last day (17 days later) » 

Anonymous
08:42
It is often claimed that gerunds are nouns.
Anonymous
@yubrajsharma You need to understand that a gerund is a noun. Just like any noun, it takes a determiner: an article, a number, a quantifier, a possessive, etc. There's nothing remarkable about The goat's screaming," "My eating," "That rumbling," or "Your having to." — P. E. Dant Nov 11 at 4:59
Anonymous
But no, they are not.
Anonymous
How can we tell?
Anonymous
And what does it mean to claim that a gerund is not a noun?
Anonymous
For this discussion, I will borrow a pair of examples from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 82.
Anonymous
08:44
> 1. He was expelled for wantonly killing the birds.
Anonymous
> 2. She had witnessed the wanton killing of the birds.
Anonymous
In the former example, we find the gerund form killing.
Anonymous
In the latter, we find a noun derived from the gerund form.
Anonymous
Let's look at example 1.
Anonymous
The constituent wantonly killing the birds is a gerund clause.
Anonymous
08:45
It is headed by a verb in gerund form, killing.
Anonymous
How can we tell it is a verb?
Anonymous
Well, it takes a direct object, the birds.
Anonymous
It is also modified by an adverb, wantonly.
Anonymous
It does not permit a determiner: *the wantonly killing the birds is ungrammatical.
Anonymous
It does not permit noun-like modification: *wanton killing the birds is ungrammatical.
Anonymous
08:46
It does not permit noun-like complementation: *wantonly killing of the birds is ungrammatical.
Anonymous
If you look at the internal structure of the clause, we can see that it is indeed a clause, and that it is headed by a verb form.
Anonymous
And yet, the curious thing about a gerund is that the clause as a whole is functionally similar to a noun phrase.
Anonymous
The mistake is to claim that this, therefore, makes a gerund a noun.
Anonymous
But this is nonsense; within the clause it is clearly a verb, as we can see above.
Anonymous
In fact, we can derive a noun from it, as in example 2.
Anonymous
08:48
In the second example, killing is most certainly a noun!
Anonymous
How can we tell?
Anonymous
It does not take a direct object; instead, it takes an of-phrase as a complement.
Anonymous
It takes adjectives as modifiers, not adverbs.
Anonymous
It takes determiners, just as nouns do.
Anonymous
In short, the constituent has the internal structure of a noun phrase, not of a clause.
Anonymous
08:51
From this we can see that the same form, killing, can be a verb form as in example 1, or a noun form as in example 2.
Anonymous
The former is a gerund, and the latter is a noun derived from a gerund.
Anonymous
They must be distinguished. It only confuses matters to call the former a noun as well.
yubraj sharma
yubraj sharma
Ummm.....Nods ....@
@snailplane P.E Dent is misleading me in his comment?
It would be better to invite P.E Dent here in this chat box !
Arrowfar
Arrowfar
09:08
@snailplane In grammar sometimes to + -ing form seems complex. For example the other day I was thinking whether it should be "deciding to coming back" or "deciding to come back". In this case "infinitive" seemed correct, but then we also say "Looking forward to hearning from you" in emails. that is a gerund and -ing form.
Sorry, went a little off topic.
yubraj sharma
yubraj sharma
I think it depends on verb. Decide to+verb and Looking forward to is a single phrase
Having to leave this question could be better than having to offer bounty to its existing answer !!! – Is it correct sentence?
 
5 hours later…
yubraj sharma
yubraj sharma
14:33
"Having to borrow money from friend is better than having to steal it."
 
2 hours later…
Man_From_India
Man_From_India
16:44
The verb looking takes two complements. Both are Preposition Phrase. The first one is forward and the second one is to hearing from you.
The second preposition phrase is headed by the head preposition to. And the head preposition takes a Gerund-Participle clause as a complement.
The Gerund-Participle clause is hearing from you.
@yubrajsharma and @Arrowfar
@snailplane nice explanation, and great to see a whole chatroom is dedicated to this topic :-)
yubraj sharma
yubraj sharma
17:18
Nods...

  last day (17 days later) »