Before a zealous reader draws my attention to the mistake, I want to admit that
Prof. Martin Grace and I were using the term “gerund” sloppily yesterday. Because
this confusion appears widespread, even among the educated class, I thought I’d
attempt a brief explication.
Gerund: 1. In Latin, a noun derived from a verb and having all case forms except
the nominative. 2. In other languages, a verbal noun analogous to the Latin
gerund, such as the English form ending in -ing when used as a noun, as in
singing in We admired the choir’s singing.
A particple is “A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function
independently as an adjective.”
As is noted in Wikipedia:
The term “gerund” is sometimes used incorrectly to mean any word
ending with “ing”. For example:
- Jane was swimming in the sea. (“swimming” is a participle verb)
Compare:
- John enjoys eating a good meal. (“eating” is a gerund)
- John is eating a good meal. (“eating” is a participle verb)
Here are some usage differences noted in Wikipedia (find examples here):
- Gerundive phrases can be topicalised (i.e. moved to the front of a sentence)
whereas participle verb phrases cannot
Gerundive phrases can be preceded by genitive phrases (possessive terms
such as his, her, their), whereas participle verb phrases cannot
The pronoun it can be substituted for a gerundive phrase, but not for a
participle verb phrase:
An example you can surely relate to, if you’ve read this far, is my usage of thephrase “discussing grammar”:
– David is discussing grammar on his weblog. (a present participle)
– Discussing grammar on a weblog is tedious. (a gerund)
Without in any way endorsing the use of the word “blog” as a noun or verb,
here’s an example using the phrase “blogging at home”:
– Martin was blogging at home last night. (a participle verb phrase)
– Blogging at home at night can be tedious. (a gerundive phrase)
If you want to try your hand at distinguishing gerundive from participle
phrases, I suggest working with 19 “walking” haiku from Issa (translated,
naturally, by English professor David G. Lanoue, who I’m sure knows all
about gerunds). Here’s a sampler:
bloated flea
are you walking it off?
up a tree
is my wrinkled hand
bad for walking?
first firefly
tired of walking
my wrinkled arm
the flea jumps
a clear sky
at high noon…
walking out alone
Kobyashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue
Bonus stuff that I learned doing this post. (thanks, again, wikipedia)
Derivation may occur without any change of form, for example telephone (noun)
and to telephone (verb) [or, “blog” (noun) and the equally revolting “to blog” (verb)].
This is known as conversion. Some linguists consider that when a word’s syntactic
category is changed without any change of form, a null morpheme is being affixed.
back-formation: Is a new word created by removing an affix from an already existing word,
as vacuum clean from vacuum cleaner, or by removing what is mistakenly thought to be an affix,
as pea from the earlier English plural pease. 2. The process of forming words in this way. See
Note at baby-sit.
“tinyredcheck” retronyms and backronyms are interesting and fun, but you can look them up
yourself for extra credit and entertainment.