Talk:Gerund

message: I don't believe in gerunds - I think this concept is a confusion between form (verb) and function (subject, object etc). However, after reading what's here, perhaps you ought to clarify the following. You have the following discussion:
"In an episode of Dan Vs., "The Ninja", after Dan's milk carton exploded from the ninja's shuriken, a teenager said to Dan "Drinking problem much?" and Dan complained that the sentence had no verb, just a gerund.[citation needed]"
Surely "drinking" here is a present participle being used "adjectivally" (whatever that means). In any event, "problem" is not the object to "drinking", so I don't think it can be a gerund.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.250.86.130 (talk) 06:12, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drinking problem much 

message: Hi.  According to the Online Writing Lab at Purdue, "-ing" words function either as adjectives, in which case they're called present participles, or as nouns, in which case they're called gerunds.
In your first section, "Tenses of the Gerund", I think all the examples function as adjectives: "Cutting the rope" and "Having cut the rope" describe the person, and "Being cut" and "Having been cut" describe the rope.  So they're present participles, not gerunds.
Do you agree?  -Zac.
:Hi². Zac: Whether cutting the rope is a gerund or not depends on where you put it: in "You are cutting the rope", cutting is a participle; in "I have no objection to your cutting the rope", it's a gerund.
:But I have another problem with Section 1: it says, 
:'Properly speaking, the English gerund only occurs in the present tense. The gerund cannot occur in any other tenses. All other verbal nouns in English are expressed with the infinitive. For example, "to have loved and lost is better than not to have loved at all."'
:First of all, there's nothing incorrect about the gerundive paraphrase of the example: "Having loved and lost is better than not having loved at all." Second, isn't that having loved a gerund in the present perfect? In English that's generally considered a different tense from present tense, so there's another problem with the simple statement that gerunds are present-tense only. Compare "I have no objection to your cutting the rope" and "I have no misgivings about your having cut the rope."  --tc
:I'm with -tc here.  Gerunds are not defined by their form; they are defined by their function.  A gerund is a noun in verb form (or similar verb phrase).  To eat is good.  Here, to eat is a gerund, but in infinitive form.  Eating is good (continuous form).  To have eaten would have been good (past infinitive).  It is true that gerunds in English usually end in -ing, but this is not the defining characteristic.  Other languages don't have the continuous form gerund.  (French uses the infinitive form.  It's still a gerund.)  My 2¢. Cellmaker (talk) 06:28, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Please cite an authoritative source for your assertion that "a gerund is a noun in verb form". Thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 11:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

text: Properly speaking, the English gerund only occurs in the present tense. ¶ This is indeed poppycock. -- Hoary (talk) 11:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mistake in section 1? 

message: I second the suggestion that in the sentence "having x'ed, I went home", "having X'ed" is not a gerund.  It is quite clearly a participle, since it modifies the subject of the sentence, I. 24.12.166.84 03:55, 18 June 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gerunds vs. Participles 

message: "Watching golf Susan thinks is tedious." English? OSV? --Henrygb 17:12, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a topicalised phrase. For example, it could be embedded in the following context: "Susan likes watching cricket, I admit, but watching GOLF, Susan thinks is tedious". Slightly awkward in most contexts, but I'm sure you can find examples like it in corpora. Cadr 20:37, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wouldn't it be better to put it as 'Watching golf is tedious thinks Susan'? Mikkel 01:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not just 'Susanne thinks watching golf is tedious'? 216.232.63.213 18:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Because that's not an example of gerund? --Tenmiles 07:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it's still an example of a gerund; the problem is that it's not an example of topicalizing a gerund by moving it to the front of a sentence, which is the point of the section that example is in. Ruakh 13:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can someone help me (I am, unfortunately, neither an apt nor studied linguist) understand? Wouldn't "watching" in the example I replied to be as much a verb as "running" or "sleeping"? I am not challenging your statement, merely attempting to better understand gerund and what makes that particular use a gerund. --Tenmiles 01:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A gerund is a verb; specifically, in English at least, it's a verb ending in -ing that's used as a noun (i.e., it's the subject, direct object, or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition, or a noun complement). This is distinguished from a present participle, which is also a verb, and which is identical in form, but which is used as an adjective. Watching, running, and sleeping are all gerunds, and they're all present participles as well; in Susan is watching golf, watching golf is an adjective describing Susan, and hence a present participle phrase, whereas in Susan hates watching golf, watching golf is the direct object of hates, and hence a gerund phrase. Does that make any sense? Ruakh 02:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "watching golf is the direct object of hates, and hence a gerund phrase. Does that make any sense?" -- Yes, in fact, it does. Thanks. I think I understand it a bit more clearly now. My impression of what qualified as a gerund was too limited. --Tenmiles 07:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Her playing of the Bach fugues was inspiring. (playing takes a prepositional phrase rather than an object; not a gerund)"  I don't understand.  "playing" is clearly a noun here.  Doesn't that make it a gerund? Kostaki mou (talk) 01:57, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Playing is the gerund of play: an occasion on which something, such as a song or show, is played. –  – Gareth Griffith-Jones |The Welsh Buzzard|— 09:12, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I dare say different definitions can be found, but for me, this is a verbal (or "deverbal") noun, not a gerund. A gerund is half-verb, half-noun (a verb in that it takes objects etc. like a verb does; a noun in that the resulting phrase as a whole functions as a noun within the larger sentence). So in "her playing the fugues", playing is a gerund (it takes an object like the verb plays would), but in "her playing of the fugues", it's a pure noun (like "performance" or "rendition"). Victor Yus (talk) 10:33, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Victor. That makes it perfectly clear to me now.Do you consider it worth revising the article accordingly? –  – Gareth Griffith-Jones |The Welsh Buzzard|— 12:09, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gerunds vs. Participles 2 

message: "I stopped smoking" and "I stopped to smoke" are not structurally analogous in the way that "I like smoking" and "I like to smoke" are. The difference in meaning between the two "stop" sentences has nothing to do with differences between "to smoke" and "smoking". In "I stopped to smoke", "to smoke" is an adjunct, not the object of "stop". This is shown by the following facts (using "to read" instead of "to smoke", because "I stopped smoking to smoke" makes no sense, though it is grammatical):
* I stopped to read a book
* I stopped smoking
* I stopped smoking to read a book
* * I stopped to read a book smoking (cannot mean the same as the previous sentence)
"to read" does not need to be adjacent to the verb because it is not an object, whereas "smoking" is an object and consequentially does need to be adjacent to th verb. Now look at the following data:
* I like to smoke
* I like smoking
* I like smoking to start the morning
* * I like to start the morning smoking (grammatical but cannot mean the same as the previous sentence)
* I like to smoke to start the morning
* * I like to start the morning to smoke (ungrammatical and cannot mean the same as the previous sentence)
This shows that "to smoke" is the object of "like" in the first sentence, and "smoking" is the object of "like" in the second sentence. Thus, the difference between "I stopped smoking" and "I stopped to smoke" is simply that "smoking" is an object in the former, but "to smoke" is not an object in the latter.
Sorry this is a bit complicated; it's quite hard to actually show these things properly, but the data are very clear. Cadr 21:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I stopped to smoke

message: Salutations,
Let me see if I understood your point (Note: I am not a native English speaker, and I'm not trying to argue with you, I am just seeing if I understood you correctly).
So, as you said, the phrases "I like to read" and "I like reading" have the same meaning and structure ("to read" and "reading" are both objects), but "I stopped to read" and "I stopped reading" are different, because "to read" is not an object but an adjunct. But, besides the grammatical difference, is there a semantical difference? I. e., "I stopped reading" is analogous to "I interrupted the action of reading"; but would "I stopped to read" be analogous to "I stopped, so that I could read" (the former using an adverbial adjunct of purpose, finality and the latter using a subordinate adverbial sentence of purpose, finality)?
Thank you in advance. Sanscrit1234 (talk) 15:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Answer 

message: The example given to contrast the uses of "go on" followed by a gerund or a to-infinitive
* After winning the semi-finals, he went on to the finals.
is clearly inapposite: "to the finals" is not an infinitive but a prepositional phrase. I suggest changing it to 
* "After winning the semi-finals, he went on to win the finals as well." (He won the semi-finals, then later won the finals.) -- Dodiad
:Yes, good call. I'll fix it. Ruakh 19:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flawed example: "go on V-ing" vs. "go on to V" 

message: Can't infinitives be gerunds? Do gerunds have to end in -ing, or are they just verbal nouns? For example, in "To rule is to destroy," "To rule" is the subject, and "to destroy" is the predicative nominal, both infinitives acting as nouns. "Ruling is destroying" means basically the same thing, and those are counted as gerunds. Can someone explain? Thanks. Lifeboat 20:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In English, gerunds are specifically verbal nouns ending in -ing. You're correct that in many contexts, gerunds and infinitives are interchangeable; but the terms gerund and infinitive are not. Ruakh 20:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, thanks! Lifeboat 23:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infinitives as Gerunds 

message: I'm just thinking the example phrase might be better off as a more generic example.  Even though it's indirect, it still stands as a self-reference of sorts that might not make sense in printed form.  Would anyone mind if we changed it to something else?  Or have any suggestions as to what to change it?  Or thinks I'm just being picky? :)  Whatever that case, I know we're supposed to avoid self-reference on wikipedia, and it wouldn't hurt to change that I think.  Errick 14:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right that Wikipedia discourages self-references, but this one isn't explicit — the example would still make sense in any other context, it just wouldn't be a self-reference anymore. I really don't mind if you change it, but I really don't think it's a problem if it remains. Ruakh 14:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bit of self-reference in the intro 

message: I added a couple examples before coming and checking out the talk page, which was probably a little bit backwards. Regardless, does anyone know anything about prepositons that are followed by gerunds? (Particularly in the construction "verb someone into/out of verbing")
129.2.211.62 03:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, since gerunds function as nouns, pretty much any preposition can take a gerund as its object. "To foo someone into bar-ing" is generally to get him/her to bar by foo-ing at him/her: "he talked her into leaving" means "he talked to her and convinced her to leave"; "they conned him into giving them his money" means "they conned him, getting him to give them his money"; and so on. —RuakhTALK 05:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about prepositions and gerunds 

message: can you have a gerund as a predicate noun or nomnative? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.217.14.5 (talk) 01:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes; it's rare compared to other uses, but you can say, for example, Love is never having to ___ (where ___ is a bare infinitival phrase of your choice; see http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+is+never+having+to%22). —RuakhTALK 03:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Predicate? 

message: I don't think an exhaustive list of verbs normally followed by gerunds can be made.  Many of the verbs in that list are ones that I see without gerunds more often than with.  Perhaps you meant to say that when a gerund is the D.O. the preceding verb is usually one on the list.  But I'm not sure that's true either.
I think that any transitive verb that can take a D.O. that isn't a physical object can have a gerund for an object.  I can't think of a counterexample.  I'm sure that any transitive verb that can have a clause as an object can take a gerund.
--  John Bickner  --216.137.65.32 19:30, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, thanks for your comment. What's actually happened is that the list started out as a fairly short list of verbs that very often take gerunds as direct objects, and a long stream of readers has thought of other verbs to add to the list that don't actually benefit it at all. By this point, it could do with some cleaning out. —RuakhTALK 22:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verb patterns with gerunds 

message: The table says that pronominal substitution is grammatical with the participle, but I don't think it is...'John kept it' my be a valid English sentence, but not if the referent is 'asking bill' ('John kept doing it would be the usual substitution). Maybe that's what's implied by 'radically changes the meaning' above, but since we're talking substitution, I really think it should be marked as ungrammatical...
Moszczynski 17:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed.  MeteorMaker (talk) 16:57, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronominal substitution 

message: Greetings. I have cleared the reference to a Spanish gerundive, since the only non-personal verbal form with adjetival function in Spanish is the (past) participle. Indeed, the term gerundivo is in Spanish a reference to the gerundive of other languages, not a connection with gerund. Pallida  Mors 13:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish gerundive? 

message: Does one say, 
I am not loath to take a person off the street into my home.  
I am not loath to taking a person off the street into my home.  
Obvi for the Commonwealth folks it's Loth.  
But should it be followed by an infinitive or a gerund? Arthurian Legend (talk) 16:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Loath takes the infinitive. (By the way, loath is the usual spelling in both the UK and US.) 2.25.135.23 (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Following an adjective 

message: I propose a section addressing languages limited by an absence of gerunds.Mavigogun (talk) 11:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Section Recommendation 

message: I searched and searched but did not find any reference to the so-called "gerund headline," an ungrammatical sentence like "Russia pressing free-trade agreement." My understanding is that the correct form reads "Russia is pressing a free-trade agreement." Given how widespread this mis-use is among news casters, some words of clarification in the article would be most appreciated.
128.32.82.78 (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gerund Headline? 

message: Correct me if I am wrong, but under the short subsection 'Gerunds preceded by a genitive', the 'gerund' preceded by the objective appears to be a participle.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.200.6 (talk) 12:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error: Gerunds vs. Participles 

message: I do not see any examples of "The old woman gave the children a telling off" or am I mistaken that this the gerund? TristanDC (talk) 02:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Give a verbing 

message: Article was massively gutted without explanation.   I will restore unless explanation is given here.Mavigogun (talk) 20:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: While the article may have the tone of a guide, the content mostly serves to illustrate what the subject -gerunds- are, and is topical.   Rather than blanking or removing large portions with no alternative, I suggest the material be re-written for non-guide-like tone.   When developing content, Wiki rules should be a constructive tool- not a pretext for injudicious editing.   The rules serve the article- not the other way around.--Mavigogun (talk) 08:00, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Gutted

message: What is the correct way to describe a word which had been modified to make it a gerund? -- can you say a word has been gerunded? ( http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/comic.php?current=2475 led me to this thought )  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.168.93 (talk) 08:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Verbing weirds language. 2.25.135.23 (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Gerundised? Gerundified?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.30.178 (talk) 17:48, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "gerunding" a word. 

message: Sometimes the two can be confused a lot... how do you tell the difference and what are ways to foolproof confusion
ex. This is a wonderful piece of writing (writing is easy to determine that it is a gerund) but...
Writing is vital to today's communication (this and others are harder to detect)
--808daman (talk) 21:00, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The gerund is the noun that names the process of the verb (writing = the action of the verb "to write") so in fact, your second example is clearly a gerund while your first is not. 2.25.135.23 (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Telling the difference between Gerund noun and a verb 

message: I removed the sentence "In these examples [with begin, continue, start; hate, like, love, prefer], if the subject of the verb is not the subject of the second verb, the second verb must be a gerund (instead of an infinitive)." from the section Verbs followed by a gerund or a to-infinitive because it seems to be wrong or at least misleading: "I'd prefer him to do his homework" sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I also did some rearranging, but the begin, continue, start; hate, like, love, prefer subsections are still not as clear as they could be. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Love and hate 

message: To explain the  tag I added to the article: The intro is currently a big list, instead of a proper lead section. 'Gerund' may have different interpretations in different languages, but some sort of general intro should be formulated. – Acdx (talk) 08:34, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: The confusion wit respect to the relationship between "gerund" and "gerundive" is still here and at Wik/gerundive, which simply says not to be confused with gerund. Kdammers (talk) 11:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Gerundive

message: ::This article isn't very clear for people who don't know what a gerund is. Can you first clearly state what a gerund is in english, and then tell us about what it means in other languages?KalWardin (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Article

message: Hi all,
Just wondering if there is any information about the antiquated "a-" form of a gerund as found in phrases such as "maids a-milking" and "geese a-laying."  I'm sure there are other examples and maybe this form applies to verbs not in the gerund form as well but I can't think of any more examples. Anyway this would be an interesting topic to explore, and if there is any information about it I'd appreciate a point in the right direction. 
Thanks!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by XomokyH (talk • contribs) 17:23, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  a- form 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Gerund. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/topp/latin/latin2.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 22:37, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In Dutch, the gerund is identical to the infinitive, so it is not always clear which uses are the infinitive and which are the gerund. The same ambiguity exists in English, where the gerund and infinitive are often both possible in the same construction, without a difference in meaning. Yet at the same time, the Dutch gerund has a gender (neuter), and in some cases like tot bloedens toe, it even has a genitive case ending. So it appears to have properties that nouns have. In German, the gerund is capitalised, like any noun, while the infinitive is not. What confuses me, then, is that the lead section says that a gerund is a verb form that functions as a noun. This seems contradictory; either it is a verb or it is a noun, how can it be both? Rua (mew) 10:57, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone extensively trained in matters grammatical, I can vouch for the accuracy of the lead. The gerund is a verbal form that functions as a noun. As for why that would seem contradictory or confusing to you, I am not qualified to say. I can, however, point out that there is nothing unusual or unprecedented in the fact. The participle, for example, is a verb form that often functions as an adjective. Does that fact also confuse you or seem contradictory? Antinoos69 (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  But then what do you call it, a noun or a verb? What is its part of speech? Rua (mew) 14:34, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are gerunds nouns or verbs? 

message: Dear Sir, 
I appreciate your efforts in this article. Most probably I agree to what you have said but one point I object here. 
Both prepositional object and prepositional complement are the same. The traditional grammar has used the term " prepositional obkect" whereas the modern grammar has used the term " prepositional complement ". Birbal Kumawat (talk) 17:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prepositional complement 

message: Which ones are a problem please? Primergrey (talk) 02:55, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, to take just one example, much of the bold type greatly improves the readability of the article, focusing attention on the essential units. It must be remembered that not all of us have young eyes. Just try separating all caps from initial caps from bold type, etc., as much as possible. That will allow specific foci, rendering further editing much easier. Antinoos69 (talk) 10:08, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: That you don't know that WP does not bold for emphasis tells me that maybe you should keep away from the undo button when you see edits that do not affect the content in any way. Primergrey (talk) 22:44, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  MOS edits 

message: I would like to know the problem with any of the following:
*eliminating over-capitalisation per MOS:CAPS
*reducing duplicate links per WP:OVERLINK
*removing bold used for emphasis and replacing with italics per MOS:NOBOLD
*removing links in the see also section that appear in the article per WP:SEEALSO
Primergrey (talk) 22:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  my edits