In "experience teaching", is "experience" a noun adjunct?

Solution 1:

My original purpose was to write an undergraduate text on digital communication, but experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that I could not write an honest exposition of principles, including both what is possible and what is not possible, without losing most undergraduates.

There is no way for "experience" to be a noun adjunct in this sentence, because "teaching" is not a noun. "Teaching" is a verb here, as shown by the fact that "teaching" takes a direct object as complement: the noun phrase "this material." In general, nouns take prepositional phrases rather than noun phrases as their complements: an example where the form "teaching" is used as a noun would be "the teaching of this material", which cannot be replaced with *"the teaching this material."

"Teaching this material over a number of years" is a non-finite clause. The clause it is contained in has the basic structure "experience [...] convinced me that I could not write an honest exposition of principles." The noun experience is the head of the noun phrase that is the subject of the clause with verb convinced.

I'm not sure what grammatical structure is used to put the non-finite clause (the one with the verb teaching) inside of the larger finite clause (the one with the verb convinced).

If, as suggested in the comments, the non-finite clause is a modifier of the preceding nominal "experience," that would give the structure

[experience [teaching this material over a number of years]] convinced me that I could not write an honest exposition of principles

You raised the objection in the comments that this would involve a modifier coming after what it modifies. But that isn't a valid objection, because that isn't actually an unusual kind of word order in English. Some modifiers come before what they modify (for example, single-word adjectives usually precede the modified nominal), but many kinds of multi-word modifiers are regularly placed at the end rather than the beginning of a phrase in English. For example, relative clauses and prepositional phrases are standardly placed at the end of noun phrases: we say "a tree that grows very large" (not *"a that grows very large tree") and "a school in my city."

Solution 2:

"...but experience, (while) teaching this over a number of years, convinced me..."

"Teaching" is merely part of a subordinate adjectival clause, qualifying "experience".

The "while" has been elided but can easily be put back in if it makes you more comfortable.

Solution 3:

... but (experience (teaching this material) over a number of years) convinced me that ...

Solution 4:

Experience is just a noun here. Insert my in front of it to get a better read:

. . . but my experience teaching this material convinced me . . .

Teaching this material over a number of years is a gerund phrase restrictive appositive for the noun experience. Experience = teaching.

You can look at it like this:

. . . but experience teaching this material convinced me that I could not write . . .

. . . but experience convinced me that I could not write . . .

. . . but teaching this material convinced me that I could not write . . .

. . . but my uncle Bob convinced me that I could not write.

. . . but my uncle convinced me that I could not write.

. . . but Bob convinced me that I could not write.

If you don't like the appositive analysis, you can consider a couple of others . . .

Here's one: Teaching this material over a number of years is a reduced adverb clause functioning as an adverb. It's reduced from:

. . . but experience while I was teaching this material convinced me that I could not write . . .

to:

. . . but experience teaching this material convinced me that I could not write . . .

Here's another: Teaching this material over a number of years is a prepositional phrase (with an elliptical preposition) functioning as an adjective:

. . . but experience with teaching this material convinced me that I could not write . . .

Those two don't sit well with me, though.

Solution 5:

I will refer to the point herrison raised in his post regarding the interpretation of the ing clause in the original sentence:

My original purpose was to write an undergraduate text on digital communication, but experience teaching this material over a number of years convinced me that I could not write an honest exposition of principles, including both what is possible and what is not possible, without losing most undergraduates.

This is what herrison said in his post:

Some modifiers come before what they modify (for example, single-word adjectives usually precede the modified nominal), but many kinds of multi-word modifiers are regularly placed at the end rather than the beginning of a phrase in English.

This is key for understanding the ing clause function in the original sentence. The clause "teaching this material over a number of years" is way too heavy to be pre-modifying the noun referent. This reflects the general constraint placed on noun modification in English - noun pre-modifiers cannot (normally) be post-modified (or complemented) themselves. The authors of CGEL recognize a verb phrase as a form intermediate between a verb and clause. So, verb phrases can pre-modify noun, but clauses (normally) cannot. In this example, the noun phrase headed by "experience" and modified by an -ing clause is equivalent to "teaching experience". The ing clause modifier is pushed behind the noun it modifies simply because it is too heavy. Other than that, the phrase can basically be reduced to "teaching experience". It is what we are talking about here.

This is important to notice because a noun and an -ing verb can stand in a quite different relation from this. So, if we rephrased the sentence a bit we could say like:

My original purpose was to write an undergraduate text on digital communication, but with teaching experience approaching ten years now, I am convinced that I could not write an honest exposition of principles, including both what is possible and what is not possible, without losing most undergraduates.

The ing clause "approaching ten years" modifies the noun "experience" in a different way from the participial clause in the original sentence. The grammar is quite different and so is the interpretation. This -ing clause is not parallel to what would be the pre-modifying counterpart - "approaching experience". This use of ing clauses is similar to that of relative clauses. The natural position of this clause is after the noun antecedent.

Or, to use another possible rephrasing of the sentence:

My original purpose was to write an undergraduate text on digital communication, but I gave up the idea, years of experience teaching me that I could not write an honest exposition of principles, including both what is possible and what is not possible, without losing most undergraduates .

This is yet another different relation between the head noun and the ing verb. The phrase "(years of )experience" is interpreted as the subject of the following verb "teaching". Unlike the previous two participial clauses, this one is not understood as a dependent within an NP. The whole thing "years of experience teaching me that.." is loosely attached to the rest of the sentence structure.