I saw her dance/dancing? I saw a flash of lightning strike/striking? I caught her steal/stealing? [duplicate]

Meta: I found a very similar post asking the difference between "I saw him cross" and "I saw him crossing". I have three additional questions on sentences of this form.

In the post I am referring to, the accepted answer was "I saw him cross the road" implies I saw the entire event of him crossing the road and "I saw him crossing the road" implies I saw him in the middle of the crossing but I didn't wait to see whether he finished crossing the road.

Q1. But what if we watch instead of see? Consider the sentences below.

I watched her dance alone in the room.
I watched her dancing alone in the room.

Watch implies something that goes on for a while. But does the original explanation still hold, i.e. does the first sentence imply I watched the entire dance and the second imply I did not?

Q2. What if you see actions that are almost instantaneous? Does the explanation still hold good? Here is an example:

I saw a flash of lightning strike the pole.
I saw a flash of lightning striking the pole.

Here, we cannot stop seeing in the middle of a lightning since it happens so fast. Does that make the second sentence wrong or can we still use either sentence to mean the same thing?

Q3. Which of the sentences below is/are correct?

I caught her steal the diamond ring
I caught her stealing the diamond ring

When you catch someone in the act, that person could not finish the act. So does that make the first sentence incorrect?

Solution 1:

The short answers:

• Q1 — "watched her dance" and "watched her dancing" are both acceptable. There are slightly different connotations but the meaning is clear. Pragmatically, they mean the same thing.
• Q2 — "strike the pole" and "striking the pole" are both acceptable. There are slightly different connotations but the meaning is clear. Pragmatically, they mean the same thing.
• Q3 — "caught her steal" is incorrect and should be avoided. "caught her stealing" is the correct form.

The connotation differences in Q1 and Q2 are very slight and are more obvious with different examples.

Q1. The part that matters here is not "watched":

I watched her cross the room.

I watched her crossing the room.

These both mean roughly the same thing that using "saw" would mean:

I saw her cross the room.

I saw her crossing the room.

The connotation difference lies in the intent of the watcher. Watching something implies a more deliberate action. "Seeing" something can happen through pure happenstance and does not imply much about the intent of the seer. Case in point, the first from the following pair of examples is much creepier:

I watched her through her bedroom window.

I saw her through her bedroom window.

So the answer to Q1 is the same as the answer you reference in your question. Using "watched" in place of "saw" does not alter the example.

Q2. Things that are instantaneous are not actually instantaneous in the sense that your being able to see it means it occurred over a specific period of time. So, the principle from the answer you reference still holds.

That being said, the difference between "strike" and "striking" is so subtle that there is no pragmatic difference between the two and would only be used in order to "flavor" the meaning.

For example, if you wanted to "stop time" in the middle of the "striking" in order to process the state of mind in a character, "striking" would work very well:

I saw a flash of lightning striking the pole and [melodramatic prose goes here].

But this kind of over-analysis will probably fly right past the reader unnoticed and phrasing things this pedantically generally isn't recommended.