I'm just trying to understand the difference between gerunds and participles.
Warning
This post is not helpful for people wishing to communicate in English. It is intended for the minority of members/(weirdoes
) who may be interested in
-ing forms. It is a summary of how some leading grammarians of the last forty years deal with them,
Aarts, Bas (2011)
, Oxford Modern English Grammar, does not differentiate between gerunds and participles. He refers to both as
-ing participles.
Carter, Ronald and Michael McCarthy (2006)
Cambridge Grammar of English, do not differentiate between gerunds and participles. They refer to both as
-ing forms.
Chalker, Sylvia (1984),
Current English Grammar, does not differentiate between gerunds and participles in the body of the book. She refers to both as
-ing forms. She writes:
A distinction is often made between gerunds ('verbal nouns') and participles, which are more like verbs or adjectives. In fact the -ing form cannot be quite so neatly divided.
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum (2002), The Cambridge Grammar of the English language, write
: [...] we reject an analysis that has gerund and participle as different forms syncretised throughout the class of verb We have therefore just one inflectional form of the verb marked by the -ing suffix; we label it with the compound term 'gerund-participle' .
Quirk, Randolph et al (1985),
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, note a complex gradience of fourteen different uses of -
ing- forms from nouns (deverbal count nouns , abstract-non count verbal nouns), through the traditionally named gerund to the traditionally-named (present) participle. They write of the forms that are not clearly nouns, [...] we do not find it useful to distinguish a gerund from a participle, but terminologically class all these forms as PARTICIPLES.
