Gerund? Linking verb?

[mark mayne]

My student challenged me to come up with a complete sentence that has only one verb and that verb would end in -ing. HELP! Has any one else heard of this challenge or have the answer.

[2006]

My student challenged me to come up with a complete sentence that has only one verb and that verb would end in -ing. HELP! Has any one else heard of this challenge or have the answer.

Do you think it's possible to have a sentence with only an -ing verb?

[Nightmare85]

Learning is effective.

It's a sentence that contains only one verb which ends in an "-ing".
However, this would be way too easy...

A sentence that has only one WORD (does not matter if it's a verb or whatever) can't exist in my opinion...

Cheers!

[2006]

Learning is effective.

It's a sentence that contains only one verb which ends in an "-ing".
However, this would be way too easy...


Cheers!

In your sentence, the verb is "is". "Learning" is a gerund, and a gerund functions as a noun.

[Kondorosi]

My student challenged me to come up with a complete sentence that has only one verb and that verb would end in -ing. HELP! Has any one else heard of this challenge or have the answer.

Each grammatical sentence has to have a finite verb. An -ing form is non-finite. If there is no other verb in the sentence, that means there is no finite verb. In this case, by definition, the cluster of words do not constitute a grammatical sentence.

QED.

[Raymott]

My student challenged me to come up with a complete sentence that has only one verb and that verb would end in -ing. HELP! Has any one else heard of this challenge or have the answer.

If this is a trick question, and the wording of the question has been correctly reported, then "Please bring me my lunch" would be one of an infinite number of solutions.

[Kondorosi]

bring, cling, ring

Damn I am blind! And with laclustre power of imagination.

[mark mayne]

I tried bring but acording to the rules I would have to use bringing. I am stumped. My next thought was "Thanks for trying".

[Barb_D]

Perhaps it was a trick question. They weren't specifying that it has to be the the -ing form/participle of a verb, but just a verb that ends in -ing, so that bring, cling, etc. meet the rules.

[2006]

My next thought was "Thanks for trying".

But "Thanks for trying." is not a "complete sentence".