Original Manuscript
What It Means to Verbalize: The Changing Discourse Functions of the English
Gerund
Lauren Fonteyn12, Hendrik De Smet1,
and Liesbet Heyvaert1
Abstract
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 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) show 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.
Keywords
historical linguistics, gerund, nominal gerund, verbal gerund, nominalization, verbalization, Early Modern English, Late Modern
English, functional linguistics, history of English
Introduction
This paper discusses the development of nominal and verbal gerunds from Early Modern to Late Modern English with a focus
on their discourse-functional behavior. The English gerund is a deverbal structure ending in -ing, which can take two different
forms: nominal gerunds, as in (1), have the internal syntax of a noun phrase (NP), whereas verbal gerunds, as in (2), have the
internal syntax of a clause.
(1) There is, first, the dryness inseparable from the learning of a language (…). (Bain, 1878, Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British
English [PPCMBE]1)
(2) I feel so relieved at having found a master. (Thring, 187X, PPCMBE)
At the same time, the nominal gerund in (1) and the verbal gerund in (2) can synchronically be defined as nominalizations, i.e.,
they serve to make a verbal form function as a noun phrase (or NP) in a clause and involve both decategorization and
recategorization (Hopper & Thompson 1984; Bhat 1994; Malchukov 2006). Both nominal and verbal gerunds show signs of
external reclassification in that they adopt—be it to a varying extent—the distribution of an NP (i.e., the grammatical function
that an NP serves in a clause, e.g., subject, object, prepositional object, etc.). They are also subject to internal reclassification
(McGregor 1997; Heyvaert 2003) or formal decategorization (Hopper & Thompson 1984), which manifests itself, for instance,
in the absence of overtly realized morphosyntactic properties such as inflection for person or tense and in the integration of
internal formal noun-like features and referential behavior in the discourse (Langacker 1991; Heyvaert 2003).
While synchronically, the verbal gerund, like the nominal gerund, is considered a nominalization, it is in fact the result of an
instance of diachronic verbalization of the nominal gerund, which existed long before its verbal counterpart (Tabor & Traugott
1998; Malchukov 2004:119-121).2 Verbalization (and nominalization for that matter) in this diachronic sense is to be understood
as a historical process in which a form gradually acquires verb-like (or, with nominalization, noun-like) characteristics, often
combined with the loss of features of its original category (Malchukov 2004:119). The diachronic verbalization of the gerund
has thus far mainly been defined in morphosyntactic terms, as earlier studies focused on the lengthy process involving the
reconfiguration of the NP structure of the nominal gerund into that of a nonfinite clause (Jespersen 1940; Mustanoja 1960; Visser
1
University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
2 Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (FWO)
Corresponding Author:
Lauren Fonteyn, University of Leuven, Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, B-3000 Leuven, Leuven, 3000, Belgium
Email: lauren.fonteyn@kuleuven-kulak.be
1963–1973; Emonds 1973; Tajima 1985, 1996, 1999; Donner 1986; Jack 1988; Houston 1989; Van der Wurff 1993; Fanego
1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2004; Miller 2002; Kranich 2006). In that process, the gerund gradually acquired verbal properties, such as
the ability to:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Govern an object or a predicative complement (e.g., She always hated his teasing the girls / my being an atheist);
Be modified by adverbs or adverbials which only co-occur with verbs (e.g., by gently stroking the cat);
Show tense and voice distinctions (e.g., the harm in having eaten the plastic wrapper / dreams of being chased);
Be negated by means of the VP-negating particle not (e.g., my father’s not caring); and
Take a subject in a case other than the genitive (e.g., I don’t like him being around mom).
According to the literature, the acquisition of these verbal features appears to have unfolded roughly as follows. The verbalization
of the gerund started during the Late Middle English period, when the deverbal noun in -ing began taking adverbial modifiers of
various kinds. Around 1300, the first gerunds with direct objects instead of of-phrases appeared, yet their occurrence was limited
to (a restricted set of) prepositional contexts. The first instances of verbal gerunds with non-genitive subject “occurred
sporadically from Late Middle English, but remained very rare for a long time afterwards” (Fanego 2004:9). In Early Modern
English, the frequency of verbal gerunds received a boost, which was accompanied by a more gradual spread of the verbal gerund
from prepositional to other grammatical contexts. Around the same time the verbal gerund also acquired the ability to express
distinctions of voice and tense/aspect through the auxiliaries be and have (Tajima 1985:111-113, Fanego 1996a:129).
While the formal aspects of the verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discoursefunctional side of the change. The view to be developed in this article is that the verbalization of the gerund was not merely a
morphosyntactic process, but was also reflected on the discourse-functional level. Not only did the verbal gerund adopt the
morphosyntactic features of a non-finite clause, it also increasingly adopted new functions in discourse. Previous discoursefunctional analyses of the gerund mainly focused on the types of reference that the gerund can realize (e.g., specific vs. generic
reference) (Schachter 1976; Heyvaert 2003, 2008; De Smet 2008). In contrast, taking our inspiration from functional approaches
to the noun phrase (Du Bois 1980; Givón 1985; Hopper & Thompson 1984, 1985), we will operationalize the discourse-functional
perspective in terms of “referent manipulability” and “internal participant targeting.” In the process, we show that, with respect
to these functions, verbal gerunds are or have become less NP-like. This discourse-functional change can only be revealed if the
verbal gerund is studied against the background of its interaction with the nominal gerund construction (cf., De Smet 2008), and
against the background of its interaction with regular NPs. Therefore, our argument is based on a comparison of the discourse
behavior of verbal gerunds, nominal gerunds, and regular NPs across two historical periods. One consequence of this approach
is that apart from revealing functional change in verbal gerunds, our analysis shows that nominal gerunds underwent functional
change too. In sum, then, we show (i) that the morphosyntactic verbalization of the gerund went hand-in-hand with a functional
shift towards less NP-like behavior in discourse and (ii) that nominal gerunds appear to have initially anticipated this functional
shift but later retracted again towards more noun-like behavior.
In what follows, we will first describe the particular discourse-functional perspective that is taken in this paper in more detail,
developing the notions of referent manipulability and internal participant targeting. Next, we discuss the historical corpus data
and the methodology used in our research and present the results of our analysis. Finally, we summarize our findings and discuss
their implications for the notions of verbalization and nominalization.
Towards an Alternative Discourse-Functional Analysis of the Gerund
In previous synchronic (Schachter 1976; Heyvaert 2003, 2008) and diachronic (De Smet 2008) studies, the discourse-functional
perspective on the gerund was operationalized by treating gerunds as NPs or discourse referents that somehow fit in with the
nominal paradigm in terms of their distribution, or in terms of the types of reference they can express (e.g., specific vs. generic
reference). In this paper, we have operationalized the discourse-functional analysis of gerunds differently, in that we analyze the
degree to which they function as regular or prototypical NPs by looking at referent manipulability and internal participant
targeting.
The starting point of this particular discourse-functional approach is that NPs and clauses differ in their typical discursive use.
This is because, according to Langacker (2009:151), “the nominal and clausal realms pose different primary epistemic concerns.”
NPs represent things or objects, which have the basic tendency to endure. The default expectation is that objects exist, will
continue to exist, and simultaneously coexist with many other instances of the given type. For NPs, then, the primary issue is
that of identification, signaling which one of the enduring coexisting (groups of) object entities or participants the speaker is
referring to. In contrast, clauses profile an event. Events do not endure, but occur in a (typically) short time span and are generally
transient and not time-stable. It follows that events do not develop a permanent identity and are not experienced as co-occurring.
The primary epistemic concern of clauses is therefore not identification of the event or process, but existence or occurrence, i.e.,
whether the event in question occurs at all.
The differences in semantics and discourse function between prototypical NPs and clauses manifest themselves in how NPs
and clauses contribute to text structure. The textual system of reference (Halliday & Hasan 1976; Lyons 1977; also called
“identification” and “ideation” in Martin 1992) is concerned with creating textual coherence through tracking and referring to
participants in discourse. In (3), the three cooking apples are anaphorically referred to by the NP the apples or the personal
pronoun them.
(3) Wash and core three cooking apples. Put the apples/them into a fireproof dish. (Martin 1992:137)
Such a system logically requires permanent or time-stable entities. In other words, the “entry condition” for the reference or
identification network is participant status (Martin 1992:128). Crucially, while all participants are realized through nominal
groups, verbs profile a process, which is a non-participant meaning (Martin 1992:129, 138). It follows that verbs are normally
not “trackable” or “targetable” through reference, suggesting that verbs typically do not act as participants, but instead report
events that involve participants. This does not mean that it is impossible for clausally introduced entities expressing events to be
tracked and referred to in discourse. Nonparticipant meanings such as processes can be construed as participant-like things by
means of discourse semantics, and one can use it, as in (4), or this, as in (5), or that to refer to them.
(4) [The Queen said:] ‘Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.’ (Halliday & Hasan 1976:52)
(5) Skrine has got the Newdigate and Hamley a College scholarship. This is pleasant. (Thring, 187X, PPCMBE)
This phenomenon is described by Halliday and Hasan (1976:52-53, 66-67) under the heading of "extended reference" (see also
Martin 1992:139); Francis (1994:84) speaks of “advance/retrospective labels”; and Takahashi (1997:63) uses the term
“summation.” As the term “extended reference” indicates, this is not the default type of reference, and is much less common than
reference to participants in their prototypical form, i.e., NPs. 3
In the same vein, Hopper and Thompson (1984, 1985) argue that linguistic function in the discourse correlates with degrees
of prototypicality in the formal marking of linguistic categories. Cross-linguistically, the extent to which an element is
morphosyntactically treated as a noun appears to be strongly related to the degree to which it serves a noun-like function. An
element is said to serve a noun-like function if it introduces a participant into the discourse that is going to be prominent in the
subsequent discourse (Hopper & Thompson 1985:159; Du Bois 1980; Givón 1981) and has stable rather than processual
properties (Cristófaro 2003). High or low categoriality (or the degree to which a form displays the prototypical behavior of its
category) is thus associated with how likely it is that an element will be referred to or targeted in the following discourse. This is
what we will term here “manipulability” (Hopper & Thompson 1985:160). Prototypical nominal referents, then, are not
necessarily those that are semantically most object- or thing-like, but those that are manipulable. Hopper and Thompson (1985)
summarize these ideas in the “Iconicity of Lexical Categories Principle” (henceforth ILCP):
(…) to the extent that a linguistic form is carrying out this cardinal function [i.e., to introduce manipulable participants in the discourse],
it will be coded as a noun, and will manifest the full possible range of nominal trappings conventional in the language. (Hopper &
Thompson 1985:159)
As an illustration of the ILCP, consider (6) and (7).
(6) Early in the chase the hounds started up an old red fox, and we hunted him all morning. (Hopper & Thompson 1984:709)
(7) We went fox-hunting in the Berkshires. (Hopper & Thompson 1984:709)
In (6), the full range of attributes characteristic of nouns is manifested: fox takes a determiner and adjectives, has the potential of
being either singular or plural (old red foxes), and can be combined with a demonstrative (that old red fox). In (7), despite the
fact that fox still signifies a (visible) thing or entity, it does not formally behave as a prototypical noun at all, as it cannot pluralize
or take modifiers or determiners. The reason for this, Hopper and Thompson (1984:708) argue, is that fox in (7) does not “play a
role in the discourse in which it figures,” whereas an old red fox does.
For verbs, on the other hand, the degree of prototypical verbhood is determined by the extent to which a form “asserts the
occurrence of an event of the discourse” (Hopper & Thompson 1984:708). Compare (8) and (9).
(8) After the break, McTravish threw the log. (Hopper & Thompson 1984:709)
(9) To throw a log that size takes a great deal of strength. (Hopper & Thompson 1984:709)
In (8), threw is used in a discourse context which selects a prototypical instance of the verb throw and can freely appear in a
variety of tenses or take agreement morphemes showing concord with its subject. This is impossible in (9). Hopper and Thompson
(1984:710) argue that in this less prototypical use of the verb in (9) and the noun in (7), “the overt grammatical contrast between
N and V is reduced or even cancelled,” as there are very few overt morphological differences between fox and throw. In the
prototypical instances (6) and (8), by contrast, the morphological features differ maximally.
It may be worthwhile relating the ILCP to the discussion of the English gerund. Both nominal and verbal gerunds are
nominalizations in the synchronic sense, in that they both preserve the verb-like event semantics, but distributionally occur in
NP slots. The nominal gerund also formally resembles prototypical NPs in that it realizes its arguments by licensing ‘s and ofgenitive NPs (Huddleston & Pullum 2002:658) and lacks the ability to express verb/clause-like notions such as tense and mood.
The verbal gerund, on the other hand, is far more clause-like than its nominal counterpart in terms of internal structure.
What may then be hypothesized about the behavior of verbal gerunds in discourse? On the one hand, we hypothesize that the
internal formal differences in the prototypical NP features that nominal and verbal gerunds display are reflected in differences in
the degree of manipulability in the discourse. If the ILCP holds, the formal coding of the two gerund types should be linked to
their discursive behavior, with nominal gerunds being more likely to function as manipulable discourse referents open to
anaphoric targeting, much like ordinary complex NPs but unlike verbal gerunds. This paper will therefore examine how
frequently gerunds are picked up as a participant in the following discourse, whether the two gerund types differ from each other
or from regular complex NPs in this respect, and whether these differences increase over time.
Anaphoric targeting of the gerund is illustrated in the following examples. As the examples show, anaphoric targeting can
assume various forms, such as full repetition (10), a definite NP (11), a demonstrative pronoun (12), or the personal pronoun it
(13).
(10) Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing as he is of doing a wrong thing.
–“Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing.” (Wilde, 1895, PPCMBE)
(11) Many firms make a specialty of laying out gardens artistically and naturally, and although some amateurs try their untrained hands
at the business, they generally have to call in the aid of the man who knows his plants and their nature and uses by everyday intercourse
and experience. (Weathers, 1913, PPCMBE)
(12) So that we cannot discourse of the man’s right, without describing the measures of his duty; that therefore follows next. (Jeremy
Taylor, 1762, Helsinki Component of the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English [HC])
(13) (…) a full-rigged barque or schooner will cast a great shadow over the window where I fain would be, and the talking of the sailors
on the deck be plainly audible. This is not, however, to assume it will be understandable. (Bradley, 1905, PPCMBE)
On the other hand, if verbal gerunds have become less manipulable than nominal gerunds and regular NPs, it can be expected
that their internal participants have become more open to anaphoric targeting, with the -ing-form in the verbal gerund functioning
as a relator between manipulable participants. This fits with Langacker’s (1987) claim that relational expressions (a category that
includes verbs, but not nouns) are conceptually dependent on the entities they relate, and therefore not only profile a relation but
also the entities related (Langacker 1987:215). Notice then that, contrary to Hopper and Thompson (1984), we do not assume
that non-finite clauses completely lose verbal functionality. Even though non-finite clauses do not independently assert the
occurrence of an event (cf., example 9 above), they retain the verbal function of linking and profiling discourse participants.
Indeed, in English verbal gerunds this is iconically reflected in verb-like participant coding. We expect then that verbalization in
the gerund will correlate with increased openness to internal participant targeting.
Anaphoric targeting of the internal participants of the gerund can again by realized by various means: repetition or a full
definite NP (14), anaphoric bridging (see Willemse 2005) (15), demonstrative pronouns (16), and the personal pronoun it (17).
(14) We may show that by blowing a small soap bubble, and then removing the mouth. The air is forced back again by the pressure
exerted on the bubble (…). (Strutt, 1890, PPCMBE)
(15) In casting his line backwards, the hook fastened on to the ear of a hare (…). (Fayrer, 1900, PPCMBE)
(16) His people were reduced to eating their horses, and these failing, to retire ignominiously home, the King at their head in a towering
passion. (Bradley, 1905, PPCMBE)
(17) (…) they should not be deprived of the honour and gratification of having some event in town; and by having it, as all our
christenings but two were, in the private chapel (…). (Victoria, 186X, PPCMBE)
Methodology
To test the above hypotheses, we analyzed corpus data for nominal and verbal gerunds, as well as regular NPs, in the Early and
Late Modern period. For Early Modern English (EModE), the Helsinki component of the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early
Modern English (HC) was used. The Early Modern section of the HC is divided into three subperiods, of which the final period
was selected for this study. This subperiod covers texts from between 1640 and 1710, and contains 171,885 words of running
text. These data have been searched for all forms ending in -ing, -yng, -inge, and -ynge. A similar search was conducted for Late
Modern English (LModE) in the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE). This corpus is also divided into
three subperiods, of which again the final subperiod was selected for close study. This section of the corpus contains texts from
between 1851 and 1914, amounting to 283,954 words of running text. 4
The HC and PPCMBE were selected for our analysis because both are designed to represent British prose in a broad variety
of genres. The texts come in three forms: simple text, part-of-speech tagged text, and syntactically annotated text. Both corpora
consist of plain text files that can be read through in full, which allowed us to efficiently locate all instances of anaphoric targeting
to the gerund or to their internal participants in their surrounding discourse. In addition, the tagged versions of the corpora were
searched for complex NP patterns most closely resembling the internal structure of (nominal) gerunds, i.e., of the type NP of NP
(the mother of the king). For both subperiods a random sample of a manageable size was drawn of such prototypical complex
NPs in order to compare their discursive behavior to that of the gerunds.
The relevant forms found in the HC and PPCMBE were carefully checked for anaphoric targeting in the following discourse.
As there can be a large distance between the anaphoric referent and the gerund it targets, rather than using a concordancing
software, both the HC and the PPCMBE were read through in full to find all gerunds and anaphoric references to them. Thus,
for Early Modern English (HC) we found 101 nominal gerunds and 521 verbal gerunds in the corpus. For Late Modern English,
we found and analyzed 142 nominal gerunds. For the verbal gerund, which in the Late Modern period had become very frequent,
we decided to study a sample of randomly selected instances rather than analyzing all hits in great detail. A search in the data for
all forms ending in -ing, -yng, -inge, and -ynge yielded a total number of 7,508 hits. For our analysis, we used a random sample
of -ing forms. All text files contained in the PPCMBE were loaded in a spreadsheet and subsequently a random number was
assigned to every line. The lines were then automatically sorted by their value and searched for forms ending in -ing. This
randomization procedure ensured that the genre stratification in the corpus would be preserved in the sample, so as to maintain
maximal comparability between all data sets. We stopped data collection at 4,000 -ing-forms, because this produced a sample of
verbal gerunds comparable in size to that for Early Modern English. In this sample, 460 verbal gerunds were found, and only
these were considered for further analysis.
A similar method was used to collect a sample of regular complex NPs. To find these, all occurrences of the syntactic pattern “N
of” in the HC and PPCMBE were marked out. For the HC, the total number of N of sequences was 3,049. From these, a 200-hit
sample was taken, which contained 184 regular complex NPs. For PPCMBE the total number of N of sequences was 6,521. From
these, a sample of 200 hits was taken to be analyzed manually. In this sample, 166 regular complex NPs were found. Clearly, we
could have drawn much larger samples here, but as the discussion below shows, small samples were enough to reveal very robust
differences between complex NPs and gerunds.5 In order to accurately compare the frequency of verbal gerunds in Late Modern
English to the frequency of nominal gerunds in the same period or to the frequency of gerunds in the Early Modern corpus, we
calculated normalized frequencies over 100,000 words.6 The details of our data extraction are summarized in Table 1.
Note that, as this article focuses on the discourse-functional differences between nominal and verbal gerunds, only those
gerunds that are distinctly nominal or verbal have been included. The gerunds in (18a) and (18b) are unambiguously nominal
gerunds, as the direct object or subject of the gerund are realized by means of an of-phrase. In (19a), on the other hand, the direct
object of the gerund is realized non-periphrastically, making it a truly verbal gerund. In example (19b), finally, the gerund can
likewise be classified as distinctly verbal, since nominal gerunds cannot express tense and voice distinctions.
(18) a. There was throwing of tin cups & tin plates across the ward by the Patients at each other. (Nightingale, 189X, PPCMBE)
b. The coming into being of all things (Boethius-James, 1897, PPCMBE)
(19) a. There can be no harm in quoting her remark. (Meredith, 1895, PPCMBE)
b. (…) the paper falls over without having been touched by anything. (Faraday, 1859, PPCMBE)
Table 1. Overview of the Corpus Data
Period
Word count
Nominal gerunds
Verbal gerunds
Regular complex NPs
HC
1640–1710
171,885
101
521
184
PPCMBE
1851–1914
283,954
142
460
166
If the gerund did not show any decisive features of either nominality or verbality, we excluded the examples from our analysis.
For example, gerunds governing an adverbial as in (20a) or a prepositional complement as in (20b) cannot be considered distinctly
nominal or verbal, because such prepositional phrases “can be governed by both nouns and verbs” (Fanego 2004:21).
(20) a. by appearing at the Lord’s Barre (Aungier, 1673–74, HC)
b. oftentimes cou’d not forbear speaking of him (Behn, c1668, HC)
A special problem case is presented by examples such as (21a). Here, the gerund the rubbing looks unambiguously nominal, but
definite determiners historically also combined with verbal gerunds (Fanego 2004; De Smet 2008). Therefore, examples like the
rubbing, which contain no other sign of nominal status, are (arguably) ambiguous and have been excluded from the analysis, on
a par with indeterminate examples such as (21b).
(21) a. as soon as ever the rubbing is over (Boyle, 1675–76, HC)
b. by this means they will gain such a habit and delight in reading, as to make it their chief recreation (Hoole, 1660, HC)
Results and Discussion
Gerunds Functioning as Discourse Participants: Increasing and Decreasing NP-hood
As a baseline for our analysis, we started by examining the discourse behavior of regular complex NPs. To quantify the
manipulability of regular complex NPs, we determined how often they are subject to anaphoric targeting in the diachronic data.
In Early Modern English, regular complex NPs as in (22) and (23) were referred to as a whole in about 28 percent of all cases.
(22) (…) and whilst they endeavour for a part of a thing (…), they neither get that Part, nor the entire thing which they so much desire.
(Boethius-Preston, 1695, HC)
(23) Electricity, which I found to be yet more considerable in an Emrald of my own, whose colour was so excellent, that by skilful
persons it was look’d on as a rarity. (Boyle, 1675–1676, HC)
In Late Modern English, the proportion of targeted complex NPs is similar, with 27 percent of all cases being referred to in the
following discourse, as seen in (24) and (25).
(24) (…) and then we will try the effect of a drop of oil put on to windward. I have now put on the drop, and you see a smooth place
advancing along. (Strutt, 1890, PPCMBE)
(25) More or less preparation of food will increase facility of digestion, so long as it does not alter the character of its constituents or
impair the digestive process. (Fleming, 1886, PPCMBE)
This gives us a point of comparison for our analysis of the discourse behavior of gerunds, which can form the target of anaphoric
reference too. Nominal gerunds were targeted in 18.5 percent of all cases, and verbal gerunds in 10 percent of all cases. In Early
Modern English, targeting of both nominal (26) and verbal (27) gerunds is mainly realized through anaphora by a full NP (26a
and 26b for nominal gerunds, and 27a and 27b for verbal gerunds), but some instances of reference through it (26c and 27c) are
found as well. Reference by means of a demonstrative pronoun (27d) only occurs with verbal gerunds.
(26) a. For if the most Acute Des Cartes had applied himself experimentally to have examined what substance it was that caused that
shining of the falling Sparks struck from a Flint and a Steel, (…) we should have found, that his Ingenious Principles would have admitted
a very plausible Explication of this Phaenomenon. (Hooke, 1665, HC)
b.
I hope it will prove no offence to publish what I have often seriously thought, (…) touching the most convenient founding of a
Grammar-Schoole; that if it shall please God to stirre up any mans spirit to perform so pious a Work, he may do it (…). (Hoole, 1660,
HC)
c.
The raising of which maintenance, to use Mr. Mulcasters words, as it will require a good minde, and no meane purse; so it needs
neither the conference of a countrey, nor yet the Revenue of a Romane Emperour. (Hoole, 1660, HC)
(27) a. He besought me to suffer no fears upon his account, for he could do nothing that honour should not dictate; but he accus’d himself
for having suffer’d slavery so long : yet he charg’d that weakness on love alone, who was capable of making him neglect even glory it
self. (Behn, c1668, HC)
b. It was believed that they both, especialy the Princesse, would have shewed some seeming reluctancy at least, of assuming her Fathers
Crowne & made some Apologie, testifying her regret, that he should by his misgovernment necessitat the Nation to so extraordinary a
proceeding, which would have shewed very handsomly to the world. (Evelyn, 1688–1689, HC)
c. I fancy there cou’d be no great harm in practising a Scene or two of Matrimony in private, if it were only to give us the better assurance
when we come to play it in publick . (Vanbrugh, 1696, HC)
d. So that we cannot discourse of the mans right, without describing the measures of his duty; that therefore follows next. (Jeremy Taylor,
HC, 1673)
In Late Modern English, nominal gerunds were targeted by anaphora in 23.3 percent of all cases, while only 6.1 percent of all
verbal gerunds were targeted. Reference to gerunds in Late Modern English is still realized by full NPs (28a), as well as
demonstratives (28b), and pronouns (28c-d), but the nominal gerund is increasingly referred to with it, as illustrated in (29a-b).7
(28) a. I need scarcely allude to the nonsense which is talked among the very poor, about the honour of being married at sixteen; which
I know leads almost un-consciously on the young woman’s part to sin with this purpose. (Nightingale, 189X, PPCMBE)
b. (…) - And you must begin by telling your wife the whole story.
- Sir Robert Chiltern : That I will not do. (Wilde, 1895, PPCMBE)
c. Besides, the sin is not in having an illegitimate baby, but in the sin which precedes it. (Nightingale, 189X, PPCMBE)
d. For, “ No doubt,” you may say, “it is true; that is what being really good means. It means being like Jesus Christ. (Talbot, 1901,
PPCMBE)
(29) a. But I hope soon to hear from yourself what your heart is full of that is, when your nursing of dear mother & father is finished. I
am afraid both still want it. (Nightingale, 189X, PPCMBE)
b. Whereas the raising or keeping of a standing army within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in time of peace, unless it
be with the consent of Parliament, is against law. (Statutes, 1865, PPCMBE)
Having established the rates of anaphoric targeting for regular complex NPs and nominal and verbal gerunds, a number of
interesting tendencies can be observed in the data. Figure 1 summarizes the results, showing the proportion of examples in which
a gerund or NP is anaphorically targeted in the subsequent discourse in Early and Late Modern English (Figure 1 also reports
normalized frequencies8 and absolute frequencies in brackets). As such, Figure 1 gives an indication of the manipulability of the
different constructions in discourse.
Figure 1. Nominal gerunds (NG), verbal gerunds (VG) and regular complex NPs (CNP) as targets of anaphoric reference in
Early and Late Modern English.
In the Early Modern English data, both nominal and verbal gerunds are significantly less likely to be targeted in the subsequent
discourse than complex NPs (p = .019 and φ = .14 for nominal gerunds; p < .001 and φ = .23 for verbal gerunds9). Within the
category of gerunds, nominal gerunds are somewhat more likely to be targeted than verbal gerunds, but not significantly so (p =
.062; φ = .08).
For Late Modern English, a somewhat different picture emerges. There is no significant difference in the rate of anaphoric
targeting between nominal gerunds and complex NPs (p = .453; φ = .04). In contrast, verbal gerunds are significantly less likely
to be anaphorically targeted than nominal gerunds or complex NPs (p < .001 in both cases; φ = .24 and φ = .29, respectively). In
contrast to the results for Early Modern English, the difference between nominal and verbal gerunds in Late Modern English is
highly significant (p < .001; φ = .24). The verbal gerund at this point behaves differently from its nominal counterpart, being far
less likely to function as a targetable participant in discourse. We can conclude then that the behavioral gap that was observed
between nominal gerunds and “regular” complex NPs in Early Modern English has narrowed by Late Modern English, while the
verbal gerund has been moving in the opposite direction, becoming more different from nominal gerunds and regular complex
NPs in terms of manipulability.
While Figure 1 reveals how often each gerund type takes the function of introducing a targetable participant, we can also
ask how different functions are typically coded—i.e., which formal choices (nominal or verbal gerund) are made to realize
a particular function (introducing a targetable discourse participant). In this respect, too, the data reveal important diachronic
changes.
This
is
shown
in
Figure 2. 10
Figure 2. The proportion of nominal and verbal gerunds with targeted and other gerunds in Early and Late Modern English.
In the category of targeted gerunds, there is a significant increase of nominal gerunds and decrease of verbal gerunds (p <
.001; φ = .20). In the category “Other” (grouping those cases where there is no participant targeting), we see a significant albeit
minute effect in the opposite direction, with verbal gerunds increasing and nominal gerunds decreasing in frequency (p = .031;
φ = .07). These observations suggest that over time there is a growing tendency for speakers/writers who want to introduce an
action or event as a “trackable” participant, to use a nominal rather than a verbal gerund. Nominal gerunds thus seem to have
acquired a more NP-like discourse-function in this respect, while verbal gerunds appear to drift in the opposite direction (if they
drift at all).
A Complicating Factor: Referential Prominence and Grammatical Function
It has thus far been suggested that important diachronic changes can be observed in the manipulability of the verbal gerund, as
well as of the nominal gerund. It is impossible, however, to fully grasp the nature of the observed changes without taking into
account the additional factors that influence the referential prominence of linguistic elements. The most important factor to be
considered here is “grammatical relation,” by which we mean the syntactic function an NP takes in a clause.
In his description of “attention phenomena,” Talmy (2007: 275) states that “a cline from greater to lesser prominence tends to
be associated with nominals in accordance with their grammatical relation in a sentence.” Such a cline could be visualized as
follows:
Subject
>
Object
>
Oblique
Talmy (2007:275) explains that, in linguistic expressions, greater attention tends to be drawn to an entity if it functions as subject,
a function which makes an entity more prominent (see also Langacker [2009] on the subject as “trajector” or primary focal
participant vs. the object as “landmark” or secondary focal participant). Prominence in turn increases the likelihood for the
participant to be targeted by anaphora. In our own data, the discourse behavior of the gerund in general follows Talmy’s (2007)
prominence cline. Overall, subject gerunds are more likely to be anaphorically targeted than objects and obliques.
The prominence cline and its effects on referential behavior become particularly relevant in the light of Fanego’s (2004)
findings on grammatical relations and the verbalization of the gerund. As Fanego (2004:50) points out, the verbalization of the
gerund started in one particular syntactic environment, viz., prepositional adverbials and oblique complements, and then
continued to spread according to a “grammatical relations hierarchy” to core complements internal to the VP (direct objects) and
finally to subjects, which remained “extremely rare even as late as the nineteenth century” (Fanego 2004:40). One could therefore
hypothesize that the lower degree of manipulability observed for verbal gerunds is due to the fact that the most prominent
syntactic position—i.e., subject position—most strongly resists the verbal gerund.
However, a closer look at our data shows that the low manipulability of verbal gerunds observed above is only partly due to
their absence from subject positions. Figures 3a and 3b show the ratio of anaphoric targeting of nominal and verbal gerunds in
Early and Late Modern English (reporting also normalized and absolute frequencies for each construction), split out over different
grammatical functions. We have limited the grammatical functions to be examined in more detail to those mentioned in Talmy’s
(2007) prominence cline, namely subject, object, and oblique functions. 11 Gerunds serving other grammatical functions such as
subject complement, object complement, or postmodifier have not been included.
When looking at the grammatical relations separately, we can make a number of interesting observations. Firstly, in Late
Modern English, oblique nominal gerunds show higher manipulability than oblique verbal gerunds (p = .006; φ = .16). For the
other syntactic positions, observations are too few for differences to be significant, but the differences clearly tend to go in the
expected direction, with nominal gerunds being more frequently targeted by anaphora than verbal gerunds. The only exception
to this trend are subject nominal gerunds in Early Modern English, but this changes in Late Modern English. Overall, this
confirms our earlier finding that nominal gerunds are more likely to function as prototypical (targetable) NPs in the discourse.
Secondly, comparing across Early and Late Modern English, we can now see in which syntactic positions the diachronic
changes observed earlier occurred. The decrease of targeted verbal gerunds occurs in the less prominent grammatical functions,
i.e., objects (p = .047, two-tailed, using a Fisher’s exact test; φ = .38) and obliques (p = .042; φ = .09).12 The increase of targeted
nominal gerunds, by contrast, appears to be situated in subject position (p = .064 approximates significance, two-tailed, using a
Fisher’s
exact
test;
φ
=
.32).
Note
that
nominal
gerunds
not
only
Figure 3a. Anaphoric targeting of nominal and verbal gerunds in Early Modern English (absolute and normalized frequency over
100,000 words).
Figure 3b. Anaphoric targeting of nominal and verbal gerunds in Late Modern English (absolute and normalized frequency over
100,000 words).
become more manipulable in subject position, they also increasingly associate with subject position. As Figures 3a and 3b show,
in Late Modern English, twenty-nine out of the total of ninety-four nominal gerunds are in subject position (30.8 percent), as
opposed to only twelve out of eighty-one (14.8 percent) in Early Modern English (p = .013; φ = .19). In fact, even though verbal
gerunds in general are far more frequent than nominal gerunds, they are still outnumbered by nominal gerunds in subject position.
Thus, it seems that the subject position somehow became more tolerant of nominal gerunds, 13 or put differently, that the Late
Modern English nominal gerund became a more appropriate means to express the subject of a clause than (a) the Early Modern
English nominal gerund and (b) the Late Modern English verbal gerund.
Verbal Gerunds Functioning as Verbs Relating “Trackable” Discourse Participants: Decreasing
Accessibility
While our focus so far has mainly been on the increase and decrease of the NP-like behavior of nominal and verbal gerunds in
terms of manipulability, a diachronic study of the discourse function of the gerund should also consider whether the discoursefunctional denominalization observed for verbal gerunds is accompanied by the acquisition of more verb-like discursive behavior.
As a starting point, we assumed that clauses differ from NPs in assigning greater prominence to their internal participants and
should therefore have greater internal accessibility, i.e., that clauses allow for targeting of their constituent NPs more easily than
do complex NPs.
To test this hypothesis, we again started by examining the behavior of regular complex NPs. In Early Modern English, only
1.6 percent of the NPs in the sample is accessed for anaphoric targeting of one of the constituent NPs, as in (30).
(30) So that though firm and strong in the greatest part of it, yet by its being ruined in the most needful, it is become inpassable. (Fryer,
1672–81, HC)
In Late Modern English, the targeting of the constituent NPs of regular NPs as in (31) also appears to be very uncommon,
occurring in only 2 percent of all cases.
(31) Cicero retained a lively remembrance of these great orators, and he thought it his duty to make their fame imperishable. (Long,
1866, PPCMBE)
Compared to regular complex NPs, gerunds provide a somewhat wider range of accessible constituent NPs or participants,
and are more accessible. In (32) and (33), there is anaphoric targeting of the explicit (prepositional) object participant (the fault)
and the genitive subject participant (Affie’s). Arguably, the set of internal participants of gerunds can be extended beyond those
that are explicitly and grammatically expressed within the NP to those that are “merely” semantically present, namely the
understood subject or “controller” subject. In (34), the understood semantic subject of doeing—i.e., the controller of doeing—is
the object of the matrix clause, namely him. This controller is again picked up in the following sentence. In (35), the controller
of seeming is Little Leo Beale, who is again referred to in later discourse. Thus, the gerund in (35)—or at least its semantic
representation—contains a participant that continues to be tracked in the following discourse, even if this participant is not
formally expressed within the gerund itself.
(32) It may be doubted concerning whiping, when as the last remedy it comes to be necessary, at what time and by whom it should be
donne, whether presently upon the commiting of the fault whilst it is yet fresh and hot, and whether the parents themselves should beat
their children. (Locke, 1685, HC)
(33) I could never consent to Affie’s being Regent unless he were quite independent of Ernest. (Victoria, 186X, PPCMBE)
(34) … if it shall happen upon any occasion that you bid himi leave off the Øi doeing of any even childish thing you must be sure to
carry the point and not let him have the mastery. (Locke, 1685, HC)
(35) Little Leo Beale was taken ill of scarlet fever the day after we started, and after Øi seeming to have it favourably, died on Sunday.
(…) I returned yesterday summoned by a telegram from Bisham, and buried him to-day. (Thring, 187X, PPCMBE)
Not wanting to decide whether controllers are internal participants or not, we analyzed internal participant targeting both with
and without controllers included. Figure 4a shows the ratio of internal participant targeting in nominal gerunds, verbal gerunds,
and complex NPs in Early and Late Modern English, excluding controllers (reporting also normalized and absolute frequencies).
Figure 4b does the same, but includes the controller as an inherent internal participant of the gerund NP.
Most strikingly, Figures 4a and 4b show that gerunds, whether nominal or verbal, are much more open to internal participant
targeting than regular complex NPs. The relationship between nominal and verbal gerunds is more complex, however. Figure 4a
shows that when the controllers are excluded, nominal gerunds are more likely to provide relevant participants for the following
discourse in Early Modern English, though the effect is small (p = .026; φ = .09). This is unexpected, but can be due to the fact
that a limited share of the verbal gerunds are participantless instances of the type being good and slowly turning. When such
instances are left out of the frequency count, the difference between nominal and verbal gerunds without controller is
nonsignificant (p = .132). Figure 4b shows that when the controllers are included as internal participants, Early Modern English
nominal and verbal gerunds behave very similarly, both relating discourse participants that are picked up in the following
discourse in about 57 percent of all cases. The situation changes in Late Modern English. When controllers are excluded, nominal
gerunds now are less likely to allow targeting of their internal participants, but not significantly so (p = .272). When controllers
are included in the results, the verbal gerund’s internal participants are targeted much more often than those of the nominal gerund
(p < .001; φ = .15).
The data show that an important change affected the gerund system between Early and Late Modern English in terms of the
accessibility of its internal participants. However, the change did not so much affect the verbal gerund, but the nominal gerund.
It is nominal gerunds that undergo a significant decrease in the ratio of internal participant targeting (p < .001, regardless whether
controllers are excluded or included; φ = .22 or .23, respectively). That the internal participants of a nominal gerund
Figure 4a. Diachronic changes in the targeting of the constituent NPs in nominal and verbal gerunds, and complex NPs
(excluding control).
Figure 4b. Diachronic changes in the targeting of the constituent NPs in nominal and verbal gerunds, and complex NPs
(including control).
gradually became less accessible suggests that over time nominal gerunds started behaving less like clausal units and more like
regular complex NPs. Verbal gerunds, on the other hand, continued to be easily accessible for targeting of their internal
participants.
Conclusion
The discourse-functional analysis of nominal and verbal gerunds presented in this paper has added significantly to our
understanding of the historical development of the English gerund system. Based on Hopper and Thompson’s (1985) Iconicity
of Lexical Categories Principle, it was hypothesized that, if morphosyntactic categoriality of a form reflects its discourse function,
the clause-like appearance of the verbal gerund must be associated with atypical NP-like behavior. The prototypical behavior of
complex NPs was established as (i) functioning as a manipulable discourse participant that is important enough in the following
discourse to be susceptible to anaphoric targeting and (ii) being inaccessible to anaphoric targeting of its internal participants.
Subsequently, it was shown that the formal verbalization of the verbal gerund is accompanied by a decreasing ability to function
as a manipulable discourse participant, with change observable between Early and Late Modern English. In terms of accessibility
of the internal participants, however, the verbal gerund did not become more accessible, but retained in Late Modern English the
clausal behavior of high accessibility that it already exhibited in Early Modern English.14
By including nominal gerunds in the analysis, it was further shown 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. Firstly, it
appeared that over time manipulable discourse participants were increasingly realized by means of nominal gerunds. Secondly,
while verbal gerunds did not significantly change in terms of internal participant targeting, the nominal gerund lost some of its
accessibility to internal participant targeting and thus became more like a prototypical complex NP over time.
The discourse-functional analysis of nominal and verbal gerunds in this paper has also added to our general understanding of
the (diachronic) processes of verbalization and nominalization, which have tended to be described in terms of hierarchies of
verbal and nominal morphosyntactic categories that are lost or adopted (e.g., Comrie 1976; Comrie & Thompson 1985; Tabor &
Traugott 1998; Malchukov 2004). We showed that the morphosyntactic verbalization of the gerund is accompanied by discoursefunctional changes. Verbal gerunds functionally denominalized—i.e., became less NP-like—as seen in their decreasing ability
to function as a manipulable discourse participant. At the same time, they gradually functionally verbalized as they acquired a
core function of verbs, that of relating manipulable discourse participants. By contrast, nominal gerunds were found to
functionally nominalize, in the sense that they increasingly acquired the cardinal function of a NP, which is that of introducing a
manipulable discourse participant into the discourse. At the same time, they functionally deverbalized, in that they lost some of
their accessibility to internal participant targeting. The changes observed in the discursive functioning of nominal gerunds could
be argued to form the discourse-functional and diachronic reflection of what Dik (1985) calls the “Principle of Formal/Semantic
Adjustment,” which states that derived items of a class X (such as nominal gerunds) will be formally and semantically assimilated
to nonderived items of that class (i.e., regular nouns).
Finally, the changes observed offer an intriguing hint regarding the earlier history of the gerundial system. The discoursefunctional behavior of nominal gerunds is, especially in Early Modern English, strikingly different from that of regular NPs. This
suggests that nominal gerunds anticipated the functional changes that accompanied the emergence of morphosyntactically verbal
gerunds, but retracted again to more nominal behavior as verbal gerunds gained ground.
Acknowledgments
Lauren Fonteyn is first author of the paper. Hendrik De Smet and Liesbet Heyvaert are joint second author. All authors would like to express
their gratitude to the editors and anonymous referees for improving this paper by providing us with elaborate and detailed feedback. In addition,
we would like to thank the audiences at the 34th ICAME conference in Santiago De Compostela and the FunC lunch talk at the University of
Leuven for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, we are also deeply grateful to Prof. Hubert Cuyckens and Prof. Teresa
Fanego for their comments and suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work for
this paper has been made possible by a research grant of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-project “The development of nominal and
verbal gerunds from Middle to Late Modern English: towards a semantic and discourse-functional analysis”).
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
This example from Late Modern English was taken from the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English, henceforth abbreviated as
PPCMBE. Early Modern Examples were taken from the Helsinki component of the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern
English, abbreviated as HC. For more information on the corpus data that we based this study on we refer to the Methodology section
below.
Infinitives can likewise be regarded as products of nominalization or deverbalization synchronically (compared to the finite verb they lack
categories of tense/mood and agreement) while diachronically deriving from deverbal nouns, involving an increase of verbal properties
of the deverbal noun (Haspelmath 1989; Malchukov 2004).
The exact frequency of extended reference varies per genre and per individual text. However, in a random selection of texts taken from
the corpora used in this study, the token frequency of extended reference was much lower than that of regular participant reference in
every individual text. In the whole selection of texts, regular participant reference by means of it, that, this, or a full NP outnumbered
extended reference by 100:29.
The Helsinki component of the Penn Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English comprises forty-eight different texts, and the Penn Parsed
Corpus of Modern British English consists of a set of thirty different texts. As one reviewer pointed out, this is a rather limited set of texts
and our methodology could not avoid that some texts are represented by more than one observation. Therefore our observations are strictly
speaking not independent.
The comparison of the 142 nominal gerunds from the whole population to the 460 verbal gerunds from only a subset of 4,000 randomly
selected -ing forms could be considered problematic. However, the chi-square test and Fischer’s exact test support comparisons between
independent samples. The specific procedure of using a full data set for a low-frequency construction and comparing it to a sampled data
set for a high-frequency construction is in fact used elsewhere, for instance in Torres Cacoullos (forthcoming). For the comparison in
Figure 2 our procedure did cause a problem, because comparison here is not between the two gerund constructions, but between two
functions, both of which can be realized by either gerund construction. If we had used the counts in Figure 1, counts for what is now one
“condition” would come from differently-sized samples. To get the proportions between the two constructions right, again we chose to
sample nominal gerunds at exactly the same rate as verbal gerunds. This is explained in note 10 below.
The normalized frequency over 100,000 words was calculated using the formula [relevant hits]*100,000/[corpus size]. For instance, in
Early Modern English 16 nominal gerunds were targeted by anaphora in the subsequent discourse (cf., Figure 1 below). The normalized
frequency of targeted nominal gerunds in Early Modern English was calculated as 16*100,000/171,885, which yielded a normalized
frequency of 9.3 occurrences of targeted nominal gerunds over 100,000 words. Where normalized frequencies had to be estimated from
samples this was done using the formula [relevant hits]*[total number of hits]/[sample size]*100,000/[corpus size]. For instance, in Late
Modern English 28 verbal gerunds were targeted in the following discourse (cf., Figure 1 below). In this case, the normalized frequency
is estimated as 28*6,521/4,000*100,000/283,954, or 18.5 occurrences of targeted verbal gerunds over 100,000 words.
In the case of anaphoric reference to coordinated gerunds, as in (29b), the gerunds were regarded as a unit. Such cases as in (29b) were
thus treated as single examples of anaphoric targeting rather than as containing two.
The formulae used for calculating the normalized frequency of each category are explained in note 6.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
p-Values estimate the likelihood that an observed difference in our sample will replicate in new samples from the same population. Unless
indicated otherwise, p-values here as elsewhere have been calculated using a chi-square test on the absolute frequencies reported in the
figures. We take a difference between two variables to be significant when p < .05. φ-Coefficients measure correlation between variables
and can be taken to indicate effect size. φ-Coefficients range from 0 (minimal effect size) to 1 (maximal effect size).
The counts for nominal gerunds in Late Modern English differ between Figures 1 and 2. This is because we analyzed all nominal gerunds
from the Late Modern English corpus but only a sample of the verbal gerunds. For the direct comparison between nominal and verbal
gerunds in Figure 1 this is unproblematic. In Figure 2, however, our comparison of the forms used to code different functions would have
been skewed in favor of nominal gerunds if we had relied on a sample of verbal gerunds as opposed to the full set of nominal gerunds. To
get the proportions between the two constructions right, we sampled nominal gerunds at exactly the same rate as verbal gerunds (in
practice retaining just the nominal gerunds that fell into the group of 4,000 -ing-forms marked out for analysis, as discussed in the
Methodology section). The procedure impoverishes our data somewhat, but significant differences are revealed nevertheless.
An oblique gerund is understood here as a gerund introduced by a preposition and functioning as an adverbial or a prepositional object.
Los (2009:118) argues that due to the loss of V-2 word order English came to assign unmarked themes to the subject function and
consequently developed a number of “unusual subject-strategies.” One could argue that the increase of nominal gerunds used as subjects
forms a part of the more general trend in English to allow more kinds of non-agentive subjects. However, such an approach would fail to
explain why the increase can only be observed for nominal and not for verbal gerunds.
Note that there seems to be a similar, yet non-significant decrease of targetable nominal gerunds in object function (p = .654, two-tailed,
using a Fisher’s exact test) and oblique function (p = .658).
As was pointed out by one of the referees, additional support for the analysis of verbal gerunds as becoming less likely targets of anaphoric
tracking and thus moving away from the prototypical NP paradigm might be gained from looking at clausal targeting (through extended
reference) outside verbal gerunds. It would be interesting to see whether the developments in targeting attested for verbal gerunds are part
of larger trends for clausal targeting.
Corpora
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Ariel Diertani. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. URL:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/
index.html
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Ariel Diertani. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. URL:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/
index.html
References
Bhat, D. N. Shankara. 1994. The adjectival category. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. The syntax of action nominal. A cross-language study. Lingua 40(2-3). 177-201.
Comrie, Bernard & Sandra A. Thompson. 1985. Lexical nominalizations. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic
description. Vol. 3, Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 349-398. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cristófaro, Sonia. 2003. Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Smet, Hendrik. 2008. Functional motivations in the development of nominal and verbal gerunds in Middle and Early Modern English. English
Language and Linguistics 12(1). 55-102.
Dik, Simon C. 1985. Formal and semantic adjustment of derived constructions. In Alide Machtelt Bolkestein, Casper De Groot & J. Lachlan
Mackenzie (eds.), Predicates and terms in functional grammar, 1-28. Dordrecht: Foris.
Donner, Morton. 1986. The gerund in Middle English. English Studies 67(5). 394-400.
Du Bois, John W. 1980. Beyond definiteness: The trace of identity in discourse. In Wallace Chafe (ed.), The pear stories, 203-274. Norwood,
NJ: Ablex.
Emonds, Joseph E. 1973. The derived nominals, gerunds, and participles in Chaucer’s English. In Braj B. Kachru & Robert B. Lees (eds.),
Issues in linguistics: Papers in honour of Henry and Ren´ee Kahane, 185-189. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Fanego, Teresa. 1996a. The development of gerunds as objects of subject-control verbs in English (1400–1760). Diachronica 13(1). 29-62.
Fanego, Teresa. 1996b. The gerund in Early Modern English: Evidence from the HC. Folia Linguistica Historica 17(1-2). 97-152.
Fanego, Teresa. 1998. Developments in argument linking in early Modern English gerund phrases. English Language and Linguistics 2(1). 87119.
Fanego, Teresa. 2004. On reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change: The rise and development of English verbal gerunds. Diachronica
21(1). 5-55.
Francis, Gillian. 1994. Labelling discourse: An aspect of nominal-group cohesion. In Malcolm Coulthard (ed.), Advances in written text
analysis, 83-101. London: Routledge.
Givón, Talmy. 1985. Iconicity, isomorphism, and non-arbitrary coding in syntax. In John Haiman (ed.), Iconicity in syntax, 187-220.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1989. From purposive to infinitive — a universal path of grammaticization. Folia Linguistica Historica 10(1-2). 287-310.
Heyvaert, Liesbet. 2003. A cognitive-functional approach to nominalization in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Heyvaert, Liesbet. 2008. On the constructional semantics of gerundive nominalizations. Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae
Europaeae 42(1). 39-82.
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson 1984. The discourse basis for lexical categories in universal grammar. Language 60(4). 703-752.
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson 1985. The iconicity of the universal categories “noun” and “verb.” In John Haiman (ed.), Iconicity in
syntax, 151-186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Houston, Ann. 1989. The English gerund. Syntactic change and discourse function. In Ralph W. Fasold & Deborah Schiffrin (eds.), Language
change and variation, 173-195. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jack, George B. 1988. The origins of the English gerund. Nowele 12. 15–75.
Jespersen, Otto. 1940. A Modern English grammar on historical principles. Vol. 5. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Kranich, Svenja. 2006. The origin of English gerundial constructions: A case of French influence? In Andrew James Johnston, Ferdinand von
Mengden & Stefan Thim (eds.), Language and text: Current perspectives on English and Germanic historical linguistics and philology,
179–195. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Nouns and verbs. Language 63(1). 53-94.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 2, Descriptive application. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2009. Investigations in cognitive grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Los, Bettelou. 2009. The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: Information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language
and Linguistics 13(1). 97-125.
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malchukov, Andrej L. 2004. Nominalization, verbalization: Constraining a typology of transcategorial operations. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Malchukov, Andrej L. 2006. Constraining nominalization: Function/form competition. Linguistics 44(5). 973–1009.
Martin, James R. 1992. English text. System and structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
McGregor, William B. 1997. Semiotic grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.
Miller, Gary D. 2002. Nonfinite structures in theory and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Schachter, Paul. 1976. A nontransformational account of gerundive nominals in English. Linguistic Inquiry 7(2). 205-241.
Tabor, Whitney & Elisabeth Closs Traugott 1998. Structural scope expansion and grammaticalization. In Anna Giacalone Ramat & Paul J.
Hopper (eds.), The limits of grammaticalization, 229-272. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tajima, Matsuji. 1985. The syntactic development of the gerund in Middle English. Tokyo: Nan’un-do.
Tajima, Matsuji. 1996. The common-/objective-case subject of the gerund in Middle English. Nowele 29. 569–578.
Tajima, Matsuji. 1999. The compound gerund in Early Modern English. In Sheila Embleton, John E. Joseph & Hans-Joseph Niederehe (eds.),
The emergence of the modern language sciences: Studies on the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics in honour
of E. F. K. Koerner, 265–276. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Takahashi, Hidemitsu. 1997. Indirect anaphors: Definiteness and inference. Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology 86(1-2). 53-80.
Talmy, Leonard. 2007. Attention phenomena. In Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, 264–
293. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Torres Cacoullos, Rena. Forthcoming. Gradual loss of analyzability: Diachronic priming effects. In Aria Adli, Marco García García & Göz
Kaufman (eds.), System, usage and society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Van der Wurff, Wim. 1993. Gerunds and their objects in the Modern English period. In Jaap van Marle (ed.), Historical linguistics 1991, 363–
375. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Visser, Fredericus Theodorus. 1963–73. An historical syntax of the English language. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill.
Willemse, Peter. 2005. Nominal reference-point constructions: Possessive and esphoric NPs in English. University of Leuven PhD dissertation,
Leuven, Belgium.
Author Biographies
Lauren Fonteyn has been working as a doctoral researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders (FWO) on a PhD supervised by
Liesbet Heyvaert (University of Leuven), Hendrik de Smet (University of Leuven), Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven), and Teresa
Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela) since October 2012. The project is entitled The Development of Nominal and Verbal Gerunds
from Middle to Late Modern English: Towards a Semantic and Discourse-Functional Analysis.
Hendrik De Smet obtained a BOF-research professorship at KU Leuven in 2013. His current research is concerned with language change in
various domains of grammar and aims at integrating changes and their underlying mechanisms with current views on synchronic language
structure, processing, and use.
Liesbet Heyvaert is an associate professor of English Linguistics at KU Leuven. Her current research interest include the lexicogrammarsemantics interface of English middle constructions and deverbal nominalizations, with a focus on nominalizations in -ing, from a synchronic
as well as a diachronic perspective. Since 2011, she has been the managing editor of Functions of Language.