When can the -ing form of a verb be placed before a noun?

In normal English syntax, single-word modifiers precede the noun they modify, but phrases follow the noun.

So you put the -ing word before the noun it modifies when it is acting as an adjective, not as a non-finite verb. You put the -ing word after the noun when it is part of a verbal phrase with other parts in it; you can’t have a long verbal phrase preceding the noun it modifies.

Sometimes the -ing word is actually a noun: a writing desk is a desk for writing, not a desk that happens to be writing. But it is still modifying desk. Here are examples of the -ing word used as a modifier (either as adjective or a noun) preceding the modified noun:

answering machine, barking mad, bleeding heart, bowling alley, burning bush, burrowing owl, carrying capacity, changing room, chattering classes, closing credits, coloring book, cooking oil, creeping thyme, dictating machine, drawing board, drilling rig, eating disorder, fighting drunk, firing squad, floating bridge, flying fish, flying buttress, flying fox, flying fuck, growing pains, heating element, holding pen, hopping mad, killing field, landing gear, laughing gas, lending library, lightning bug, magnifying glass, mailing list, missing person, moving walkway, opening night, parking meter, plunging neckline, praying mantis, quaking aspen, revolving door, rising sun, rounding error, scalding hot, shifting use, shouting match, starting line, talking point, thinking cap, trading post, waiting game

On the other hand, here are pairs of examples where the first one has the -ing word first where it acts as a simple adjectival modifer, and where the second one has it acting as an actual verb:

• the acting director had harsh words for us
• the director acting in the company’s best interests keeps a tight ship
  
  
• the binding action of this substance
• the cord binding the two halves together
  
  
• the bouncing ball hit me in the face
• the ball bouncing down the stairs was lost forever
  
  
• the calling function retains its own private variables
• the woman calling for a new husband will soon enough find one
  
  
• the carrying case was very heavy
• the case carrying the lead was heaviest of all
  
  
• the circling vultures drifted ever higher
• the vultures circling above our heads would wait until we dropped
  
  
• the cooking sausages smelled fabulous
• the women cooking our breakfast made us wash up first
  
  
• a demanding teacher is hard on the students
• a teacher demanding full attendance is seldom listened to
  
  
• the facing audience recoiled
• the man facing the audience cheered

And so on and so forth. In your case, you could have put sleeping afterwards, and had a man sleeping under the tree, but sleeping men like sleeping dogs are not particularly unusual.

However, you would not normally speak of fishing men, so you would have a man (who was/is) fishing for something down by the river bank. If you strained it, you could build up a context in which fishing men might contrast with farming men or some such, but it would be abnormal.

You might find a man singing in the rain, or you might find a singing man (who is out) in the rain, but you will never find a singing-in-the-rain man. Or to put it more crudely, there is a world of difference between having a fucking idiot in your livingroom and having an idiot fucking in your livingroom.

I wouldn't say that "There's a fishing man by the river bank" is wrong. It's not ungrammatical. It has easily discernible meaning. It just may not be idiomatic. That's not a grammar problem. I think most native speakers would probably say There's a man fishing {by/on/at} the river bank or There's a fisherman {by/on/at} the river bank. Simply a question of style and idiomaticity.

Whether the adjective comes before or after the noun it modifies usually doesn't matter for meaning in English, but There's a man dying by the river bank seems to have a different nuance from There's a dying man by the river bank. Adjective placement seems to me to affect the focus of the sentences in this case -- maybe in all cases (but I haven't thought enough about it to come to any conclusions). Some adjectives -- well, one for certain -- must come after the noun: this is a usage and not a grammar problem: There were flowers galore but not There were galore flowers. Use a different word or phrase, e.g., abundant instead of galore, and the usage rules are different: She had common sense {galore / in abundance}, She had abundant common sense, and She had an abundance of common sense.

In French, however, there's a difference in meaning between "un homme pauvre" and "un pauvre homme": the first guy is penniless and the second is pitiful.

Bill is absolutely right in saying that there is nothing grammatically wrong with fishing man. It is not likely to be frequently found, but the Corpus of Contemporary American English has this one record from ‘Stern Men’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, published in 2000:

They were famous lobstermen, superior to every fishing man.

My tentative conclusion is that there is no grammatical rule against placing an adjective ending in ‘-ing’ before a noun. Any counter examples?

As I was responding to Barrie English's contribution, an answer to my own question occurred to me. I hope others will tell me what they think of it.

In a nutshell: the statement an Xing Y can be interpreted as meaning either a Y that Xs or a Y that is Xing. In many contexts only one interpretation makes sense (the other is either absurd, or violates's Grice's Co-operative Principle) so we go with that one. In cases where either interpretation makes sense, we prefer a Y that Xs over a Y that is Xing.

For instance, in the case of a sleeping man we could interpret this as meaning either a man who sleeps or a man who is sleeping. But a man who sleeps would be an odd thing to say (all men sleep!) so we interpret this to mean a man who is sleeping. The same applies to a crying baby, a shining light and so on.

But in the case of, say, a dancing girl, or Barrie English's example of a fishing man, here either interpretation would make sense, we favour a girl who dances and a man who fishes.

Is it because 'sleeping man' may be regarded as state of being for the man, but not 'fishing man'?

In your second addendum you said:

I should clarify precisely what fishing man is supposed to mean. It does not mean a man who fishes. That would be taken care of by case 1 of the hypothesis above. The intended meaning is a man who is fishing.

And that, I think, is the crux of your dilemma.

"There is a fishing man by the river bank" Has two different meanings

1. There is a man fishing by the river bank (verb)

2. There is a fisherman by the river bank (noun)

whereas a sleeping man only has the one, logical, interpretation.

1. There is a man sleeping under the tree.

Hence fishing man could either be derived from a verb or a noun.

Both a fisherman and a man fishing make sense, then I realized that fisherman also has two separate meanings!

1. A man catching fish (a profession)
2. A man fishing fish (a hobbyist)

Now the second sounds decidedly odd, the final words: fishing fish is plausible but speakers will naturally avoid saying that.

In order to differentiate the two men; one who catches fish for a living a fisherman from one who does it as a pastime, we have the words: angler and angling.

So perhaps, Pitarou's question:

My native-speaker's grammatical intuition tells me that:

• There is a fishing man by the river bank.

is wrong. Why?

has something to do with the word, fish, being used as both a noun and a verb. In addition, fish is also a concrete noun, not an abstract one. Here is a list I composed of verbs that are said to be agent verbs. "For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive". The endings "-er", "-or", and "-ist" are commonly used in English to form agent nouns"

• There is a dancing man at a party = a man dancing or a dancer at a party.
• ... a cooking man in the kitchen (sounds really odd) = a man cooking or a cook in the kitchen.
• ... a cheating man playing in the casino = a man cheating or a cheater in a casino
• ... a cheating man with his girlfriend.
• ... a drinking man by the bar counter.
• ... a gardening man near the tree.
• ... a milking man in the barn.
• ... a painting man outside.
• ... a telephoning man by the kiosk.
• ... a watering man in the garden (very odd!)

All of the above sound "wrong" to me, perhaps it also has something to do with these words being classed as deverbal

Deverbal nouns are nouns which are derived from verbs or verb phrases, but which behave grammatically purely as nouns, not as verbs.

I had the same question and came across this thread. This is my guess. We can use the -ing form in front of a noun when the action is something that doesn't involve another object. Sleeping is just lying a body on a surface. The same goes with a dancing girl, a crawling baby, a walking man. We don't require anything else other than our body. If the action involves another object, it sounds strange to use the -ing form. A fishing man - fishing will require a fishing pole. A punching man - the man will need to punch something.