"What I'm doing is watching TV." — Why does it have to be the gerund-participle ('watching')?

Solution 1:

I don't know the right way of analysing this, but it seems to me to have to do with grammatical aspect. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum) interprets English as having two aspects, progressive and non-progressive. (The perfect is not considered to be an aspect; it's treated as a distinct system for various reasons.)

As far as I can tell, the gerund-participle is marked for progressive aspect, while the infinitive is not.

In your examples, the gerund-participle seems to agree in aspect with the form of the verb "do." (I don't know if "agreement" is technically the right term for this.)

I don't know why it has to match like this.

I found a resource about cleft sentences that just states this fact, but doesn't explain it:

In order to make a verb stand out the construction what … do must be used; different verb forms will be found, according to context. Infinitives with or without to are possible. If the wh-clause contains a verb in the progressive aspect the complement also has a verb in the -ing form:

What they do is dump their products
What I did was (to) call the police
What he was trying to do was just earning your trust

–"Cleft sentences"; handout from the website of Università degli Studi di Padova, Dipartimento Dei Beni Culturali

According to this resource, this construction with "what" is often called a "pseudo-cleft" sentence to distinguish it from sentences using the dummy pronoun "it." They may also be called wh-clefts, apparently.

I found another resource, The Pseudo-Cleft Construction in English by F. R. Higgins, which says:

With the progressive, as is well-known, the predicate complement must have an -ing form, as in (xiii) (their [42a]):

(xiii) What I'm doing is teaching him a lesson.

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any other mentions of the progressive in this book (I initially had high hopes that it might explain how the construction interacts with the English aspectual system).

Some sources mention that some speakers do use the past participle form in sentences such as "What I had done was watch(ed) TV."

In English, [when a verb phrase is focalized], it can appear either as a bare infinitive or as a to-infinitive, as shown in (1c). However, when a progressive -ing form is used in the presuppositional clause, the focus verb has to be in -ing form as well (6a), and when a perfective -en form is used in the presuppositional clause, the focus verb can optionally be in -en form, as in (6b).

(6) a. What I'm doing is patting/*pat/*to pat the cat.
b. What I have done is taken/take/to take a taxi to school.

–"On the Syntactic and Semantic Properties of VP Foci in Pseudocleft Sentences in Japanese", Yuki Ishihara, p. 37

I tried to look up information about the internal grammatical structure of pseudo-cleft sentences, but everything I found looked very complicated.

Solution 2:

The examples used in the post are wh-type cleft sentences complement of the verb "be". We know cleft clauses relocate information in an otherwise straightforward sentence for emphasis. lt is just moving the stressed material before and after the predicate; the words to be emphasized are joined to the relative clause by 'is' or 'was'(Swan 139).

The focus of the wh-type cleft normally has to be in the form of a noun phrase or nominal clause. We know "what" is a combination of 'that' + ' which ' and, in that sense has a relative clause in it.

In A Communicative Grammar of English (3rd.Ed.) by Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svarlvik (page 218, sec.422) it is said that the wh-type can focus on the verb by using the substitute of 'do'. The complement of the wh-type cleft sentence takes the form of a non finite clause, most commonly a bare infinitive ( in our example, ' watch TV'). This non finite may be a bare infinitive, a 'to infinitive', an ed-participle or an ing- participle. The examples cited are as under

• What he'll do is spoil the whole thing (bare form)

• What he's done is a) spoil the whole thing, b) to spoil the whole thing , or c) spoilt the whole thing.

• What he is doing is spoiling the whole thing.

As a conclusion it is suggested that the bare infinitive is the most usual construction except after done where the ed-p participle is just as acceptable and after 'doing' where -ing participle has to used. The book doesn't elaborate on the obvious reason of agreement of this nominal phrase with the time and aspect captured in the foregoing ( What...). Our examples can effectively be explained in the light of the foregoing.

http://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/340600179/m/5221051301?r=2071075301 This link also endorses the view why after copula "be" the gerundial phrase in the predicate portion should be used if the relative clause that precedes the 'be' verb has imperfect aspect.

However the contentious issue being resolved it seems pertinent to add a few words about what-cleft (not wh-type in general) which we know by the name pseudo-cleft in the sense it is cleft for the sake of cleaving — a kind of forced attempt to land with a thud on the real verb by using the substitute verb "do". Hence wh-cleft is treated as thematic equative or "theme rheme" structure expressed by the predicator be where pre copula material should have agreement with the post copula constituents. Infinitive with or without "to"is very much common with any aspect except continuous where the on-going aspect can alone be arrested by gerundial, a look alike of tensed participle.

random-idea-english-blogpost.in/2012/04 clears my confusion when it says the infinitive after verb DO in pseudocleft always goes without TO in North American English and the tendency is fast spreading in BrE as well.

Solution 3:

Please forgive some more general notes, which I can't fit in a comment. I'd have to agree that the following sentence is ungrammatical:

[1a] *What I am doing is watch TV.

But if we can trigger the purposive nature of the infinitive, then I think it's acceptable:

[1b] What I am doing for distraction is [to] watch TV.

It also strikes me that the more we separate is from the infinitive, the more acceptable it becomes:

[1c] ?What I find that I am doing and much to my consternation is watch TV all day.