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An -ing form is termed gerund when it behaves as a verb within a clause (so that it may be modified by an adverb or have an object); but the resulting clause as a whole (sometimes consisting of only one word, the gerund itself) functions as a noun within the larger sentence. For example, consider the sentence "Eating this cake is easy."
Generally, the only inflected forms of an English verb are a third person singular present tense form ending in -s, a past tense (also called preterite), a past participle (which may be the same as the past tense), and a form ending in -ing that serves as a present participle and gerund. Most verbs inflect in a simple regular fashion, although ...
This second subordinated verb can be in either the infinitive (both full and bare) or gerund forms. An example appears in the sentence He deserves to win the cup, where "deserve" is a catenative verb which can be followed directly by another verb, in this case a to-infinitive construction. [1]
This is followed by the simple past tense , and then the past participle. If there are irregular present tense forms (see below), these are given in parentheses after the infinitive. (The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.)
A gerund is a verb form that appears in positions that are usually reserved for nouns. In English, a gerund has the same form as a progressive active participle and so ends in -ing. Gerunds typically appear as subject or object noun phrases or even as the object of a preposition:
The simple past or past simple, sometimes also called the preterite, consists of the bare past tense of the verb (ending in -ed for regular verbs, and formed in various ways for irregular ones, with the following spelling rules for regular verbs: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y ...
Italian forms a progressive aspect in much the same way as in Spanish, using a conjugated form of the auxiliary verb stare ("to stay") followed by the gerund of the main verb. There are only two forms of gerunds, the choice depending upon the ending of the main verb in the infinitive: -ando for verbs whose infinitive ends in -are (parlare ...
The verb say displays vowel shortening in the third person present indicative (although the spelling is regular): says /sɛz/. The same shortening occurs in the past form said /sɛd/. (Compare the diphthong in the plain form say /seɪ/.) The verb wit is the only non-modal verb that is also a preterite-present verb and it does not take -s in the ...