Comparative and Historical Linguistics Commons^™

The Thing About -Ing, Amy S. Orf

Conference Presentations

Once students are exposed to the Spanish progressive, they often start generalizing –ndo to every context where –ing occurs in English, producing ungrammatical structures such as me gusta nadando and el traje nadando. Expressing –ing in Spanish is actually quite complicated and depends on whether -ing functions as a verb, adverb, noun, or adjective. Even the Spanish progressive causes problems for students since it differs in use from the English progressive. In this presentation I hope to shed some light on the equivalents of –ing in Spanish.