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-ing is a suffix used to make one of the inflected forms of English verbs. This verb form is used as a present participle, as a gerund, and sometimes as an independent noun or adjective. The suffix is also found in certain words like morning and ceiling, and in names such as Browning.
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 ...
Those of weak verbs were marked by the ending -d, with or without an epenthetic vowel before it. Modern English past participles derive from these forms (although the ge-prefix, which became y-in Middle English, has now been lost — except in some rare dialects such as the Dorset dialect, where it takes the form of a-).
-kje for words ending in -ing: koning (king) → koninkje (the 'ng'-sound transforms into 'nk'), but vondeling → vondelingetje (foundling) -tje for words ending in -h, -j, -l, -n, -r, -w, or a vowel other than -y: zoen → zoen tje ( kiss ), boei → boei tje ( buoy ), appel → appel tje ( apple ), ei → ei tje ( egg ), keu → keu tje ...
Verbs ending in a consonant plus o also typically add -es: veto → vetoes. Verbs ending in a consonant plus y add -es after changing the y to an i: cry → cries. In terms of pronunciation, the ending is pronounced as / ɪ z / after sibilants (as in lurches), as / s / after voiceless consonants other than sibilants (as in makes), and as / z ...
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.
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A Grammar of the English Language, In a Series of Letters: Intended for the Use of Schools and of Young Persons in General, but more especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Plough-Boys. New York and Chicago: A. S. Barnes and Company. Cobbett, William (2003) [1818]. A Grammar of the English Language (Oxford Language ...