1.9.2 -ing participle modifying noun

Examples of errors:

1. This explains its outraging role in world affairs.
2. The reasons for this problem are overaged machines and crowding conditions.
3. We do not want a restricting and penalizing society, but a protective society.
4. I like my home town, Kassel, and my riding village.
5. This little boy is not your playing fellow.
6. People are becoming more and more afraid of strangers.
7. This is a result of the increasing number of attacking and robbing old people.
8. Opponents of the report want to uphold moral standards and abolish any changing habits.

There is no general rule comparable to Rule 1.9.1 regarding the occurrence of -ing participles as adjectives (premodifiers of nouns). Most commonly, though, the -ing participle premodifier represents an underlying verb whose subject is the head noun:

a drinking man <- a man who drinks
a surprising opinion <- an opinion that surprises

This is the underlying relationship that holds in (l)-(3), but the problem here is that penalizing and restricting are not acceptable as adjectives, since they have non-participial counterparts in punitive and restrictive. Similarly, the adjective forms of crowd and outrage are crowded and outrageous.

Somewhat less commonly, the head noun represents an underlying adverbial, and the -ing participle an underlying verb, as in

a parking place <- a place where one can park
swimming pool <- a pool where one can swim

The combination of riding and village (cf. (4)), however, is not acceptable. The underlying adverbial may be one of time or manner, as well as of place:

(Tuesday is my) shopping day <- day when I go shopping
fishing companion <- companion with whom one fishes

Playing fellow (cf. (5)) is not acceptable, but compare playing clothes, playing companion.

In (6) attacking and robbing old people might be understood as 'old people who attack and rob (others)', which of course is not the intended meaning. There are two errors here. First, number requires a plural noun, and *attackings (i.e. attacks) and *robbings (i.e. robberies) are unacceptable. Second, the prepositional phrase is constructed with the wrong noun as head; it is the number of attacks and robberies that are being referred to, not the number of old people. Similarly, in (7), although changing habits ('habits which change') is acceptable per se, the sense of the sentence is that the changes in habits,.rather than the habits themselves, are what the opponents want to abolish.