Abstract
Grammatical categories are central to generative theories of grammar. In many ways, the study of syntax really is just the study of grammatical categories. Problems that have cropped up with the originally proposed parts of speech have been solved by decomposing them into bundles of binary features ±N and ±V. Despite this success, there remains a class of constructions, known as trans-categorial or simply mixed category constructions, which do not fit well with any refinement of the four basic categories. The chapter first discusses the properties of verbal gerunds, with particular attention paid to their status as mixed categories. Next, it reviews some of the previous proposals offered to account for verbal gerunds. Finally, the chapter presents an analysis of mixed categories as non-canonical combinations of properties from independent grammatical dimensions. The nominal nature of verbal gerunds is shown most clearly by the external distribution of verbal gerund phrases (VGerPs). Keywords: phrase structure grammar; verbal gerund phrases (VGerPs); verbal gerunds
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