“He died fighting for (the sake of) his country.”
In the above sentence, can I add ‘in the’ before fighting?
Is it grammatically OK to say, “He died fighting.”
It’s correct without adding ‘in the’, Hanifasmm.
He died fighting for his country.
He died fighting for the sake of his country.
english-test.net/ AQ ** KM 67 02 ** 50 CQ ** 93 70 11 ** 63 TY ** 33 SO ** 91 13 ** ** JJ RU WA 45 ** ** ** ** **
“He died in the fighting for his country.”
Is this sentence not correct?
I think it should be “he died in the fight for his country”
Here ‘the fighting’ & ‘the fight’ are all nouns only.
“He died in the fighting for his country.” must be correct.
Am I wrong?
As I pointed out in post #2 (Thank you, Tort!), you are wrong.
Could you give me reason to understand my mistake?
Thanks.
I see this this way bellow
He died fighting for his country.
“fighting” here is the present participle and it has been used instead “while he was fighting”
Got it?
Why would you add "in the " before “fighting”?
“He died fighting for his country.”
In this sentence ‘fighting’ can be termed as a gerund instead of a present-participle?
Could you please explain the grammar involved in constructing this sentence?
All right, this bellow is how I see the matter.
He died while he was fighting for his country.
There are two clauses in the sentence.
“he was fighting for his country” and “He died”
We’ve got from this sentence that
He is dead now.
He fought for his country.
One action was happening when another took its place.
For event that was going on while another happened we use the past continuous tense.
For event that happened while another one was going on we use the simple past tense.
Starting from this sentence, written in this way, we come to this form below
He died fighting for his country.
Why we switched to this form?
In order to make the sentence shorter.
In the case of this form “fighting” is the past participle and not the gerund.
“fighting for his country” I see as an adverb of manner which tells us how he died.
I’m not a grammarian, nor am I a native speaker, but I think that you would need a noun in order to make a case for “in the”:
He died in the fight for his country.
‘He died in the fighting.’ is correct and ‘fighting’ is a noun in that sentence!
I have no ideea why ‘He died in the fighting for his country.’ would be incorrect.
thefreedictionary.com/fighting (See the bottom of the page.)
Tort is correct, Gelu.
It would be a fight for his country, not a fighting for his country.