Talk:reclining

Common collocations of reclining

Following are common collocations of reclining. Almost all show the term in attributive use.

Attributive use

1. position
   1. posture, pose
2. person
   1. man, woman, nude, Buddha, male, couple. girl, Madonna, lady
   2. ibex, caprid, god, personification, figure, bull, chimera, ox, seal, calf, cow
3. mechanism
4. chair, backrest, swing, seat, back, wheelchair
5. rod, plane, mast, s
6. dial
7. banquet
8. pulse rate, heart rate
9. shrub

DCDuring (talk) 15:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

I dont know why people seem to want to use every possible classification for these words except the most obvious one. Instead of saying it's an appositional use of a gerund of a noun, why not simply say that it's an adjective? A reclining chair is a type of chair. I can see how you could analyze it as "recline[activity]" + "chair", but if we do that, we lose information because it's no longer clear, at the semantic level, whether the reclining is done by the person in the chair or also the chair itself.

For most of the other examples, I would say that the most obvious classification is an adjective as well. The few exceptions are easily waved away .... reclining pulse rate at first seems not to be adjectival, but that's because reclining isnt modifying pulse rate, its describing the person whose pulse is being measured. The whole person series up above can either be adjectival or not ... if we're talking about a painting, then yes, reclining figure is adjectival, and all we need is that it can be an adjective. Some of the other terms Im not familiar with, but again, we don't need to go through every one ... we have clear attestation of widespread adjective use here. The only problem is that people seem to be analyzing it each in their own way, and that brings me back to the beginning of this post ... instead of arguing whether it's an appositional gerund of a noun, or a participial form of a verb, why not pick the most obvious choice, the one that most casual Wiktionary readers will most likely be looking for? Thanks, —Soap— 05:59, 11 September 2022 (UTC)