jwschang said:
There is only one "kind" of Continuous Participle, which is as a VERB and VERB FORM. But the verb/Cont Participle may be used to act as a Noun (I do cooking), in which such usage it is called a Gerund, and it can also be used as an Adjective (Running water) but no special name given to it in such usage.
Well, you see, that's new to me. To my knowledge, there are two kinds of participles: present participles, so named because they end in -ing, and past participles, so called because they end in -ed/-en. I've not, until know that is, heard the term 'verb' to refer to the present participle. I've heard 'verbal', but not 'verb'. This is what I know:
If a present participle (-ing word) functions as a verb (i.e. when coupled with forms of the verb To Be) it's the string
Be + ing , to my knowledge, that functions as a continuous verb; the -ing word itself remains a present participle in form.
If a present participle functions as a noun, it's called a gerund, and if a present participle modifies a noun, it functions as an adjective:
I
am eating sushi. (Verb)
Eating sushi is on my list of things to do when I go to Japan. (Noun)
He's an
eating sushi kind of guy. (adjective)
To my knowledge, -ing nouns are called "gerunds", whereas -ing verbs and adjectives are called present participles.
In short, I've heard of the term
present participle but have never heard of a present participle being called a verb--until now that is. It's a new one on me.
jwschang said:
If we break down further the phrase "waiting for people", there is not much meaning left in the sub-parts as a syntactic unit.
I'll have to politely disagree.
jwschang said:
[waiting] + [for people] = participle (not phrase, only one word) + preposition phrase (but not a lot more meaning as a phrase).
[waiting for] + [people] doesn't make much sense to break it this way.
I see the phrase as follows. (By the way, and not to be challenging, a word
is in fact considered a phrase in linguistics (see Chomsky, et al, et al.)
Participle = waiting for (Phrasal unit)
Object = people
I believe the head of the phrase is not 'people' but 'waiting for', a present participle, which happens to subcategorized for an object. That the phrase 'waiting for people' can be replaced by "it" makes it a nominal (a gerund) and that it sits in the subject position gives it its function as subject.
In short,
PRO + waiting for + people (S+V+O)
I see a lot of stuff happening in 'the sub-parts of the synactic unit', so much so in fact that it provides some very nice examples for form vs function:
waiting for = present participle (Verbal)
people = noun (Object)
waiting for people = (Noun)
That is, even though the head of the phrase is a verbal, the phrase functions as a nominal, a gerund. Cool!