My sister enjoys baking cakes.

[Anyone]

"My sister enjoys baking cakes."
In this sentence, "baking cakes" is a gerund phrase. My friend, who is a native-English speaker, told me 'cakes' was an adjective because it modifies baking which is a gerund.
I have learned that gerund phrases have both verb and noun characteristics, so I understand that "baking" takes 'cakes' as an object, which is why cakes is a noun, not an adjective.
Is her analysis right or mine?

 

[5jj]

Cakes is a noun, the direct object of baking.

 

[emsr2d2]

"My sister enjoys baking cakes."
In this sentence, "baking cakes" is a gerund phrase. My friend, who is an English-native a native English speaker, told me 'cakes' was an adjective because it modifies "baking" which is a gerund.

See above. "English-native" does not exist as a compound adjective. When talking about someone's native language, always say "native + language + speaker".

I have learned that gerund phrases has have both verb and noun characteristics, so I understand that "baking" takes 'cakes' as an object, which is why cakes is a noun, not an object.

Note my corrections above.

Is her analysis right or mine?

Your friend is incorrect. I suggest you show her this thread so she can see why.

 

[Annabel Lee]

"My sister enjoys baking cakes."
In this sentence, "baking cakes" is a gerund phrase. My friend, who is an English-native speaker, told me 'cakes' was an adjective because it modifies baking which is a gerund.

As 5jj has said, that analysis is incorrect. Not only is cakes not an adjective, but it is not even functioning adjectivally there. For what it's worth, in the following, somewhat related construction, cake (though still a noun) is functioning adjectivally:

My sister enjoys cake baking.​

​

In that sentence, baking truly is a noun, not a verbal functioning as a substantive (the construction commonly referred to as a "gerund"). Although that sentence is awkward (hence the red), in other cases both constructions are equally natural:

My brother enjoys hunting deer. ​

[Hunting deer is the direct object of enjoys; deer is the direct object of the verbal form hunting]​

​

My brother enjoys deer hunting.​

[Deer hunting is the direct object of enjoys; deer is an attributive noun modifier of the noun hunting.]​

 

[Anyone]

See above. "English-native" does not exist as a compound adjective. When talking about someone's native language, always say "native + language + speaker".

Note my corrections above.

Your friend is incorrect. I suggest you show her this thread so she can see why.

Thanks for correcting my sentences. I was so confused that I made some mistakes.

 

[Anyone]

As 5jj has said, that analysis is incorrect. Not only is cakes not an adjective, but it is not even functioning adjectivally there. For what it's worth, in the following, somewhat related construction, cake (though still a noun) is functioning adjectivally:

My sister enjoys cake baking.​

​

In that sentence, baking truly is a noun, not a verbal functioning as a substantive (the construction commonly referred to as a "gerund"). Although that sentence is awkward (hence the red), in other cases both constructions are equally natural:

My brother enjoys hunting deer. ​

[Hunting deer is the direct object of enjoys; deer is the direct object of the verbal form hunting]​

​

My brother enjoys deer hunting.​

[Deer hunting is the direct object of enjoys; deer is an attributive noun modifier of the noun hunting.]​

I had been wondering why she explained to me that baking was an adjetive in that sentence. I came to the same conclusion as you mentioned. She must have confused cake baking with baking cakes. Cake baking is a compound noun, where cake functions like an adjective. On the other hand, baking cakes is a gerund phrase, and cakes functions as a noun, the object of baking.

 

[Skrej]

A simpler explanation may be that she just didn't really understand the different parts of speech and was guessing! I'll bet dollars to donuts she didn't give it as much analysis as you already have.

Remember that just because someone's a native speaker of a given language, that doesn't necessarily mean they can articulate all of its grammar rules and terminology. Native speakers generally learn by imitation and correction, not grammatical analysis and study. There may be some formal instruction later in school, but even that's typically a few years after learning to speak. Even that is sort of just fine-tuning language skills, not an in-depth study of the grammar itself.

Even though they can produce grammatical sentences consistently, it's usually a product of internalization, not analytical conscious thought. They can tell you what's wrong or how to correct something, but they won't necessarily be able to articulate the grammar of it. Ditto for pronunciation and even spelling.