ME , HAVING A COMPLETE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN BECAUSE I'M SO SICK OF EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT MACKENZIE !
Source: Dork Diaries 10: Tales from a Not-So-Perfect Pet Sitter, by Rachel Renée Russell.
In the above quotation, is "talking" a gerund or present participle?
Sitifan, as you understand the quotation, what pronoun would you use in place of
everyone talking about Mackenzie if you had to use a pronoun there? Would you use
them ("I'm so sick of
them") or
it ("I'm so sick of
it"). The possibility of either pronoun reflects a profound difference and ambiguity in how the sentence can be interpreted and syntactically parsed.
If you would use
them, then you understand
everyone as the object of the preposition
of and
talking about Mackenzie as modifying
everyone. If you would use
it, then you understand
everyone talking about Mackenzie as forming a substantive, which functions as the object of
of and has own subject (
everyone) and verb phrase (
talking about Mackenzie).
Although your answer to my question ("Which pronoun would you use in place of
everyone talking about Mackenzie?") won't alter the terminological mess in the grammatical literature on participial constructions, it will enable us to choose between the labels used by those authors who differentiate the two constructions.
I myself would choose
it and, using traditional terminology, would say that
talking is a gerund there, albeit one whose subject is not in the possessive. I don't think the quote is talking about the speaker's being sick of
everyone who talks about Mackenzie but, rather, about her being sick of
everyone's doing so. That everyone is doing so makes the speaker sick.
If my interpretation/parsing is correct, then you are seeing what Fowler ridiculed as
the "fused participle" construction.
