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"Heard me [infinitive]" vs. "heard me [present participle]"

    1. At that time, you wouldn't have heard me talk about it.
    2. At that time, you wouldn't have heard me talking about it.
    1. At that time, you wouldn't have heard me condemn it.
    2. At that time, you wouldn't have heard me condemning it.

Which one of the above sentences are incorrect and why?

tchrist
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Bright Polyglot
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2 Answers2

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None of them are incorrect.

English sense verbs, unlike most complement-taking verbs,
can take either gerund or infinitive complements.

  • I saw/heard him leave/leaving.

This is most common with long-distance senses, of course;
-- She smelled him leaving is a fairly unlikely (though not ungrammatical) thing to say.

It may be (and undoubtedly some people interpret it this way, though others don't)
that

  • I heard him leaving.

means something like (and may be a variant of)

  • I heard him while he was (in the act of) leaving.

while

  • I heard him leave.

means something like

  • I heard the noise produced by his leaving.

Not a whole lot of difference here, and for all intensive purposes they're synonymous.

Community
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John Lawler
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    Yeah the difference is almost imperceptible, and I couldn't pinpoint it. The pragmatic difference between I heard him leave and I heard his leaving, however, is clear. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 04 '13 at 18:44
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    Ah, but if we're going to subject this one to intensive analysis, perhaps we should consider the fact that with some constructions there's still another possibility - "I heard his* breathing". Which seems perfectly reasonable to me, but unlike the him breathe/breathing* versions, it doesn't work so well with saw. – FumbleFingers Jan 04 '13 at 19:17
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    But that's a noun, not a gerund. I heard his labored reading of the book, but not *I heard his reading the book with difficulty. – John Lawler Jan 04 '13 at 19:48
  • Given the right context, there is also the difference that the gerund can refer to the subject of the inflected verb, rather than the object: “He was trying to hide in the doorway, but I saw him craning my neck out far as I could”. This is not possible with an infinitive. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 16 '13 at 19:13
  • Yes, but in that case I saw him craning is not a constituent; the gerund isn't the complement of saw, but rather a final means adverbial clause with deleted by, and probly a different intonation. Certainly it works preposed instead of postposed: He was trying to hide in the doorway, but, craning my neck out as far as I could, I saw him. – John Lawler Oct 16 '13 at 20:44
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    Great jokes from little ... – Edwin Ashworth Jun 25 '15 at 11:28
  • Here's a good explanation on the difference in meaning http://www.englishgrammar.org/verbs-perception/ – Dmitry Aug 31 '15 at 23:07
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I agree that there's not much difference between the two, although the "-ing" form may suggest something that goes on for a while. For example, "I heard him sneeze" suggests that he just sneezes once, whereas "I heard him sneezing" gives more of a sense that the sneezing goes on for a while.

On a separate point, the expression is not "for all intensive purposes" (John Lawler). It's an eggcorn arising from a mishearing of the correct expression, which is "for all intents and purposes".

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
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