How to parse "a brief period lying"

@Robby zhu posted:

Hi,

'Rest', in terms of muscle relaxation and so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. The body's tissues are self-repairing and self-restoring to a degree, and function best when more or less continuously active. (New Concept English)

Questions:

Is "a brief period lying "a variant of "a brief period's lying", just like, several weeks(=weeks') vacation？ I don't think so, because "period's" seems impossible there. How do you analyze this phrase? Thank you.

I'm not trying to offer an analysis, but I'd like to note that similar issues are found with "He has difficulty talking" and "He has a job washing cars."

Perhaps omission of "of" or "in" is involved in such usages.

@raymondaliasapollyon posted:

I'm not trying to offer an analysis, but I'd like to note that similar issues are found with "He has difficulty talking" and "He has a job washing cars."

Perhaps omission of "of" or "in" is involved in such usages.

Thanks for the note, but I think these examples are different in structure from the phrase in question. OP is about the inner structure of "time + Ving".

This is how I analyze your examples (I marked them for ease of discussion):

2. He has difficulty talking.

= He has difficulty (in) talking. "Talking" is a clause level adjunct. "Difficulty (in) talking"  does not work together as a constituent.

3. He has a job washing cars.

I'm not sure, but "washing cars" seems to be in apposition to "job". I understand that his job is washing cars, whereas the phrase in OP doesn't have this relation.

@Robby zhu posted:

2. He has difficulty talking.

= He has difficulty (in) talking. "Talking" is a clause level adjunct. "Difficulty (in) talking"  does not work together as a constituent.

3. He has a job washing cars.

I'm not sure, but "washing cars" seems to be in apposition to "job". I understand that his job is washing cars, whereas the phrase in OP doesn't have this relation.

I do think "difficulty talking" is a constituent and "talking" is not a clause-level adjunct, after considering the following sentence:

His difficulty talking  prevented him from socializing with others.

The only way to take "talking" as a clausal element is to assume it is sitting inside a sort of small clause of its own, with a phonetically null subject like PRO, in generative terms.

As for "He has a job washing cars," I agree there's an appositive relationship between the job and washing cars, but  some expressions made up of an ING form and a noun don't seem to exhibit such a relationship.

For example, consider the "running jump" in "take a running jump." The running is not (equal to) a jump, but somehow characterizes it.

@raymondaliasapollyon posted:

I'm not trying to offer an analysis, but I'd like to note that similar issues are found with "He has difficulty talking" and "He has a job washing cars."

Perhaps omission of "of" or "in" is involved in such usages.

I think that this is the most convenient way of parsing the construction; that is, we can treat "a brief period lying" as short for "a brief period of lying."

There is surely a better way of analyzing (note: not "way analyzing") the construction, but I am not prepared to offer one at this time.

This is not a one-size-fits-all matter. I agree that "a job washing cars" contains perhaps a different construction from that found in "has difficulty talking."

There are interesting, mind-boggling syntactic matters to consider here, such as why (1) below is fine and (2) is extremely awkward, if not ungrammatical:

(1) What do you have difficulty washing?
(2) *? What do you have a job washing?

@Robby zhu posted:

1. 'Rest', in terms of muscle relaxation and so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. The body's tissues are self-repairing and self-restoring to a degree, and function best when more or less continuously active. (New Concept English)

Questions:

Is "a brief period lying "a variant of "a brief period's lying", just like, several weeks(=weeks') vacation？ I don't think so, because "period's" seems impossible there. How do you analyze this phrase? Thank you.

Hi, Robby zhu,

"A brief period lying" is certainly more idiomatic and frequent, but I don't think "a brief period's lying" is wrong. This construction has called my attention since I was a student (decades ago!), because, semantically speaking, it seems to work both ways: a brief period of lying, lying during a brief period. With other nouns, "of" appears in both combinations: several weeks of vacation, vacation of several weeks.

@David, Moderator posted:

There are interesting, mind-boggling syntactic matters to consider here, such as why (1) below is fine and (2) is extremely awkward, if not ungrammatical:

(1) What do you have difficulty washing?
(2) *? What do you have a job washing?

An interesting couple of examples, David. As Raymond said, there seems to be a semantic difference, according to which "washing" defines the area where somebody has difficulty, or the subject-matter, in (1), while it defines the job itself in (2). With (2), the what- question does not seem to work, but it does if "job" is used differently, doesn't it?:

(3) What are you having quite a job washing?

While in (1) and (3) "washing" admits a direct object, it does not in (2) because it forms part of the same object with "job."

@David, Moderator posted:

This is not a one-size-fits-all matter. I agree that "a job washing cars" contains perhaps a different construction from that found in "has difficulty talking."

There are interesting, mind-boggling syntactic matters to consider here, such as why (1) below is fine and (2) is extremely awkward, if not ungrammatical:

(1) What do you have difficulty washing?
(2) *? What do you have a job washing?

Thank you, David. That's an interesting contrast. Does "a brief period Ving" behave like (1) or (2)?

@raymondaliasapollyon posted:

Does "a brief period Ving" behave like (1) or (2)?

Hi, Ray—I'd say it behaves like (2). That's what my intuition tells me, anyway. Like you, I think that "a period/job Ving" can be naturally paraphrased as "a period/job of Ving," where "of" is the addition.

(3) *? After they warmed up, what did they have a brief period doing?

In contrast, the natural paraphrase of "have difficulty Ving" (and I think that Gustavo's "have quite a job Ving" has basically the same meaning as "have difficulty Ving") involves "in": "have difficulty in Ving."

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

While in (1) and (3) "washing" admits a direct object, it does not in (2) because it forms part of the same object with "job."

Hi, Gustavo—I like the observations you made in your post. I just wanted to clarify that I do understand "washing" to have a direct object in (2). It is the wh-movement of that direct object that I find of questionable grammaticality.

(2') You have a job washing cars.
(2) *? What do you have a job washing [_]?
(2a) *? Those are the cars which he had a job washing [_].

@David, Moderator posted:

I just wanted to clarify that I do understand "washing" to have a direct object in (2). It is the wh-movement of that direct object that I find of questionable grammaticality.

(2') You have a job washing cars.
(2) *? What do you have a job washing [_]?
(2a) *? Those are the cars which he had a job washing [_].

Yes, that is what I meant to say, that "washing" does not easily accept an object in a question like (2) (or, now that you mention it, in a relative clause like the one you proposed in (2a)).