Tom is head of the noun phrase Tom speaking and is modified by speaking. Here you can add
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meteorquakeMaybe having a special word for it (speech) makes it less desirable. But perhaps it becomes suitable when we want to resolve the ambiguity of the word speech (which can mean the act of speaking or the thing spoken); eg -Tom's speaking was quite out of place under the circumstancesd
I agree that the existence of the word "speech" makes it unlikely th
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GPYwhy we can't say "This is Tom's speaking" when we mean "This is Tom speaking".
In my opinion, the reason for this is that Tom is head of a noun phrase rather than subject of a gerund-participial clause, where the difference between genitive and non-genitive is one of register and not so much of meaning.
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> In my opinion, the reason for this is that Tom is head of a noun phrase rather than subject of a gerund-participial clause, where the difference between genitive and non-genitive is one of register and not so much of meaning.

There's I think two dialogues going on.
The first was about whether "me using" is conceived by the listener as "Tom's using" or "Tom using". This is
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