This topic confuses me very much.
I'm aware that the meaning of words in a sentence depends on its place,
but I can't still completely grasp the idea/topic.
Could you help me with the next sentences, please?
(a) Look out! There's a car coming!
(b) I came across a group of children playing.
The both look to me as incomplete, as if there's an implicit, deleted part of a sentence. Is this right?
As if they should be kind of:
(a)
There's a car coming along the street. /
There's a car coming toward you.
(b)
I came across a group of children playing in the playground. /
I came across a group of children playing next to my house.
-shouldn't they?
I have no questions on these full sentences, but their shorter form confuses me.
The second question is whether the words "coming" and "playing" can stand before the noun?
Kind of:
(a) Look out! There's a coming car.
(b) I came across a group of playing children.
Are these sentences correct? If they are, do they mean the same as ones above and sound native?
And the last question:
We know a phrase about English "the shorter the better".
So why "There's a car coming!" rather than "A car is coming"?
Are the both correct, do they mean the same and sound native?
(a.1) Look out! There's a car coming!
(a.2) Look out! A car is coming!
Please, could you help me with all these questions?
Best Answer
There is nothing incomplete about the first group of sentences you posted; they are completely normal. At most, you could say that there is an implied "which is" or "who is", like
or maybe
But the meaning is simply
For your second question, yes, both of those are grammatically correct. In these sentences, "playing" or "coming" is something called a participle, which is essentially a verb form used like an adjective. The children are playing, so they are playing children. "Coming car" is unusual - we would usually say oncoming car - but it isn't grammatically incorrect.
For your third question, yes, shorter is usually better when it comes to spoken English! But both of your answers are correct and can be found in live usage. For example,
and
They differ at most only very slightly in meaning: "There's a X coming" means that there exists an X, and its action or state of being is "coming". "An X is coming" means that a specific example of an X has a state of "coming". In practice, they're pretty close to interchangeable. I would regard as completely normal both
and