Craig's perceptive discussion of the "verbness" of various words such as "taking" from my example was impressive and informative.

But I think the difficulty I'm having is the bifurcated nature of the word verb--applying to a word class (née part of speech) and to a function in a sentence.

So when Craig says that "taking" in "The couple taking a walk in the park" is a verb, I take it that he means it belongs to the word class "verb."  But its function in the sentence is not "verb," is it?

If a student is trying to edit his or her writing and is trying to decide whether "The couple taking a walk in the park" is or is not a sentence, doesn't that student need to recognize that it does not have a verb (in Martha's terminology, a "main verb")?


Peter Adams
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