running

[azz]

a. Stop that dog running.

Is the sentence grammatical correct?

Grammatically speaking does it correspond to
1. Stop that dog that's running.
or
2. Stop that dog's running.
?

Many thanks

[Phil White]

At the risk of repeating myself, there are relatively few cases where you can use adjectival qualifiers postpositively. This is not one of them. Your meaning 1 simply doesn't work in English.

The only meaning possible is "stop that dog from running".

Having said that, that particular meaning bears little relationship to the reality of dog behaviour. The most you can hope for is to make a dog run in a different direction if it has decided to run.

[Erik_Kowal]

The most you can hope for is to make a dog run in a different direction if it has decided to run.

An amusing illustration of this was reported on the BBC news today. A dog which had stranded itself on some offshore mudflats was enticed back to land by being encouraged to follow a sausage dangling on a length of string from a pet rescue drone. Evidently the dog then ate half the sausage and while doing so almost managed to submerge the very expensive drone.