practice+ving

[dido4]

1. John parctices baseball every day.
2. John practices playing baseball every day.

Q1: Is the #1 sentence right?
Q2: Any difference between these two?
---------------------------------------------------
3. John practices hitting.
4. John practices hitting the ball.

Q3. What's the difference between these two?


Thank you

[Bridget]

The word "playing" is redundant, there. Use "John practices baseball every day/daily".

[Marius Hancu]

Both OK:
-----
Spinners: Level I‎ - Page 303 (http://books.google.com/books?id=WytmaUVcQ7YC&q=%22he+practices+baseball%22&dq=%22he+practices+baseball%22&lr=)

by William Kirtley Durr, Joseph Brzeinski, Houghton Mifflin Company - Readers (http://books.google.com/books?q=+subject:%22Readers%22&lr=) - 1981 - 368 pages

So he practices baseball whenever he can. In a few years, even though he is still small, the boy becomes very strong
-----

Tino Martinez‎ - Page 27 (http://books.google.com/books?id=wyA9AAAAYAAJ&q=%22practice+playing+baseball%22&dq=%22practice+playing+baseball%22&lr=)

by John Albert Torres - Juvenile Nonfiction (http://books.google.com/books?q=+subject:%22Juvenile+Nonfiction%22&lr=) - 1999 - 64 pages

There was nothing to do there except practice playing baseball. The team
traveled to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Italy that summer and compiled an



------

[Marius Hancu]

>Q3. What's the difference between these two?

The ball:-)

One might imagine other hitting actions, in sports that don't involve a ball. Or one might imagine hitting practice without a ball, just simulated.

[OddThomas]

Notice the difference between the two sets of sentences, and see that you cannot sayJohn practices the ball.
But you can sayJohn practices playing.
The ball is too vague an activity, so that practices the ball does not produce a viable mental image of a concrete act. Yet playing is sufficiently concrete to work in the phrase practices playing. Of course, playing what is undetermined, but the sentence is semantically sound.

The same phenomenon occurs with
John practices throwing horseshoes.
John practices driving a car.
John practices horseshoes.
John practices driving.
John practices throwing.But not,
John practices a car.

[Bridget]

by John Albert Torres - Juvenile Nonfiction (http://books.google.com/books?q=+subject:%22Juvenile+Nonfiction%22&lr=) - 1999 - 64 pages

Again, isn't that a rout?

[Bridget]

There are no examples of practise playing in the BNC, and only 5 in COCA (of practice playing). If one is practising a certain part of the whole, so to speak, I can see the logic in using "practise playing". Apart from that, "playing" seems redundant.

X practises piano ("practise", alone, implies "playing")
?X practises playing piano (a rather naive redundacy)
X is practising playing scales on the piano (practising a part of the whole)