Nominal and verbal gerunds in present-day English: aspectual features and nominal status

Abstract

In this paper, we want to add to the comparative description of Present-day English nominal and verbal gerundive nominalizations, by presenting the results of a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of their aspectual features. It will be shown that, in general, the claim that gerunds designate unbounded activities or activities that are in progress cannot be upheld—because a significant number of both nominal and verbal gerunds denote non-durative situations (achievements, semelfactives) or telic ones (accomplishments), and because most gerunds lack explicit markers of ‘completeness’ or ‘ongoingness’. As regards the distinction between nominal and verbal gerunds, it will be shown that nominal gerunds denote activities significantly more often and are more likely to occur in contexts which are explicitly marked for temporal bounding or for ongoingness. Verbal gerunds, on the other hand, represent significantly more often achievements or semelfactives and occur more often than nominal gerunds in neutral or unmarked contexts in terms of temporal bounding. These findings are shown to tie in with a number of recent functional-semantic accounts of the English gerund and shed new light on the categorial gradience between nominal and verbal gerunds.