Dear RL:

You wrote:

Dear Sir

I believe the use of present participles as premodifiers and post modifiers is hard to codify. For instance, we can use ‘an escaping prisoner’, or ‘a drowning man’ but not ‘a walking man’. However, one can say: The man walking etc. Would you please share your idea about this particular phenomenon of English language?

RL

You can say “the walking man,” but it would be unusual. Present participles follow the noun they modify when they are in phrases. “Walking” is almost always used in a phrase. In English people seldom just “walk.” They walk somewhere or in a certain manner. Therefore, we would be more likely to say something like the following:
The man walking with a limp is a beggar. (his manner of walking)
He said he saw the woman walking down the street. (where she was walking)
Sometimes the participle follows the noun for emphasis. For example there was a recent film entitled “Dead Man Walking.” “Walking Dead Man” would have meant the same thing and would have sounded just as “correct” to an English ear, but the first is more rhythmic and emphatic. (The rhetorical term for this rhythm is “cursus.”)

There is also a subtle sense that a participle before a noun is more descriptive of the noun–it is more consciously adjectival–while the participle following the noun emphasizes the action more. Since most people walk, a “walking woman,” could describe nearly anyone, while a “woman walking” emphasizes the action more at that particular time (the idea being she could have been doing something else). This is fairly subtle, and more an issue of style than grammar.

I hope this helps.