inflexional or derivational ?

[Laziza]

What is the function of "ing" as a type of morpheme in the following sentence:
"My mother is always car*ing* and support*ing* "

Here, -ing forms adjectives from verbs. So, I'm saying it as derivational morpheme. But my teacher is saying it as inflexional. Which one is right?

 

[jutfrank]

I suppose you could analyse them in both ways, but I think it makes more sense to think of caring and supporting as adjectives, which makes the -ing morphemes derivational.

Did you ask your teacher why he/she thinks otherwise? He/she must have a good reason.

 

[teechar]

In that sentence, "supporting" cannot be a verb, since "support" is a transitive verb. Therefore, those "-ings" are derivational.

 

[PaulMatthews]

What is the function of "ing" as a type of morpheme in the following sentence:
"My mother is always car*ing* and support*ing* "

Here, -ing forms adjectives from verbs. So, I'm saying it as derivational morpheme. But my teacher is saying it as inflexional. Which one is right?

The gerund-participial verb form "supporting" is formed by adding the inflectional suffix ing.

But the adjective "supporting" is formed by conversion. This involves changing a word's syntactic category without any concomitant change of form.

Other examples include "amusing", "entertaining, "worrying".

The same applies with past participle to adjective conversion, for example "amused", "bored", "worried" and so on.