Answer: What are gerunds? How do they differ from regular verbs?
Welcome! An anonymous grammar fan asked us, "What are gerunds? How do they differ from regular verbs?" Today, we've got the answer, along with a little help from our friends from Saiyuki.
Before we dive right into gerunds, feel free to give yourself a quick refresher about verbs in general, starting with this post, which explains what verbs are, and this post on advanced verbs, which explains the various permutations of verbs that aren't really verbs. Our subject today, gerunds, fall under this category.
Verbs (in the most general sense) denote an action or a state of being, such as
Sanzo snorted and rolled over in his sleep, completely igoring the commotion that Goku and Gojyo caused as they fought over the last spring roll.
All of the bolded words in the example above show actions that the people in the various clauses of the sentence are performing: snorting, rolling over, causing a commotion, and fighting.
Gerunds enter the picture when we turn those verbs into nouns, like I did in the sentence above-those are the italicized words. So instead of showing the action, as in he snorted, we describe or name the action by making it a noun (by adding -ing to it):
"Oh, dear," said Hakkai. "Sanzo's snorting is getting worse. There must be a cat nearby, aggravating his allergies."
Goku put down his chopsticks. "A cat? Ooh, where? Petting cats is the best. They purr!"
"Nah," said Gojyo. "Watching Sanzo sneeze is the best. The faces he makes!"
You have to be careful, though, because participles also tend to end in -ing, like so:
A glaring Sanzo was rummaging through his pockets. "Where's the gold card, Hakkai? I need to pay the inkeeper."
Participles aren't nouns. Instead, they modify things like nouns or complete progressive verbs. In the example above, rummaging completes the past progressive verb "was rummaging." And glaring describes (or modifies) Sanzo.
So how do you remember the difference? Just ask yourself if the action word ending in -ing is naming the action itself and whether it can be paired with a verb, acting as a subject or object of that verb. If it can, you've got a gerund on your hand.
Sources:
"Gerunds." The Purdue Online Writing Lab.
"The Gerund." ChompChomp.com.
Before we dive right into gerunds, feel free to give yourself a quick refresher about verbs in general, starting with this post, which explains what verbs are, and this post on advanced verbs, which explains the various permutations of verbs that aren't really verbs. Our subject today, gerunds, fall under this category.
Verbs (in the most general sense) denote an action or a state of being, such as
Sanzo snorted and rolled over in his sleep, completely igoring the commotion that Goku and Gojyo caused as they fought over the last spring roll.
All of the bolded words in the example above show actions that the people in the various clauses of the sentence are performing: snorting, rolling over, causing a commotion, and fighting.
Gerunds enter the picture when we turn those verbs into nouns, like I did in the sentence above-those are the italicized words. So instead of showing the action, as in he snorted, we describe or name the action by making it a noun (by adding -ing to it):
"Oh, dear," said Hakkai. "Sanzo's snorting is getting worse. There must be a cat nearby, aggravating his allergies."
Goku put down his chopsticks. "A cat? Ooh, where? Petting cats is the best. They purr!"
"Nah," said Gojyo. "Watching Sanzo sneeze is the best. The faces he makes!"
You have to be careful, though, because participles also tend to end in -ing, like so:
A glaring Sanzo was rummaging through his pockets. "Where's the gold card, Hakkai? I need to pay the inkeeper."
Participles aren't nouns. Instead, they modify things like nouns or complete progressive verbs. In the example above, rummaging completes the past progressive verb "was rummaging." And glaring describes (or modifies) Sanzo.
So how do you remember the difference? Just ask yourself if the action word ending in -ing is naming the action itself and whether it can be paired with a verb, acting as a subject or object of that verb. If it can, you've got a gerund on your hand.
Sources:
"Gerunds." The Purdue Online Writing Lab.
"The Gerund." ChompChomp.com.