ing form

[Anonymous]

Why we use "having" here ?
why not " have"? i know we use _ing form of verb after auxiliary verb

in continuous tense but it is very confusing for me when to use "-ing"

form in the sentence .



1) I felt more comfortable (having) either a stamp or a letter with me

at all times.


please check these sentences.


2) He is off the medication.


3)Get him down.


4) What kind of surgery she has operated on.


When we can use preposition at the end of the sentence?


Thanks

[Pete]

>Why do we use "having" here?
>Why not "have"? I know we use _ing form of verb after auxiliary verb in continuous tense but it is very confusing for me when to use "-ing" form in the sentence.

1) I felt more comfortable (having) either a stamp or a letter with me at all times.

-- To answer this, you must analyze the sentence and see how the word in question is being used. Notice that the subject is "I" and the verb is "felt". All the rest is the remaining part of the predicate; here it is the "complement". English doesn't allow a regular, finite verb to stand alone in that location. (Such a verb must have a subject and be part of a clause.) Thus "have" cannot go there. What can go there is the present participle "having"; it says something about the subject of the sentence, "I", as well as having an adverbial sense, saying why the person felt comfortable.


>Please check these sentences.

2) He is off the medication. [Ok.]

3)Get him down. [Ok.]

4) What kind of surgery she has operated on. [No. You operate on a person or an animal. You might mean:
- What kind of surgery did she have? [She is the patient.]
- What kinds of surgery has she performed? [She is a doctor/surgeon.]

>When we can use preposition at the end of the sentence?
-- In simple declarative sentences, a preposition comes just before its object, so it cannot come at the end of such sentences.
-- In questions and complex sentences, there are other rules about position that sometimes conflict with the rule about the position of the object of the preposition. Usually the WH word or other relative pronoun comes first in its clause, even when it is logically the object of a preposition.

-- When there is such a conflict, sometimes it makes more sense to allow the preposition to end the sentence than to rewrite the sentence in a way that is awkward or even wrong.

-- There is a famous quote by Winston Churchill about this:
- This is the kind of English up with which I cannot put.
-- (This sounds much less natural than
- This is the kind of English I cannot put up with. )

-- Another sentence that cannot be fixed merely my moving its words around is:
- Here is the envelope that the card came in.

-- In short, when you can easily put the object after the preposition, do so. When you can't do that, it is ok to put it at the end. If you are writing very formal English for someone who doesn't believe this, find another way to say what your mean. For instance, for my example above, you might say:
- The card came in this envelope.
-- It doesn't mean exactly the same thing, but it is natural and avoids the preposition problem.