Verbal Gerund Research Articles

Functional hybridity in translation

Abstract The present study addresses a topic on the crossroads between contrastive linguistics and translation studies as we seek to investigate how the English verbal gerund is used in translated and non-translated English, as well as how it is translated into German and Dutch. Instead of merely analysing frequencies throughout a corpus, we aim to map out usage profiles and translation strategies through a multi-methodological and multifactorial approach, thereby offering a more contextualized approach to the English verbal gerund. On the basis of data from CroCo and DPC, two parallel and comparable corpora for the language pairs English-German and English-Dutch, a set of over 6,000 verbal gerunds was annotated. A hierarchical configural frequency analysis was conducted to uncover different usage profiles or ‘types’ of verbal gerunds. Second, a conditional inference tree and a random forest analysis were modelled to select the best predictors to help distinguish between a nominal or a clausal translation solution. In addition to providing more insight into the status of English verbal gerunds in translation, this paper offers new perspectives on two broader debates in contrastive linguistics and translation studies, viz. the ‘loose-fit’ or ‘tight-fit’ status of constructions and the treatment of unique items respectively.

Types of transfer in ideational metaphor: a corpus-based study

ABSTRACTIdeational metaphor in the Hallidayan sense comprises experiential metaphor and logical metaphor. Experiential metaphor arises from the semogenic rank-shift and logical metaphor from the semogenic transcategorization. This article conducted a corpus-based diachronic study to identify types of transfer in ideational metaphor. Our findings show that the transfer from verbal groups to countable nouns and finally to adjectives does not necessarily go through all the in-between stages. Five types of semogenic transfer were identified in ideational metaphor: nominalisation of verbal groups, gerundalization of verbal groups, adjectivalization of participles, adjectivalization of nominal groups and verbalization of conjunction groups. These five types of transfer can be generalised as three resources for creating ideational metaphor: nominalisation, adjectivalization and verbalization, all involving semogenic rank-shift. We also found two other types of transfer: mass noun to countable noun and verbal gerund to present participle. Neither transfer creates ideational metaphor because no semogenic rank-shift is involved. The former is transcategorization from living metaphor to dead metaphor, and the latter is transcategorization at the word rank.

Verbalization of nominalizations: A typological commentary on the article by Nikki van de Pol

The present article provides a typological commentary on the article by Nikki van de Pol (2019) on the history of the English gerund. It is shown that in spite of certain idiosyncratic aspects, the history of the verbal gerund illustrates a well-known grammaticalization path of verbalization, whereby deverbal nouns are first grammaticalized into nonfinite forms (participles, infinitives, converbs), and may later be integrated into the verbal paradigm. It is further suggested that the mixed behavior attested for the verbal gerund, which deviates both from the nominal and from the clausal prototype, may be universally supported by constructional polysemy and blending with constructions which have further progressed on the verbalization cline.

A game of give and take: category change on the border between adverbial verbal gerunds and augmented absolutes in English

This article discusses one of several reasons for the loss of augmentation in English absolute constructions (ACs): the emergence of the verbal gerund (VG) in -ing. The VG was from the start strongly associated with prepositional contexts (de Smet, 2008) and has been shown to have a history connected to the AC (Fanego, 2004). More specifically, the strong association between VGs and prepositions probably caused a reinterpretation of most prepositionally augmented ACs as VGs, resulting in a functional split (Fonteyn & van de Pol, 2016). Second, this paper illustrates how the what with-construction underwent a very similar development, albeit in the opposite direction. Indeed, it appears that the grammaticalization of with into an AC-marker (van de Pol & Hoffmann, 2016), and the resulting strong association between with and ACs, may have caused the formally similar what with-construction to be reanalyzed as an AC. As a result, this study serves as an example of how category borders are often gradient (see also Malchukov, 2004, 2006) and how such gradient boundaries may cause the (bidirectional) reanalysis of constructions close to the border, which in turn may impact the larger overarching constructions involved.

Contrasting Complement Control, Temporal Adjunct Control and Controlled Verbal Gerund Subjects in ASD: The Role of Contextual Cues in Reference Assignment.

This study examines two complex syntactic dependencies (complement control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control) and one pragmatic dependency (controlled verbal gerund subjects) in children with ASD. Sixteen high-functioning (HFA) children (aged 6–16) with a diagnosis of autism and no language impairment, matched on age, gender and non-verbal MA to one TD control group, and on age, gender and verbal MA to another TD control group, undertook three picture-selection tasks. Task 1 measured their base-line interpretations of the empty categories (ec). Task 2 preceded these sentence sets with a weakly established topic cueing an alternative referent and Task 3 with a strongly established topic cueing an alternative referent. In complement control (Ron persuaded Hermione ec to kick the ball) and sentence-final temporal adjunct control (Harry tapped Luna while ec feeding the owl), the reference of the ec is argued to be related obligatorily to the object and subject respectively. In controlled verbal-gerund subjects (VGS) (ec Rowing the boat clumsily made Luna seasick), the ec's reference is resolved pragmatically. Referent choices across the three tasks were compared. TD children chose the object uniformly in complement control across all tasks but in adjunct control, preferences shifted toward the object in Task 3. In controlled VGSs, they exhibited a strong preference for an internal-referent interpretation in Task 1, which shifted in the direction of the cues in Tasks 2 and 3. HFA children gave a mixed performance. They patterned with their TD counterparts on complement control and controlled VGSs but performed marginally differently on adjunct control: no TD groups were influenced by the weakly established topic in Task 2 but all groups were influenced by the strongly established topic in Task 3. HFA children were less influenced than the TD children, resulting in their making fewer object choices overall but revealing parallel patterns of performance. In this first study of three sub-types of control in ASD, we demonstrate that HFA children consult the same pragmatic cues to the same degree as TD children, in spite of the diverse pragmatic deficits reported for this population.

Effects of discourse on control

This study examined discourse effects on obligatory and non-obligatory control interpretations. Seventy participants undertook three online forced-choice surveys, which monitored preferred interpretations in complement control, verbal gerund subject control, long-distance control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control. Survey 1 ascertained their baseline interpretations of the empty category in these constructions. Survey 2 primed the critical sentences used in survey 1 with a weakly established topic of discourse and survey 3 primed them with a strongly established one. Reference assignment in complement control remained consistent across all three conditions, illustrating that pragmatics does not infiltrate this structurally regulated and syntactically unambiguous construction. Changes in interpretation were found in the remaining three constructions. An accessibility-motivated scale of influence, combining three independent discourse factors (topichood, competition and linear distance) was created to model reference determination in verbal gerund subject control and long-distance control. The results for temporal adjunct control are novel. They revealed a much stronger susceptibility to pragmatic interference than that reported in the literature yet the construction behaved differently from non-obligatory control under discourse pressure. We propose a structural account for sentence-final temporal adjunct control, which permits the evident interpretation shift while still excluding arbitrary and sentence-external interpretations.

The Great Complement Shift revisited

This paper examines the history of the ACC-inggerundive, a subtype of verbal gerund differing formally from both bare gerundives (I enjoyed reading the paper) and POSS-inggerundives (I was surprised atJane’sarriving late) in having an overt subject argument either in the common case, if it is a full noun phrase (Two peopleworrying about each other, with no external diversion, brews a deadly atmosphere) or in the accusative case, if it is a personal pronoun (You can’t preventmetelling the truth). Findings from a corpus-based study show that early instances of ACC-inggerundives most often functioned as preverbal sentential subjects and served as arguments to causative predicates such asbrew,makeandoblige. Based on this evidence, it is argued that ACC-inggerundives have emerged as an intersection of a number of pre-existing constructions, most especially a subtype of absolute participle, now obsolete, that encoded causative (factive) semantics and preceded its superordinate clause. The development of the new gerundive subtype from this participial source, which proceeded as a succession of small discrete steps, can be fruitfully accounted for as a case of constructional change, along the lines proposed in Hilpert (2013) and Traugott & Trousdale (2013).

Divide and conquer: the formation and functional dynamics of the Modern Englishing-clause network

The present article offers a corpus-based analysis of the diachronic development of the usage profiles of three adverbial non-finite clauses in Modern English: the free adjunct, the verbal gerund and the absolute construction. By treating present-participial adverbial clauses and adverbial gerunds as part of a single adverbialing-clause network, this article sheds new light on the different semantic and functional-pragmatic factors motivating the formal variation within theing-clause network. By means of two mixed-model logistic regression analyses, we determine the relative impact of the independent variables of adverbial semantics, position, degree of coreference and length on the language user's choice in (i) whether or not to include augmentation (syndesis) and (ii) whether or not to include an overt subject in the adverbialing-clause. The resulting picture is one of an emerging adverbialing-clause network in which the internal variation is determined by principles of processing complexity.

What It Means to Verbalize

The English gerund system consists of two types of gerunds: a nominal gerund ( the learning of a language), and a verbal gerund that developed out of the nominal gerund ( learning a language). While the formal aspects of this diachronic verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discourse-functional side of the change. In this paper, it is argued that the formal verbalization of the gerund is accompanied by an important change in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system. Based on functional characterizations of noun phrase (NP) behavior in the literature, the prototypical behavior of complex NPs is operationalized as (i) functioning as manipulable discourse participants that are important enough in the following discourse to be susceptible to anaphoric targeting and (ii) being inaccessible to anaphoric targeting of internal participants. The results of an analysis of a set of nominal gerunds, verbal gerunds and ‘regular’ complex NPs covering the period 1640–1914 (taken from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Early Modern and Modern British English) shows that the increasingly clause-like appearance of the verbal gerund is in fact accompanied by atypical NP behavior. Moreover, the paper makes clear that the changes in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system did not only affect the verbal gerund, but also had some implications for the nominal gerund. These findings shed new light on the (diachronic) processes of verbalization and nominalization, and on what they mean on a discourse-functional level.

Nominal vs. Verbal -ing Constructions and the Development of the English Progressive

In this paper, I examine nominal and verbal - ing forms in English and discuss aspects of their historical development. In particular, I investigate certain differences between verbal and nominal gerunds in comparison with the present participle with respect to what I call here gradience in verbal traits . I put forward the following hypothesis. Diachronically, the nominal component of both nominal and verbal gerunds relates to the nominal origin of both forms, namely an Old English derived nominal in - ung/-ing . The 'more verbal' component of the verbal gerund relates to certain aspects of the diachronic development of the English progressive. The changes in the development of the progressive in fact resulted in the emergence of the verbal gerund with parallel continuation of the Old English nominal in - ung/-ing and the Old English participle. After reviewing the development of English progressive, I will present diachronic and synchronic evidence that the original nominal pattern of the progressive acquired verbal traits. I will then show how this influenced the development of the two gerund types. I will then turn to a structural analysis of the constructions under investigation, which can be summarized as follows: synchronically, the gradience in verbal traits is accounted for on the basis of variation in the internal functional structure of the elements under investigation. On this view, the presence of verbal characteristics is linked to the presence of certain structural layers standardly associated with verbal clauses. Deverbal formations split into several subtypes depending on the number and the type of the layers these contain. This is expressed within a system that views word/category formation as a result of processes operating in specific syntactic structures, which contain the root as the minimal element that enters word formation (Alexiadou 2001, Alexiadou, Iordachioaia & Soare 2010, Borer 2013, Embick 2010, Marantz 1997, and others).

A constructional approach to stativity in Japanese

This paper deals with the relationship between the formal properties and a specific meaning associated with a class of Japanese sentences that have the verbal gerund and iru ‘be’ (i.e., -te iru). These sentences are characterized by the -te iru verbal morphology on a dynamic verb and a non-volitional subject that does not participate in the event denoted by the verb. The particular stative interpretation induced by these sentences cannot be attributed to the meaning of the individual lexical items. The paper argues instead that the source of the stative meaning is better explained by a constructional view, that the meaning is attributed to the construction itself.

The verbal gerund in modern Hebrew

The Hebrew verbal gerund is a construction used mainly as a temporal adverb. Its surface form consists of the following sequence of elements (where Vinf is an infinitival verb form and XP is a complement of the verb): P - Vinf - Subj - XP. The main claim of this paper is that the verbal gerund is a clausal structure with an INFL node specified as [-Tense]. As a VSO clausal structure, the verbal gerund is an exceptional phenomenon in an otherwise SVO language. This and other idiosyncratic properties of the construction are explained on the basis of some properties of the initial element. It is argued that the initial preposition is a complementizer and that the surface word order of a verbal gerund is derived by two successive applications of head movement, from V to I and from I to C. In addition to word order, the proposed analysis makes possible an explanation of other properties of the verbal gerund, such as the obligatoriness of an overt subject and the impossibility of negation.