VBG Non-finite -ing forms (all)

Xiao M98 MFTE VBG composite

Definition

All present participle forms, including participial clauses and WHIZ deletions. This is the MFTE-level merged feature; Biber counted participial clauses (VBG_CLAUSE) and WHIZ deletions (WHIZBG) separately.

Children (composite)

Detection Rules

mfte

MFTE counts residual VBG after re-tagging progressive aspect (PROG) and going-to (GTO). Uses cat attribute so that tokens refined by PROG or GTO (which declare refines: VBG) are automatically excluded.

cql[cat="VBG"]

Requires: pos

Matches all VBG tokens. Includes progressive aspect, going-to, participial clauses, and WHIZ deletions.

cql[pos="VBG"]

Requires: pos

Normalization

Per words

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
  • xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis

View YAML source