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Can anyone tell me why sentence (A) is wrong, and (B) is correct?

(A) "The topic of landmines is very heavy and complicating."

(B) "The topic of landmines is very heavy and complicated."

To me, both seem to make sense. In my understanding, 'complicating' in sentence (A) is equivalent to 'confusing,' while 'complicated' in sentence (B) is synonymous with 'complex.'

I did some research and there is no such word as "complicating" in my dictionary; there are only "complicate" and "complicated." I am assuming it is because "complicating" cannot be used as an adjective - it can only be used as the present progressive form of the verb "complicate." And if this is the case, can sentence (C) below be grammatically and idiomatically correct?

(C) "The topic of landmines is very heavy and complicating the peace talks."

Thanks for your help!

herisson
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Motoko M
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  • Or: The heavy topic of land mines is complicating the peace talks. –  Jul 22 '15 at 09:41
  • Sentence (A) is unidiomatic; any native speaker hearing you say it would consider it incorrect or incomplete. Sentence (B) is fine and the normal way it would be phrased. The reason we can use confusing instead of complicating in (A), and the reason we can use complicating in (C), is because complicating is strictly transitive, whereas the subject of confusin, the thing confused, can be me. Not so with complicating. – Dan Bron Jul 22 '15 at 11:56
  • The line explained everything; because complicating is strictly transitive. Thanks, Dan! – Motoko M Jul 24 '15 at 02:00
  • I don't think that "heavy" is the appropriate term to be using above. – Hot Licks Dec 30 '15 at 02:41

3 Answers3

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I am assuming it is because "complicating" cannot be used as an adjective - it can only be used as the present progressive form of the verb "complicate."

Exactly right. The word "confusing" has the form of the present-progressive, but it can also be used as an adjective (Source: Oxford Learner's Dictionaries). This is just a fact about the specific word, so looking up in the dictionary like you did is the correct course of action here.

Because "heavy" is an adjective and "complicating" is a present participle, your sentence C) seems a bit odd to me. There's a kind of "zeugma" where you're making "is" serve two roles: as a copular verb and as an auxiliary verb. (These grammatical roles are usually differentiated; see "Is "am" in "I am right" an auxiliary verb?". But, keep in mind that some people refer to "be" as an "auxiliary verb" in all of its uses, whether or not it is "helping" a lexical verb.)

To avoid this, I would add a few more words to change the structure:

(C2) "The topic of landmines is very heavy, and it is complicating the peace talks."

Community
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herisson
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  • So convincing, especially regarding "copular verb" and "auxiliary very." I will be careful about using one single word when it has two or more different grammatical roles! Thanks for your help, sumelic!! – Motoko M Oct 04 '15 at 04:19
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While there are exceptions, normally when you want to turn a verb into an adjective, you use the past tense. complicated is the past tense of complicate, and can be used to describe something. complicating is the present tense, so is not generally used as an adjective.

In (C), you're not using complicating as an adjective, it's being used as a verb, to refer to what the topic of landmines is doing (it's causing the peace talks to become more complex).

Barmar
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(A) "The topic of landmines is very heavy and complicating."

To me, 'complicating' means something that complicates a situation, so you could say 'adding that divide to that already complex maths equation is complicating it further'.

'Confusing' is not synonymous with 'complicating' because 'confusing' means something that confuses somebody. You can't 'complicate' somebody, though.

(B) "The topic of landmines is very heavy and complicated."

To me, 'complicated' is the past tense of 'complicate', so this makes sense because 'The topic of landmines' has been through a process of complication, thus is now complicated. It is not however currently in a process of 'complicating' other things, which is why the first quote does not make sense.

Ambidextroid
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