[Grammar] Gerund acting as verb

[grammarfreak]

I have read a lot about gerund, gerund phrases and participial phases; but I do not know how is grammarly named when gerung is used as an '' acting verb ''. for intance :


1) Richard Kuklinski was finally caught by an undercover ATF agent wearing a hidden wire

2) She identified the voice crying for help as her husband's voice.


In these two examples, gerund acts as an acting verb, but what is the gerund name in these cases ? ( whether I want to browse it in internet, in a grammar book, etc.)

I need a pricesely explanation about it, or should these two sentences be written as follows :

1) Richard Kuklinski was caught by an undercover ATF agent who was wearing a hidden wire

2) She identified the voice that was crying as her husband's voice

Please help me !

 

[Raymott]

I have read a lot about gerund, gerund phrases and participial phases; but I do not know how is grammarly named when gerung is used as an '' acting verb ''. for intance :


1) Richard Kuklinski was finally caught by an undercover ATF agent wearing a hidden wire

2) She identified the voice crying for help as her husband's voice.


In these two examples, gerund acts as an acting verb, but what is the gerund name in these cases ? ( if I want to browse it in internet, in a grammar book, etc.)

I need a pricesely explanation about it, or should these two sentences be written as follows : Yes, that's what they mean. Note, I'm not saying they should be written that way, but the originals are contractions or ellipses of the sentences below.

3) Richard Kuklinski was caught by an undercover ATF agent who was wearing a hidden wire

4) She identified the voice that was crying as her husband's voice

Please help me !

In 3 and 4, you can see that the 'gerunds' are actually present participles. We don't call them gerunds when they are acting as a verb.
(Not every word ending in -ing is a gerund).

PS: If you label more than one sentence with the same number, it's harder to cite them.

 

[Barb_D]

Those are gerunds. Gerunds end in -ing, but they function in the way a noun would function in a sentence - as a subject, etc.
Wearing those high heels isn't a good idea.
Weaing a wire is one way to gather evidence in an investigation.

But these -ing words are not functionng as nouns. They are describing the agent and the voice. They are participles.

EDIT: I shouldn't have stopped to play Tetris or I would have snuck my response in first!

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Hello, Grammarfreak:


(1) I am also a student of English, so I can understand how confusing this all is.

(2) I think that the following comments are accurate:

(a) He was caught by an agent who was wearing a hidden wire. = "wearing" is a participle. It is a verb ("was wearing" is called a verb phrase).

(b) He was caught by an agent wearing a hidden wire. = "wearing" is again a participle; "wearing a hidden wire" is the participle phrase that modifies (belongs to) "agent. As you can see, (b) is just a shorter way of saying (a).

(c) Wearing a hidden wire is one way to catch the bad guys. = "wearing" is called a gerund here. It is a noun. It is

something like "The wearing of a hidden wire." And "wearing a hidden wire" is a gerund phrase.


HAVE A NICE DAY!