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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."
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:
In addition to a subject and a verb, dependent clauses contain a subordinating conjunction or similar word. There are a large number of subordinating conjunctions in English. Some of these give the clause an adverbial function, specifying time, place, or manner. Such clauses are called adverbial clauses.
The definition may be extended to idiomatic phrases that behave as a unit and perform the same function, e.g. "as well as", "provided that". A simple literary example of a conjunction is "the truth of nature, and the power of giving interest" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria). [3]
The gerund can behave like a verb in taking objects: crossing the river cost many lives. The deverbal noun does not take objects, although the understood object may be expressed by a prepositional phrase with of : the crossing of the river cost many lives (an indirect object is expressed using to or for as appropriate: the giving of the award ...
A clause is often said to be the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. [1] But this semantic idea of a clause leaves out much of English clause syntax. For example, clauses can be questions, [2]: 161 but questions are not propositions. [3] A syntactic description of an English clause is that it is a subject and a ...
When used as a gerund or present participle, the -ing form is a non-finite verb, which behaves like a (finite) verb in that it forms a verb phrase, taking typical verb dependents and modifiers such as objects and adverbs. That verb phrase is then used within a larger sentence, with the function of an adjective or adverb (in the case of the ...
In both instances, a gerund functions nominatively rather than adjectivally or adverbially—whether as an object (e.g., "I like sleeping") or as a subject (e.g., "Sleeping is not allowed"). Although gerunds and present participles are morphologically identical, their grammatical functions differ substantially.