'Good stopping' 'nice walking'

[princessx]

Am I the only one to shudder when I hear this new way of praising children? It's not grammatically correct is it?

Should you really say: 'well done, you stopped at the appropriate place.'?

Any thoughts?

tiger, the gerund is the nearest we have in English. Agree it works so much better in Latin - from the pov of being simpler to explain at least! (actually, did I really just say that?)

Reminds me when DD had a poem for homework where she had to underline all the verbs.

The poem contained not one main verb but lots and lots of gerunds.

I suppose if you substituted another adjective ( e.g. excellent or pitiful) the construction would sound fine so grammatically it's okay but just sounds naff rather than wrong.

Whilst I understand such phrasing is very helpful for small children and those with limited receptive language, I think it's the Americanness which makes people itch a bit.

When DD had her homework problems, practically none of the British-educated parents (or teachers) knew what a gerund was and all the non-native English speakers did. We're not usually taught English grammar in that way, or at least, my generation (40-something) wasn't.

It's a verbal noun ie, a verbal form that functions as a noun - always ends in '-ing' eg,

Smoking is bad for your health.
The whistling of the kettle.

A verbal noun; we don't use them much in English, which is probably why the op finds 'good sitting' etc sounds odd.
Awaits correction; it's a bit scary posting in pedants' corner.

I still don't see what's wrong with it or why it should be American - it's just an adjective + noun. Why is it different to eg, 'Nice dress!' Or 'lovely weather'. Is it the brevity you object to?

try this?

As others have said, it is grammatically correct; it just sounds a bit unusual, and nothing wrong in that; language evolves and changes to meet needs. FWIW, it is not a construction in common use in the US, either.

It's a gerund rather than a present participle, innit? It's just that in English gerunds and present participles look the same. I suppose that "Your stopping is good" or "Your listening is good" would be more technically correct, but there's no need to get sniffy about the ingishness of the construction.

Only on mumsnet!

It feels American to me as much of the positive parenting materials which use this construction are from the US. That may be just my experience though.

Interesting - I hadn't associated it with parenting language in particular.

Better than "fuckin STOP you wee shit!".

I love this thread.
I don't understand chunks of it,yet I love it.

I remember when we had the DSs bedroom painted and DS2 almost immediately wrote his name in huge letters across the wall.
He had never written his name unprompted before so DH and I gave him a great big thumbs up and "good writing name!".
Ds1 just stood there looking at us with 'you're fucking kidding me!" etched across his little face.

pag