Progressive or simple: How to correctly talk about what's happening (what someone's doing)

Question

I don't know how to analyze the grammar of the following two statements:

"I don't want to keep listening to you sniffle."

vs.

"I don't want to keep listening to you sniffling."

To the point, I haven't been able to figure out if one is more correct than the other or if there's really any difference in meaning.

They're both grammatical, and the reason is that sense verbs (like see, hear, listen, look, etc) can take either infinitive or gerund complements (I saw him leave/leaving).. — John Lawler, Aug 23 '23 at 21:04

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 19:08

The second sentence is grammatically incorrect. Only the first sentence is correct.

However, you can make the second sentence correct by changing the "you" to a "your". This is because the "-ing" suffix is used to make gerunds, so "your sniffling" in this context can mean "the sniffles that belong to you".

Progressive or simple: How to correctly talk about what's happening (what someone's doing)

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