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Gerunds have proven to be adequate forms of "annoyances" to me and have thus led me to inquire their properties and uses. I would appreciate it if anyone could provide me with assistance in this predicament.

Do both of these sentences make sense? Explanations are valued.

  1. My absence at the dinner party was due to my playing chess with a colleague.

  2. My absence at the dinner party was due to my playing of chess with a colleague.

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  • I don't know the official answer, but I would guess that the version with "of" is correct. I am not sure what your goal is, but as a native speaker I can say that both would sound fine, the latter more formal. – skaz Jul 09 '15 at 20:08
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    The first seems more idiomatic to me (American) but the second does not seem ungrammatical. – phoog Jul 09 '15 at 20:08
  • I would not say of. Did you search the site using the gerund tag? – anongoodnurse Jul 09 '15 at 20:18
  • The second one isn't ungrammatical; but playing doesn't function as a gerund in it. The -ing form can function as a gerund, a participle and a verbal/deverbal noun. Gerunds take an object. The second paying takes a PP, ergo, not a gerund. – Tushar Raj Jul 09 '15 at 20:23

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The version "my playing chess" has the gerund "playing" and the direct object "chess". This is okay, since a gerund is a verb, and a transitive verb like "play" can take a direct object.

The second version, "my playing of chess", may be acceptable (it doesn't sound as good to me), but it's not a gerund. The fact that the logical object "chess" is preceded by "of" indicates that "playing" is a noun. This is what happens to logical objects of nouns, since grammatically, nouns cannot take direct objects. "Chess" has to be converted to a prepositional phrase because of this grammatical requirement. (Compare the verb "father" with the direct object "a son" and the noun "father" with the prepositional object "of a son".)

So, since in "playing of chess", the "playing" is a noun, it can't be a gerund (which is a verb form). This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it, because there is a derivational suffix "-ing" which creates nouns from verbs, so "playing" may be a noun created by the addition of this suffix to the verb "play".

From the Wikipedia article on Gerunds:

  • I like playing football. (playing takes an object, so is a gerund)
  • Her playing of the Bach fugues was inspiring. (playing takes a prepositional phrase rather than an object; not a gerund)
Tushar Raj
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Greg Lee
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  • Have you looked at the definition of gerund lately? A gerund is a noun made from a verb. – phoog Jul 09 '15 at 20:26
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    @phoog, that definition of gerund is incorrect. A gerund is head of a noun phrase, just as nouns are, but that doesn't make it a noun. A gerund cannot take an article and cannot be modified by an adjective, unlike a noun. – Greg Lee Jul 09 '15 at 20:32
  • I got your back Greg. This answer is correct. +1. – Tushar Raj Jul 09 '15 at 20:33
  • @GregLee The loud screeching hurt my ears. What part of speech is "screeching"? Can you cite a definition of gerund that does not say it is a noun formed from a verb? – phoog Jul 09 '15 at 20:34
  • I've added a little reference to clear things up. @phoog: Gerunds do function as nouns, but not all -ing nouns are gerunds. "I love painting" and "I love this painting" are two entirely different uses of the -ing noun from paint. – Tushar Raj Jul 09 '15 at 20:38
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    @phoog, in your example, "screeching" is a noun, as one can tell because it has "the" and because it is modified by an adjective. Compare the gerund in "Loudly screeching those curses hurts my ears", where absence of article, modification by an adverb, and presence of a direct object all show that we are dealing with a gerund. – Greg Lee Jul 09 '15 at 20:40
  • @TusharRaj, Greg Lee: thanks, I've learned my new thing for the day. – phoog Jul 09 '15 at 20:42
  • @TusharRaj, I am very unenthusiastic about your formulation saying gerunds function as nouns. – Greg Lee Jul 09 '15 at 20:42
  • @GregLee: That's what most definitions say, bro. I'm just playing peacemaker here. – Tushar Raj Jul 09 '15 at 20:43
  • @TusharRaj, as usual, McCawley has a clear way of putting this in his discussion of parts of speech in The Syntactic Phenomena of English. He distinguishes between "upstairs" grammatical classification and "downstairs" classification. Upstairs structure is the syntactic environment of a parent phrase. Gerunds are confusing because they are upstairs nouns but downstairs verbs. With regard to tree sisters (downstairs), they do not function as nouns, but rather as verbs. – Greg Lee Jul 09 '15 at 21:13
  • @GregLee: I'm definitely going to read that. Thanks. You were right about gerunds being head of NPs. Thing is, sometimes the P doesn't have any other word (I like painting). To say they function as nouns avoids calling them either nouns or verbs explicitly. – Tushar Raj Jul 09 '15 at 21:20
  • @GregLee, Tushar Raj: Greg, what have you done? That's going to take a year to read properly!!! And informative it may be but clear it ain't. :-) – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '15 at 14:39
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    @TusharRaj, Greg, The easy fix there is just to explain that gerund clauses can often perform the same functions that noun phrases do. Most often S, O or Complement of a preposition. – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '15 at 14:44
  • @Araucaria, But a "gerund clause" is a noun phrase. No wonder it performs the same functions that noun phrases do. How does that fix anything? – Greg Lee Jul 30 '15 at 16:40
  • @GregLee Oh that old chestnut ;) The reason is that it will satisfy just about anybody's grammar, including those for whom a gerund clause is not an NP (because the phrase isn't headed by a noun). More importantly it draws a distinction between being a subject/object/ other complement of a verb or preposition and the category of the phrase. For your purposes, you could say that it's an NP headed by a verb which can fullfil many of the the same functions as NPs headed by nouns! That's a bit less elegant but it does the same job! (Note that they can't fullfil all those functions though). – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '15 at 16:49
  • @GregLee The fact that there's only a partial overlap in the functions that gerund clauses and NPs headed by nouns can fulfill is part of what leads researchers like Huddleston and Pullum to conclude that gerund clauses aren't NPs. For what that's worth ... – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '15 at 17:04
  • @Araucaria, please fill me in. What NP functions does a "gerund clause" fail to fulfill? – Greg Lee Jul 30 '15 at 17:12
  • @GregLee Gerund-participle clauses cannot occur as DOs of verbs such as PROMISE or KNOW. Gerund-participles can function as extraposed subjects. NP's can't. – Araucaria - Him Jul 31 '15 at 09:02
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    @Araucaria, Those might be selection restrictions, i.e. semantic, rather than subcategorization restrictions, i.e. grammatical (Chomsky made the distinction in Aspects). Compare "I know to return early", "I know my returning early", "I know my early return." The last is just as bad as the gerund form, even though it doesn't have a gerund. – Greg Lee Jul 31 '15 at 16:53
  • @GregLee Yes, that's possible too. – Araucaria - Him Aug 01 '15 at 00:38
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It seems like your confusion here is coming from choice of terms. Since the absence was a result of What your were doing and not exactly where you were, I'd replace "due to" to " because of ".

Due to is more appropriate nouns Because of is more appropriate for verbs (action)

Ex. My absence at the dinner party was because of my playing chess with a colleague. Ex2. My absence at the dinner party was because I had been playing chess with a colleague. The second example employs the use of past perfect progressive tense.

Gerunds ( Verbs acting as nouns) are usually followed by verbs, which distinguishes the present participle from an action term and a word that describes "what" in the sentence.

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