[Lucienne]

A teacher asked me about sentences of the form verb +ing +noun. I told her that although you could say "the singing boy is my brother," my native speaker intuition prefers "the boy (who is) singing is my brother." My feeling is that in most cases it sounds better when the noun comes first. However, the above case was somewhat ambiguous to me, and there are some clear cases where the noun comes last, such as a moving train, a sinking ship, a dying man. What do you think?

For example, which would you choose?

The swimming boy is Tom vs.
The boy swimming is Tom. vs.
The boy who is swimming is Tom.

The standing man is Tom. vs.
The man standing is Tom.
The man who is standing is Tom.

I passed a swimming boy vs.
I passed a boy swimming. vs.
I passed a boy who was swimming.

I love to see singing children vs.
I love to see children singing. vs.
I love to see children who are singing.

Thanks for your help!