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The Modern English-ing ending, which is used to form both gerunds and present participles of verbs (i.e. in noun and adjective uses), derives from two different historical suffixes. The gerund (noun) use comes from Middle English-ing, which is from Old English-ing, -ung (suffixes forming nouns from verbs).
These include ending in -t (e.g. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the [n] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive, show, rise). English irregular verbs are now a closed group, which means that newly formed verbs are ...
Like the -ing suffix, the to-infinitive spread historically from a narrow original use, a prepositional phrase referring to future time. Like the -ing form it spread to all English verbs and to form non-finite clauses. Like the -ing form, it spread by analogy to use with words of similar meaning.
In some weak verbs ending in a final -t or -d, this final consonant coalesced with the weak past ending to leave a single -t or -d in the past forms. Some verbs ending in l or n had their past ending irregularly devoiced to -t , and in a few verbs ending with a v or z sound ( leave , lose ), both that sound and the past ending were devoiced.
Reading by using phonics is often referred to as decoding words, sounding-out words or using print-to-sound relationships.Since phonics focuses on the sounds and letters within words (i.e. sublexical), [13] it is often contrasted with whole language (a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading) and a compromise approach called balanced literacy (the attempt to combine whole language and ...
Similarly, in the poetry of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), -ing forms consistently rhyme with words ending in /ɪn/, as in this verse of A Ballad on the Game of Traffic, where "lining" rhymes with "fine in": But Weston has a new-cast gown On Sundays to be fine in, And, if she can but win a crown, 'Twill just new dye the lining.
English adjectives, as with other word classes, cannot in general be identified as such by their form, [24] although many of them are formed from nouns or other words by the addition of a suffix, such as -al (habitual), -ful (blissful), -ic (atomic), -ish (impish, youngish), -ous (hazardous), etc.; or from other adjectives using a prefix ...
A word family is the base form of a word plus its inflected forms and derived forms made with suffixes and prefixes [1] plus its cognates, i.e. all words that have a common etymological origin, some of which even native speakers don't recognize as being related (e.g. "wrought (iron)" and "work(ed)"). [2]