-ing

The suffix '-ing' is one of the most frequent and productive suffixes in English.‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‌​‌​‍​‍​‌​‌​‌​‍​‍​‍​‌​‌​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‍​‌​‌​‍ It serves several functions: (1) the present participle of verbs, forming progressive tenses and participial modifiers ('she is running,' 'the running man'); (2) the gerund or verbal noun, converting a verb into a noun ('running is good exercise,' 'I enjoy running'); (3) a derivative noun, often concrete, formed from a verb ('a building,' 'a meeting,' 'the gathering,' 'a saving,' 'the painting').

Historically, '-ing' in Modern English is a merger of at least two distinct Old English suffixes.

**1. The present participle '-ende' or '-ande'.** This comes from Old English '-ende' (West Saxon) or '-ande' (Anglian and Northern), both from Proto-Germanic *-andaz, from Proto-Indo-European *-ont- / *-nt-, the active participle suffix. This is the same suffix that gave Latin '-ant-' / '-ent-' (as in 'student,' 'servant,' 'agent,' 'absent,' 'president'), Greek '-nt-' (as in 'agon,' '-agon'), Sanskrit '-ant-,' and German '-end' (as in 'lernend,' learning; 'arbeitend,' working). Old English 'rīdende' meant 'riding'; 'cumende' meant 'coming.'

**2. The verbal noun / gerund '-ung'.** This comes from Old English '-ung' (and sometimes '-ing'), from Proto-Germanic *-ungō, an abstract noun formant attaching to verbs to form nouns of action or process. Old English 'rǣdung' (reading, an act of reading), 'stefnung' (a voicing), 'timbrung' (a building / act of building). Modern German '-ung' (Bildung, Zeitung, Lernung) is the direct cognate, and it is still easily distinguishable from the participle '-end' in German.

In late Old English and early Middle English (c. 1100–1400), the two suffixes began to converge in both spelling and sound. The participle '-ende' / '-ande' weakened to '-ing' under multiple pressures, partly through phonological reduction of unstressed final syllables and partly through analogy with the already similar-sounding verbal noun '-ing.' By 1400 the two were effectively indistinguishable in writing and pronunciation, and Modern English treats them as a single '-ing' suffix.

This merger means Modern English speakers use '-ing' for what are historically and grammatically different functions, and distinguish them only by syntactic context: - Progressive tense: 'She is running' (present participle). - Gerund / nominalisation: 'Running is good exercise' (verbal noun). - Participial modifier: 'the running water' (adjectival use of participle). - Agent-like or instrument noun: 'the building' (noun derived from 'build').

Old English speakers distinguished these functions with different suffixes; Modern English speakers rely entirely on sentence structure. This merger is one of the most striking grammatical simplifications in the history of English.

Spelling rules are standard for English suffixes. Final silent '-e' is dropped ('bake > baking,' 'write > writing,' 'dance > dancing,' 'love > loving'). An exception: '-e' is kept in a few cases to distinguish meaning or preserve pronunciation ('dye > dyeing' vs. 'die > dying,' 'singe > singeing' vs. 'sing > singing'). A final consonant after a short stressed vowel is doubled ('sit > sitting,' 'run > running,' 'plan > planning,' 'begin > beginning'). Final '-c' usually adds '-k-' to preserve the hard sound ('picnic > picnicking,' 'panic > panicking,' 'traffic > trafficking'). Verbs ending in '-ie' change to '-ying' ('die > dying,' 'lie > lying,' 'tie > tying,' 'vie > vying').

Phonologically, '-ing' is pronounced /ɪŋ/ in careful speech. In informal speech, especially in certain dialects, it is often pronounced /ɪn/ — the so-called 'g-dropping' phenomenon, though historically the '-in' form is probably inherited from the older '-ande'/'-ende' participle rather than a drop of anything. Both pronunciations have long histories in English and 'dropping g's' is not a recent linguistic laziness but a dialect feature dating back centuries.

The productivity of '-ing' is essentially unlimited. Every verb in English — native or borrowed, one syllable or many, regular or irregular — forms an '-ing' participle and a corresponding gerund. New verbs (from borrowings, coinages, back-formations, or conversions from nouns) immediately accept '-ing' without friction: 'googling,' 'texting,' 'photoshopping,' 'meming,' 'tweeting,' 'uploading,' 'downloading,' 'streaming,' 'podcasting,' 'crowdsourcing,' 'trolling.' The suffix attaches even to nonce verbs, acronyms, and novel expressions.

A secondary productive pattern produces concrete or eventive nouns from verbs. A 'building' is not just the act of building but a built structure; a 'meeting' is not just meeting but an event where people meet; a 'painting' is an object produced by painting; a 'ceiling,' 'covering,' 'clothing,' 'dressing,' 'wedding,' 'setting,' 'opening,' 'ending,' 'beginning,' 'finding,' 'saying,' 'showing,' 'feeling,' 'writing,' 'reading' (as a public event), 'hearing' (a court hearing), 'offering.' Many of these have drifted from their verbal-noun origin and are now fully concrete nouns with plurals ('buildings,' 'meetings,' 'paintings'). They cluster around domains of human activity: construction ('building,' 'plumbing,' 'wiring,' 'ceiling,' 'flooring,' 'tiling,' 'roofing'), textiles ('clothing,' 'bedding,' 'covering,' 'lining,' 'padding,' 'stitching'), cooking ('dressing,' 'stuffing,' 'topping,' 'filling,' 'icing,' 'coating'), and abstract events ('meeting,' 'wedding,' 'gathering,' 'outing,' 'hearing,' 'saying,' 'warning').

A further subtlety is the grammatical ambiguity between gerund and present participle in a noun phrase: 'his running was fast' (gerund — 'the running that he did was fast') versus 'his running' (could also be participial, but typically gerundial in this construction). Traditional grammarians distinguish these; modern linguists often group them under a single category 'ING-form.'

There is also an unrelated suffix '-ing' forming noun-denoting-people-from-a-place in a very small set of words: Old English '-ing' as patronymic or group-marker, visible in personal names ('Browning,' 'Cunning-ham'), place names ('Reading,' 'Wapping,' 'Ealing,' where '-ing' denotes the people of — 'Reading' was the place of Rēada's people), and a few other historical formations ('farthing' from Old English 'fēorþing,' fourth part; 'herring' from Old English 'hǣring'; 'morning' from Middle English extension of 'morn'). These are historical fossils and not productive.

Representative '-ing' participles and gerunds include literally every verb in English. A tiny sample: accepting, achieving, acting, adding, admiring, adopting, advancing, advising, agreeing, allowing, amazing, announcing, answering, anticipating, appearing, applying, approaching, approving, arguing, arranging, arriving, asking, assessing, assigning, assisting, assuming, attending, attracting, avoiding, baking, balancing, banning, banning, bathing, bearing, beating, beautifying, becoming, beginning, behaving, belonging, bending, betting, binding, biting, blaming, blinking, blocking, blooming, blowing, boiling, booking, boring, borrowing, bouncing, breaking, breathing, bringing, broadcasting, building, burning, bursting, burying, buying. Concrete '-ing' nouns: bedding, blessing, building, ceiling, clothing, coating, covering, cross-ing, dressing, ending, evening, feeling, filling, finding, flooring, gathering, greeting, hearing, heating, icing, inning, lighting, lining, living, meaning, meeting, morning, opening, outing, painting, parking, plumbing, reading, ring (cognate), roofing, saving, saying, seating, setting, shading, showing, singing, sitting, siding, standing, stuffing, surrounding, thing (from Old Norse, unrelated), thinking, timing, topping, training, tuning, turning, understanding, waiting, walking, warning, washing, wedding, weighing, welcoming, whispering, winning, wiring, wishing, working, writing.