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A gerund may function syntactically as the head of a verb phrase: for instance, the gerund of a transitive verb may take a direct object in the accusative case, e.g., ad discernendum vocis verbi figuras 'for discerning figures of speech', hominem investigando opera dabo 'I will devote effort to investigating the man'.
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 preposition en may be omitted if the gerund has an implied subject and takes an object which is not a pronoun; in that case the object may be prefixed before the gerund verb (and its possessive may be omitted when it refers to that implied subject), e.g. Chemin faisant, il ne pense à rien (lit. "Path making," i.e.
Many uses of gerunds are thus similar to noun uses of the infinitive. Uses of gerunds and gerund phrases are illustrated below: As subject or predicative expression: Solving problems is satisfying. My favorite activity is spotting butterflies. As object of certain verbs that admit such constructions: I like solving problems. We tried restarting ...
Objects are distinguished from subjects in the syntactic trees that represent sentence structure. The subject appears (as high or) higher in the syntactic structure than the object. The following trees of a dependency grammar illustrate the hierarchical positions of subjects and objects: [15] The subject is in blue, and the object in orange.
v. t. e. In linguistics, conjugation (/ ˌkɒndʒʊˈɡeɪʃən / [1][2]) is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb break can be conjugated to form the words break, breaks, broke, broken and breaking. While English has a relatively ...
As a dependent clause, a non-finite clause plays some kind of grammatical role within a larger clause that contains it. What this role can be, and what the consequent meaning is, depends on the type of non-finite verb involved, the constructions allowed by the grammar of the language in question, and the meanings of those constructions in that language.
The subject interesting him is Greek history. Greek history is an interesting subject. Greek history is a very interesting subject. In the first sentence, interesting functions transitively in a non-finite sense as a participle that expresses the object him, thereby forming the grammatical equivalent of "[that is] interesting him".