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China flaglin
Hi everyone,in the sentence ,did you find any grammar mistakes,I find it in a book, and I feel it is weird.
“Free from the burden of co-existing harmoniously with the opposite sex, boys and girls often turned their attention to scholarly pursuits”
I'm thinking if the word “harmoniously” change to "harmony" would be better?

Comments · 8

1
Thanks a lot, everybody!
now I understand very clearly,harmoniously is used for the co-existing in this sentence
1
Great question! “Harmoniously” is correct, and can go either before or after the gerund (“coexisting”). Even though “coexisting” is a gerund, which is a noun, we need to look at the entire gerund phrase, which is formed from the infinitive phrase, “to co-exist harmoniously”. When we form the gerund phrase, we replace the infinitive with the gerund, but the rest of the words keep their original form. If we wanted, we could use a non-verbal noun, in which case it would be “harmonious coexistence”.

1
The grammar is correct - it is a bit complex though!
0
IDK for sure because I m still learning but some comments create a question in my mind. Because
As I know “harmoniously” is an adverb and adverb is comes at the beginning, at the end of a sentence or if it comes in middle then it is followed by noun, pronoun or verb. But in this sentence it comes in the middle of nowhere and followed by prepositional phrase
It is what I think guys, if I m wrong please correct me please
0
Probably 'harmoniously' sounds bad for you, because you think that 'co-existing' is an adjective, and it is should be followed by a noun. However here 'co-existing' can be considered as a noun, and is followed by an adverb, which is fine. Could native speakers correct me if I'm wrong?

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