Gerunds

11 Key excerpts on "Gerunds"

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  Essential Grammar for Today's Writers, Students, and Teachers

  • Nancy M. Sullivan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Table 4.1 provides an overview of the three verbals that we will focus on in this chapter: Gerunds, parti- ciples, and infinitives. Remember, these verbals are not verbs. 102 Verbals Gerunds Gerunds are the first of the three verbals that we will examine here. A gerund func- tions only as a noun; therefore, the term “gerund noun” is redundant—we don’t need the “noun” part of it. As you can see in Table 4.1, a gerund takes the form of a present participle (Ving), for example, “learning,” “walking,” and “talking.” Identifying Gerunds In previous chapters, we examined the many slots that can be filled by nouns— subject, appositive, direct object, indirect object, object complement, object of prep- osition, and predicate nominative. Gerunds fill these same slots. As we have already dedicated a good amount of space in this book to learning about nouns, our understanding of Gerunds should be an easy task. They are simply Ving forms used as nouns: Practicing is vital to your success in language acquisition. The best route to successful language acquisition is practicing. In the first sentence above, the gerund practicing is in the subject slot; in the second sentence, it is in the predicate nominative slot following the linking verb is. Gerunds can also be part of gerund phrases. Below are examples of Gerunds in ger- und phrases. In these sentences, the gerund practicing is in parentheses and the entire gerund phrase is underlined. The first sentence also has the gerund phrase learning a second language in the object of preposition slot: Table 4.1 Verbals/Verbal Phrases Type Form Function Examples Gerund Verb+ing Noun Learning can be rewarding. (Ving) Learning a second language can be rewarding. I like learning languages. Participle Verb+ing/ Adjective Studying for hours, I finally grasped the concept. Verb+en Studying Spanish, I felt a connection to the culture. (Ving/Ven) Spanish is an established language in the United States.

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  Typology and Second Language Acquisition

  • Anna Giacalone Ramat(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  182 Anna Giacalone Ramat development of acquisition and the main problems encountered in learner productions are described in Section 4. Subjects and data analyses are presented in Section 5 and the results are discussed in Section 6. 2. General typological information about Gerunds According to a widely accepted opinion, Italian Gerunds belong to the category of converbs, which is a recently defined cross-linguistic grammatical category (Haspelmath and König 1995). We will take Haspelmath's definition as a starting point: a converb is a nonfinite verb form whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination (1995: 3). This formal (morphological) and functional (semantic) definition fits quite nicely to Gerunds in Italian as well as to Gerunds in other Romance languages. Other types of nonfinite verb forms such as participles (verbal adjectives) and infinitives (verbal nouns) will not be dealt with here. Converbs are part of the inflectional paradigm of verbs and share the notion of nonfiniteness, as stated by Haspelmath. Although criteria for defining finiteness may be contro-versial (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1994, Klein 1998), in this paper I use a morphologically based notion of finiteness: those verbal forms which lack specifications for one or more of the following properties of verbs are nonfinite: tense, aspect, mood as well as agreement with their arguments. Nonfinite forms are usually not used as main predi-cates in independent clauses and in finite subordinate clauses: they may be used in nonfinite subordinate clauses or in periphrastic con-structions in association with an auxiliary. 3. Gerunds as adverbial constructions in Italian As said above, converbs function as subordinate clauses with some nonspecific adverbial relation to the main clause. In many cases this relation can be made explicit by means of a paraphrase with a tempo-ral, causal or conditional subordinate clause. In others a coordinative

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  Who Climbs the Grammar-Tree

  [leaves for David Reibel]

  • Rosemarie Tracy(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  (d) Rejecting the offer, I guess we had no reason to anticipate, but that's what we ended up doing. 2 The term gerund originates with Latin grammar, where (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) it refers to a form of the Latin verb capable of being construed as a substantive but retaining the regimen of the verb. The term is extended to functionally equivalent forms in other languages, e.g. to the English verbal noun in -ing when used rather as a part of the verb than as a substantive. It was David Reibe! who first taught me to regard such dicta of traditional grammarians with respect but also caution. In the more explicit account I will present below, it becomes clear that the traditional view expressed in this dictionary entry is not correct for the -ing form of the English nominal gerund; it is a verbal participle that is inside the head of a noun phrase, but that is not the same as being a verbal noun. 438 1.1.2 The subjectoid bears the possessive clitic -'s, whereas finite clauses have subjects in the nominative case and other types of clause have subjects in the accusative case. The subjectoids of NGPs are exactly like the possessive determiners of ordinary NPs like your hat (there are, of course, clauses with accusative subjects and verb forms in -ing, but this 'ACC-ing 1 construction, as seen in Him climbing a tree is something I've got to see, is one that I believe must be analyzed rather differently, and I do not attempt to treat it here). 1.1.3 Preposed adverb phrases are allowed in clauses 3 but are not allowed in an NGP: (3) (a) They say that [ s you left without a word], (b) They say that [ s without a word, you left].

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  Introducing English Syntax

  A Basic Guide for Students of English

  • Peter Fenn, Götz Schwab(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  p.161 8    Non-finite clauses in the complex sentence (II) The gerund 8.0 The gerund

  The gerund is an -ing -form. It refers to actions, and especially to activity fields , in much the same way as a noun does:

  (1)    a.   Jogging became her great passion.

  b.   Jill hates shopping .

  c.   Their favourite evening activity was reading .

  There is also a passive gerund with the -ing -form of be , plus the past participle of the full verb, e.g. Jenny likes being asked difficult questions .

  Gerunds are not only noun-like in meaning. They also fill the same sentence functions as noun phrases, as we can see from these examples: subject in (1)a., direct object in (1)b. and subject complement in (1)c. For this reason, the gerund is traditionally called a ‘nominal’ verb form. Modern linguists, though, tend to regard this view as an oversimplification: the infinitive, after all, can take on the same functions, yet it is not seen as particularly ‘nominal’ in character. Secondly, like any other non-finite verb, the gerund always has a predicator function. It forms a subordinate clause even when it is alone, as in the sentences in (1). And this demonstrates its verbal character, underlined by the fact that within its own clause it can take its own verbal complementation:

  On the other hand, stressing the ‘nominal’ label does have a certain justification to it, particularly when the gerund is contrasted with the present participle. The latter is also an -ing

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  The Syntax and Morphology of English Verbs

  Patterns that Matter

  • Joseph Embley Emonds(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  3

  (5-4)

  John’s not doing the laundry (surprises me).

  Certain other gerund complements disallow overt subjects in any dialect; those are generally said to exhibit “obligatory control” in their null subject position:

  (5-5)

  The principal neglected [DP [DP Øi / *his school’s] [D Ø] [NP cleaning up]].

  Everybody undertook [DP [DP Ø

  i

  / *their kids’] [D Ø] [NP planting some trees]].

  Bill

  i

  is limited to [DP [DP Ø

  i

  / *his brother’s [D Ø] [NP having two meals a day]].

  Nonetheless, there is evidence that DP subjects of Gerunds as in (5-4) and (5-5) are obligatorily present, even if null. Consider for instance the presence of a reflexive pronoun in Keeping oneself/ herself out of debt struck me as sensible. The Gerunds must include a covert subject to serve as the obligatorily clause-internal antecedent of the reflexive pronoun object, as convincingly argued for in Wasow and Roeper (1972) .

  A central question concerns how Gerunds, which are internally structured like VPs, end up inside DPs with the distribution of NPs. The fact is, Gerunds are nothing more than shorthand for using a given predicate VP in an NP position. So the gerundive inflection –ing simply reflects the obligatory N head of a DP. As discussed in section 4.3.3, the –ing in (5-4) alternatively realizes this N on the head of its sister VP.

  Because no specifically nominal interpretation is associated with the gerund per se, the –ing in (5-4) seems to be an instance of the LF Cancellation Feature Ø of chapter 1. Recall that the feature Ø can be associated with any X

  0

  category, and functions to remove that category’s usual Logical Form content.4 That is, the category NØ in (5-4) cancels the minimal nominal interpretation (number and gender features). This NØ is realized (spelled out as -ing

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  The Present-day English Gerund System

  A Cognitive-Constructionist Account

  • Charlotte Maekelberghe(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Smith and Escobedo 2002 ), whereas the semantic value of -ing in nominal Gerunds is compared to that of other derivational suffixes (Quirk et al. 1985 ; Brinton 1991 , 1995 , 1998 ; Alexiadou et al. 2013 ). Other studies focus on the semantics of -ing in general, including its participial use (De Smet 2010 ; De Smet and Heyvaert 2009 , 2011 ). Within Cognitive Grammar, the -ing suffix has been attributed an “imperfectivizing” or “progressive” value (Langacker 1991 ; Smith and Escobedo 2002 ; Egan 2008 ), implying that it represents a situation as ongoing. In the same vein, Wierzbicka (1988) argues that, in contexts where time is relevant, -ing complements express simultaneity between the situation expressed in the matrix clause and the complement clause, as is illustrated in example (12a). Nominal Gerunds, then, are argued to denote “activit[ies] that are in process” (Quirk et al. 1985 : 1292) and which are thus “durative, atelic, and dynamic” (Brinton 1998 : 48). These claims are typically illustrated by means of the following examples:

  (12)

  a.

  Mary enjoyed eating the steak. (Wierzbicka 1988 : 67)

  b.

  Mary promised to eat the steak.

  (13)

  a.

  His exploring of the mountain is taking a long time

  b.

  His exploration of the mountain took/will take three weeks.

  (Quirk et al. 1985 : 1551)

  More recently, however, these approaches have been problematized by a number of counterexamples:

  (14)

  You seem to be under the misapprehension that I intend making love to you. (BNC, De Smet 2013 : 28)

  (15)

  The confrontation between Nicholas and the wives began soon after the sentencing of their husbands

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  The Many Faces of English -ing

  • Xin Sennrich(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  ing form is a gerund or a present participle. Gerunds are nouns, in that phrases headed by Gerunds can occur in argument positions or other positions that allow noun phrases, such as following a preposition, whereas phrases headed by present participles cannot. Present participles are adjectives, because phrases headed by present participles, like other adjective phrases, can function as modifiers of nouns, modifiers of clauses, predicative complements, whereas phrases headed by Gerunds cannot.

  7.2.1  Gerunds only

  Phrases headed by Gerunds, like other noun phrases, can function as the subject of a sentence (Quirk et al. 1985 : 1063). If a phrase headed by a V-ing form functions as the subject of a sentence, V-ing is a gerund, not a present participle.

  (3)

  a.

  Playing the piano is his hobby.

  b.

  Drinking water regularly is good for your health.

  c.

  Fiona’s telling lies upset her boyfriend.

  Noun phrases headed by Gerunds can function as the direct object or the indirect object of a verb. Their function as the direct object must be distinguished from phrases headed by present participles as the predicative complement of aspectual verbs, although they have superficially the same structure of Verb + V-ing. Section 7.3 provides a detailed analysis.

  If a phrase headed by a V-ing form functions as the direct object which takes an object complement, as in examples (4), or the indirect object of a ditransitive verb, as in examples (5), the V-ing form is a gerund. The gerund status of the V-ing form is evident because the phrase that V-ing heads is in an argument position. It can be tested by passivisation, it-clefting, etc., which illustrates the distributional difference between Gerunds and present participles. Phrases headed by Gerunds are noun phrases, and thus can be passivised or undergo it-clefting, whereas phrases headed by present participles cannot (Bresnan 2001

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  English Historical Linguistics and Philology in Japan

  • Jacek Fisiak, Akio Oizumi, Jacek Fisiak, Akio Oizumi(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  3 A second serious flaw in the previous studies is their lack of semantic consideration. The traditional account for the rise of the verbal gerund is as follows: the suffix of the present participle, -inde, was morphologically and phonologically merged into that of the verbal substantive, -ing, with the 154 Osamu Koma / / / / internal context/ of the nominal gerund external context of the nominal gerund / / / / internal context/ of the nominal gerund external context of the nominal gerund Figure 1. The internal and external context (or structure) of the nominal and verbal- gerund result that the former gave the latter some verbal properties. 4 In this case, however, the traditional account has not touched upon any semantic relation between these two non-finite forms. We have to admit here that this kind of account is the less persuasive for lack of semantic reasoning or motivation. When two syntactic forms influence each other and bring about a novel structure, I think it natural that some semantic aspects should be crucially involved in this process. Needless to say, semantic aspects of syntactic constructions of the earlier stage are especially difficult to approach. But we could say here that if we can find any clue to the Verbal gerund and its historical development in English 155 semantics of the gerund and the present participle, it will prove to be a great step toward the verification of the traditional account given above. In the present paper I will tackle these two problems by resorting to a different angle of observation from that which previous studies have presupposed. 2. Aims and data In this section, keeping in mind the two problems raised above, I will present two aims of this study, and touch briefly upon the corpus on which the present study is based. 2.1. External structure The original -ing nominal in OE acquired the following verbal properties in the course of its development: (1) a.

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  Toward a Typology of European Languages

  • Johannes Bechert, Giuliano Bernini, Claude Buridant, Johannes Bechert, Giuliano Bernini, Claude Buridant(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  2. Changes In nearly all European languages, Gerunds and participles are typically in-volved in certain processes of change: Adverbial participles, Gerunds and absolute constructions 351 (i) Participles and Gerunds are often grammaticalized as connectives (prep-ositions, conjunctions, conjunctional adverbs). Notwithstanding, providing, pro-vided, concerning, during, etc. in English are cases in point. As a result of reanalysis and grammaticalization, the interpretation of such participles and Gerunds is no longer controlled by the subject or a non-subject NP of the main clause. Furthermore, they may govern the subjunctive like other con-junctions (e. g. en admettant que in French) and change their position within the phrase: (22) a. These measures will be taken, his resistance notwithstanding. b. These measures will be taken, notwithstanding his resistance. These developments of connectives from underlying participles or Gerunds are not random as far as the meaning of the underlying verbs is concerned. There are clear correlations between certain semantic domains as expressed by verbs and certain adverbial relations as the targets of semantic change: perception verbs tend to develop into causal connectives (e. g. E. seeing that, Fr. vu que), conditional connectives tend to develop from cognitive verbs (e. g. E. supposingl assuming that} and verbs of saying tend to develop into unspecific complementizers (e. g. Turk, diye, gerund of demek 'say'). (ii) Languages that originally used Gerunds and participles as major pattern of clause-linking typically borrow complementizers and the strategy of sub-ordinating finite clauses from other languages through contact. This happened in Turkish, where the importation of ki 'that' from Persian (ke) opened the door to the Indo-European pattern of complex sentences (cf. Lewis 1967: 21 Iff.). Similar changes have been reported for Quechua, as a result of Spanish influence.

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  A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles

  Volume 5, Syntax (fourth volume)

  • Otto Jespersen(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter IXThe Gerund. Verbal Nature In this chapter we deal with those points in which the syntax of the gerund has approached that of finite verbs.

  Tertiaries with Gerunds

  On those combinations in which an adverb (tertiary) enters as first part into a compound with a gerund as second part, see 8.62 .

  9.11 . A gerund combined with a following adverb that supplements the verbal idea.

  This begins in the 14th c.: Ayenbite 263 ate uerste guoinge in (many quotations in Blume) | Mandv 282 at oure goynge out | Ch MP 10.11 thy [fortune's] whirling up and doun | id H 67 in liftinge up his hevy dronken cors | Caxton R 95 without goyng in to the myre | Gosson Seh. of Abuse 23 Marius giueth an account of his bringing vp | Marlowe E 859 thy parting hence | Sh Lr V. 2.10 Men must endure Their going hence, euen as their comming hither | Cymb II. 4.23 worthy his frowning at | Gent IV. 3.29 my flying hence | R2 III. 3.112 His coming hither | AV Ps 139.2 Thou knowest my downe sitting, and mine vprising ... 3 my lying downe | ib Hebr 10.27 a certaine fearefull looking for of iudgement | Ruskin T 17 you think such matters need debating about? | Mrs Carlyle in Carlyle F 3.184 getting what waiting on I absolutely needed | Twain H 1.28 I got a good going-over from Miss Watson, on account of my clothes | Ridge G 100 I gave your father a straight talking to | Pinero S 105 it's my duty, as an old friend, to give you a good talking-to | Shaw Ibsen 5 the explanation will not be an explaining away | Caine C 151 they went on with their making-up.

  9.12 . Examples of the plural of such Gerunds: AV Job 7.4 I am full of tossings to and fro | Bunyan P 79 he heard rushings to and fro | id G 4 my castings down, and risings up.

  9.13 . The gerund and adverb may in rare cases be separated by an object: Defoe Rox 182 any of the people that had the breeding of them [children] up.

  9.14

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  Event Arguments: Foundations and Applications

  • Claudia Maienborn, Angelika Wöllstein, Claudia Maienborn, Angelika Wöllstein(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  In particular older speakers of Scots still differentiate the present participle and the gerund (verbal noun). In older Scots the present participle was written /an(d)/ and the gerund /in/. These pronunciations are still used. (32) a. Present Participle: He wis aye stravaigan aboot. He was always roaming around, b. Gerund: He's fond ο stravaigin aboot. He likes roaming around. Hence we have evidence coming from two areas that the gerund -ing is a nominal head. Since, however, Gerunds do refer to ongoing events and allow adverbial modification, we do have evidence for the presence of AspectP within the verbal gerund. (33) illustrates the structure assumed for verbal Gerunds: Table 2 relates the functional material contained in (33) to the properties associated with verbal Gerunds: Gerund types, the present participle and patterns of derivation 149 Properties verbal gerund Functional Structure article * D contains's', no NumbP adjectival modification * No NumbP adverbial modification V AspectP overt subject ^ (gen) SpecJDP movement from Spec, vP accusative object V ν [+extemal argument] Table2 It appears to be the case that a crucial difference between the two gerund types concerns the fact that nominal Gerunds contain number, while verbal Gerunds lack number. Moreover, the latter contain Aspect, while the former lack Aspect. Note here that while pluralization is not possible for the verbal gerund, it is possible for the nominal one, e.g. *Johrt's readings the book vs. John's readings of the book. This analysis captures the different distribution and interpretation of the nominal and the participle in English. What has not been answered thus far is the propositional reading related with the verbal gerund. The suggestion made in Chomsky (1970) that Gerunds con-tain a sentence level, i.e. a TP, cannot be maintained in view of the fact that modal and speaker oriented adverbials cannot be contained within the verbal gerund.

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