{"id":419,"date":"2012-02-13T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=419"},"modified":"2012-01-19T16:53:16","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T21:53:16","slug":"gerunds-what-are-they-and-how-can-you-identify-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/gerunds-what-are-they-and-how-can-you-identify-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerunds: What Are They and How Can You Identify Them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simply put, a gerund is a noun formed by taking a base verb and adding the suffix* \u2013ing.\u00a0 Gerunds are very easy to make: you just add \u2013ing to the base form of a verb, for example: give + ing = giving.\u00a0 It is important to remember though that gerunds aren\u2019t verbs; they are nouns.\u00a0 The tricky thing about gerunds in English is that they look exactly like verbs in the present participle tense (Note: present participle is a verb tense used to indicate that an action is incomplete).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at what gerunds look like in a few sentences so you can see how they act like nouns and not verbs.\u00a0 To do this first you need to know how to find a noun in a sentence (see my previous post on Parts of Speech in English \u2013 Nouns<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Take a look at these sentences:<\/p>\n

The pool<\/strong> is fun.
\nEnglish<\/strong> is difficult.
\nThat is a <\/strong>new dance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The nouns in these sentences, which are in bold, are: \u2018the pool\u2019, \u2018English\u2019, and \u2018a (new**) dance.\u2019<\/p>\n

If I take these nouns out of these sentences, I can replace them with any noun (any noun that will also make sense in the situation), including a gerund, that I want .<\/p>\n

Here are the same base sentences that now include gerunds:<\/p>\n

Swimming<\/strong> is fun.
\nSpeaking<\/strong> is difficult.
\nThat is dancing<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

Now, in these sentences, \u2018swimming,\u2019 \u2018speaking,\u2019 and \u2018dancing\u2019 are the nouns, even though they might look like verbs because they end in -ing.\u00a0 In these sentences the gerunds are occupying the place in the sentence where the noun goes, which is one way you know these words are noun.\u00a0 If you look at these sentences you can see that gerunds can be both the subject of a sentence, for example: \u2018Swimming<\/strong> is fun.\u2019 or the direct object of a sentence, for example: \u2018I like swimming<\/strong>.\u2019\u00a0 In either case the gerund is a noun not a verb.<\/p>\n

Of course, our discussion of gerunds can go more in depth from here, as gerunds have qualities of nouns and verbs and sometimes a gerund can behave as a verb within a clause (it may be modified by an adverb or have an object of its own) in this case the clause as a whole acts as a noun phrase within the larger sentence.\u00a0 This is going a little beyond what I want to cover here though, which is: what is a gerund and how can you identify one?\u00a0 The answers to these questions are:\u00a0 a gerund is a kind of noun, it is a word ending in \u2013ing that occupies the \u2018noun place\u2019 in a sentence.<\/p>\n

* suffix = a word ending
\n** The word \u201cnew\u201d in this sentence is an adjective describing the noun \u2018dance.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simply put, a gerund is a noun formed by taking a base verb and adding the suffix* \u2013ing.\u00a0 Gerunds are very easy to make: you just add \u2013ing to the base form of a verb, for example: give + ing = giving.\u00a0 It is important to remember though that gerunds aren\u2019t verbs; they are nouns.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[134956],"tags":[161167,160761,160875],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-english-grammar","tag-gerund-nouns","tag-gerunds","tag-gerunds-vs-verbs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}