present-participlesverb-forms
In the following two sentences, there is -ing after while:
While exploring the paths of program, we established a natural
partitioning of paths on-the-fly based on program dependencies –
such that only one path in a partition is explored.Any method which covers various possible behaviours of a given
program while avoiding path enumeration, can be extremely useful
for software testing.
Can someone help to elaborate why the use of -ing after while is correct (in term of grammar rule)?
Are they still teaching the old 'long/short' vowels? If so, here's the rule:
If the syllable before the /-ing/ is pronounced with a 'long' vowel, leave the final consonant single (and delete any final silent /e/)
If it's pronounced with a 'short' vowel, double the final consonant.
It may help make this clearer if you explain that a vowel before a doubled consonant is (almost) always short. Then write the /-ing/ forms out 'wrong' and invite your son to pronounce them the way they look:
| ride | ridding |
| sit | siting |
| skate | skatting |
| write | writting |
| get | geting |
As Renan points out, it gets more complicated when the final syllable of the base form is unstressed; but it looks like your son hasn't gotten that far yet.
There is an error here, but it is not what you think it is.
To in this case is not the ‘infinitive marker’, which sits in front of an infinitive (what you call the ‘verb-zero or –general’), but the ordinary preposition to, which may very well take a gerund (the -ing form acting as a noun) as its object.
Unfortunately, it’s the wrong preposition—or at least it used to be.
When I was young, fifty years ago, one said there is an advantage in or of this that or the other. This was distinct from the advantage to the person who received the benefit. Your example would have been written (with the to phrase added) as:
There are two main advantages to many employees in working in teams over working alone.
In colloquial use, however, the construction with to instead of in has been growing more and more common for the past three quarters of a century; and I have no doubt that it will eventually be accepted in formal use, if it has not been already. Here's a Google Ngram:
But I recommend that you maintain the distinction. That way you will never raise anybody's eyebrows, not even those of old fogeys like me; and you will avoid the repetition if you ever have to say something like:
?There is an advantage to you to maintaining the distinction.
That's awkward. It's much more graceful to say
There is an advantage to you in maintaining the distinction.
? marks an utterance as marginally or only possibly acceptable
Best Answer
These are examples of reduced adverbial clauses,in which the subject and BE are deleted.
This reduction is only permitted under two conditions:
The verb of the clause must be in a progressive form, or rewritable as a progressive form.
The subject of the clause must be the same as that of the main clause which it modifies, or a pronoun which refers to it.
This implies that it was the partitioning which was exploring. The technical term is dangling modifier—‘dangling’ because the clause ‘hangs loose’, not firmly attached to an appropriate subject. Note that the unreduced clause is OK, because the differing subjects are distinguished:
✲ marks an utterance as unacceptable