Hello,
Im an ESL student who is writing his university paper and it is focused on "clausal condensation" in scientific prose and popular scientific texts. (how many of -ing non-finite forms are in the text, what is their function in teh sentence, what are the possibilities of their translations into the Czech language etc.) Im describing the difference between gerunds and present participles and I would like to ask if gerunds are "verbs functioning as nouns" i.e. if they went through the process of nominalization. Im confussed with terms "verbal" and "deverbal" nouns... I will have to analyse non-finite occurances in a practical part of the thesis, therefore I need to understand if the -ing form I see is either gerund or participle or if there is something tricky lurking around.
So.. in Fasting is dangerous for you, Fasting would be a gerundive non-finite structure functioning as a subject of the clause, right?
Thank you for your responses.
The problem here is that terms such as "gerund," "participle," "deverbal" etc. come from Latin, and that's where they belong, not in modern English. Nonetheless, some linguists take the following approach:
What's important is to differentiate the -ing word that is a verb from the -ing word that's been
nominalized. "Nominalization" basically means that the -ing word appears with an article (the "nominalizing" agent) and optionally with an of-prepositional phrase:
The painting hungs on the wall; The painting of my family hungs on the wall: The singing of the national anthem. Adding the plural making morphme -s also produces nominalization:
Paintings hung on the wall. The implication of this is that the term "gerund" no longer applies because the -ing word is now a "noun."
It's also important to distinguish the -ing verb from the -ing word that modifies a noun (verbs don't modify nous):
a very troubling situation. We can call this
adjectivization of the -ing word. But whereas the term "gerund" no longer applies in
nominalization, the term "participle" still applies, even with
adjectivization. The reason is that participles and adjectives have distinctive properties (adjectives take comparatives and superlatives; participles, don't.)
In other context (where there is no article and no modification of a noun), the -ing word is labeled " the gerund-participle" or simply an "-ing word." And that means that "fasting" in your example becomes the
gerund-participle (or
-ing word, if you prefer), just as "fasting" in
We are fasting today is the gerund-participle. This is the approach taken by the
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL)
, among others. This approach is based on morphology; in English, there's no
inflectional difference between the terms "gerund" and "participle" as used by traditional grammar
Now, some linguistics use the term "gerund" when talking about nominalization
by function. In other words, a "gerund" is an -ing word that has a nominal/noun function, and that includes your example:
(a)
Fasting is dangerous for you ("fasting" functioning as subject, a nominal/noun function)
(b)
We are thinking of fasting tomorrow ("fasting" functioning as object of the preposition "of," a nominal/noun function)
(c)
I remember fasting on Tuesday ("fasting" functioning as direct object, a nominal/noun function)
while "participle," for example, is the -ing word that appears in progressive constructions:
(d)
We are fasting.
CGEL counters, however, that "fasting" in a-d is the
same word (there's no morphological/inflectional difference), so it makes no sense to call "fasting" either "gerund" or "participle," even if the word appears in different functions (a-c vs d). If you want to use those terms, then "fasting" in a-d is the gerund-participle.
In English, there's no "Academy" that governs the use of the language, so however you define "gerund" is, well, up to you. The only thing is, be consistent. That said, the advantage of the CGEL approach is its simplicity: if the -ing word doesn't have article, there's no
nominalization; if the -ing word doesn't modify a noun. there's no
adjectivization; as a result, what you have is the "gerund-participle." Simple. You might even say in your paper, "I'm using the terminology adopted by CGEL," so that your readers know exactly where you are coming from.
