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English has no vestige of the West Germanic gerund. Traditional grammar uses the term gerund for the -ing form of a verb when it is used as a noun (for example, the verb reading in the sentence "I enjoy reading."). [9] See the sections below for further detail.
(The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.) In the case of modal verbs the present and preterite forms are listed, since these are the only forms that exist with the present form identical for all persons.
Gerunds (e.g., going, seeing) - These act as nouns but are derived from verbs; Participles (e.g., going, seen) - These can function as adjectives or part of verb tenses (like has gone) Nonfinite verbs are used in constructions where there's no need to express tense directly. They help in creating sentences like "I want to go," where "to go" is ...
The -ing form (going, writing, climbing), used as a present participle, gerund, (de)verbal noun, and sometimes (de)verbal adjective The verb be has a larger number of different forms ( am , is , are , was , were , etc.), while the modal verbs have a more limited number of forms.
Gerund forms are often used as plain verbal nouns, which function grammatically like common nouns (in particular, by being qualified by adjectives rather than adverbs): He did some excellent writing (compare the gerund: He is known for writing excellently). Such verbal nouns can function, for instance, as noun adjuncts, as in a writing desk.
There are many suffixes that can be used to create nouns. Huddleston (2002) provides a thorough list that is split into two main sections: person/instrument nominalizations and action/state/process nominalizations. An especially common case of verbs being used as nouns is the addition of the suffix -ing, known in English as a gerund.
For example, the noun aerobics has given rise to the adjective aerobicized. [3] Words combine to form phrases. A phrase typically serves the same function as a word from some particular word class. [3] For example, my very good friend Peter is a phrase that can be used in a sentence as if it were a noun, and is therefore called a noun phrase.
An example of a verbal adjective with verb-like features is the word wearing in the sentence The man wearing a hat is my father (it behaves as a verb in taking an object, a hat, although the resulting phrase wearing a hat functions like an attributive adjective in modifying man). An example of a deverbal adjective is the word interesting in ...