Why '-ing' in these sentences.

Question

I have a question about two sentences.

Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars.
The outer layer is removed, resulting in white rice.

Why do the highlighted verbs here need to be gerunds? Thanks very much for your comments.

T.

Inchoateknowledge · Accepted Answer

The first sentence sounds nonsense to me.
No, it is ok, sorry.

Clive · Answer

Hi Tobias,

Welcome to the Forum.

Why do the highlighted verbs here need to be gerunds?

Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars. 'Including' is really a present participle used adjectivally. The problem is that the sentence is not well written, so there is no word for the adjective to qualify. The writer's thought was: Half the students had bad behaviour, including going to karaoke bars. Now we can see that it's an adjectival phrase describing 'behaviour'.

The outer layer is removed, resulting in white rice. It seems to me you can look at this either as being adjectival, describing the whole main clause, or as adverbial describing the action. Either way, it's not a gerund.

I'm not sure if I've answered the question you had in your mind. If not, please write again.

Best wishes, Clive

Goodman · Answer

TobiasI have a question about two sentences.

Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars.
The outer layer is removed, resulting in white rice.

Why do the highlighted verbs here need to be gerunds? Thanks very much for your comments.

T.

Tobias,

This type of sentence structure with verb+ing as present participle is very common. I agree with others that they were written in an odd tone.

For your questions, since they are similar, I will take the first one and rewrite it as follows just for explanation purpose.

Example Question: Half the students misbehaved, including going to karaoke bars.
Revised: Half the students had bad behaviors, which include drinking and visiting karaoke bars.

Present participle sometimes can be used to link a preceding context, action, noun and pronoun to a definitive statement. Example:

As John arrived home and opened the front door, he was completely stunned to have found a trail of his belongings scattering from his front door all the way to the end of the hallway where his bedroom was.

He stood at the door for a few minutes, seemingly feeling unsure what to do, and pondering on whether he should go into his bedroom to investigate. Finally, being concerned with his own safety, he reached in his pocket for the cellphone, deciding to call the police.

In this passage, I used this structure repeatedly for demonstration purpose so that you can get a sense of the usage. Hope that helps.

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you everyone for your input. It's a lot clearer now.

T.

Why '-ing' in these sentences.

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