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I'm still confused between the two, so please help?

"Life is so much more than just stealing and killing."

Song_Areum
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    This question doesn't make sense to me: the gerund is a form of the verb. – herisson Aug 07 '16 at 03:06
  • What I meant is 'stealing' and 'killing' functions as a noun or a verb in the sentence? – Song_Areum Aug 07 '16 at 03:10
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    From that sentence it's hard to tell, but a gerund interpretation works OK. – John Lawler Aug 07 '16 at 03:15
  • The options I see are gerund (a verb form that can act as a noun phrase) or a lexical noun (which is a noun that is derived from a verb). So I think a better title would be something like "is it a gerund or a noun?" – herisson Aug 07 '16 at 03:16
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    Your two examples are strictly speaking ambiguous, though verb interpretation is preferred. Noun status can be forced by adjectival premodification as in occasional stealing / pointless killing. – BillJ Aug 07 '16 at 07:06

2 Answers2

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If you replace the words "stealing" and "killing" with "theft" and "murder" you can see that "stealing" and "killing" are gerunds; that is, a form of the verb that functions as a noun.

Ronald Sole
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    Yes, but if you add the objects "things" ("stealing things") and "people" ("killing people), then they are verbs. – BillJ Aug 07 '16 at 12:54
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As long as this is phrased as an either/or question about verbs, it cannot be answered.  The problem is that "verb" is an overloaded word.  It falls on both sides of the either/or division. 
 

On the one hand, a gerund is always a verb.  A gerund is a verb with an -ing ending and a substantive function.  Gerunds show much of the same behavior as other verb forms.  They can take arguments, which are objects or complements.  They can take adjuncts, such as adverbs and adverbial prepositional phrases. 

While we are on this hand, the word "verb" represents a part of speech.  Other part of speech labels include "noun", "adjective", "adverb" and "preposition".  As long as we're talking about parts of speech, "gerund" is just a category of "verb". 
 

On the other hand, a gerund is never a verb or a part of a verb.  While we are on this hand, the word "verb" represents a part of the sentence.  Other parts of the sentence include "subject", "object", "complement" and "supplement". 
 

"Verb" is the only label that appears on both of these lists.  It is much easier to ask questions about the other labels.  We can ask "is this noun a subject?" or "is this subject a noun?" without causing any confusion.  It is much more confusing to ask "is this verb a verb?" 
 

One way out of this problem is to remove the word "verb" from one of these two lists.  One possible substitution is to use the word "predicator" instead of "verb" on the list of the parts of the sentence.  Let one list include "noun", "verb", "preposition" and so on, just as it always has.  Let the other list include "subject", "predicator", "object", "complement" and so on. 

Given this substitution, we can now split the title question into two separate and far less confusing questions: 

  • Is a gerund a verb? 
  • Is a gerund a predicator? 
     

These clear and separate questions have simple and easy answers: 

  • A gerund is always a verb.  The part-of-speech category called "gerund" is a part of the part of speech category called "verb". 
  • A gerund is never a predicator.  The part-of-speech category called "gerund" does not fill the same role in a sentence that a finite verb can fill.  A gerund makes a fine subject, object or complement, but it does not make the part of the sentence called "verb". 
Gary Botnovcan
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    'These clear and separate questions have simple and easy answers.' Some grammarians don't even accept the term 'gerund'. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 07 '16 at 15:14
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    Um, so? OP uses it. I use it. What does it matter whether others don't? The argument remains valid regardless of whether you reject any of its premises. Of course, if you do reject one of its premises, then you cannot benefit from the simplicity and ease of its conclusion. – Gary Botnovcan Aug 07 '16 at 16:30
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    Ing- forms are either verbs as in I saw them killing the birds or nouns as in I witnessed the killing of the birds. It's that simple. The term 'gerund' is redundant_. We can call the nouns 'gerundial nouns' but just noun is adequate. – BillJ Aug 07 '16 at 16:57
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    There is a distinction between "I saw them killing the birds" and "I saw their killing the birds". "Killing" remains a part-of-speech verb in both (with "the birds" as its object) but it's a participle modifying an object pronoun in the first and a gerund modified by a genitive pronoun in the second. Those are both distinct from the deverbal "I saw the killing of the birds". The only one for which "noun" could possibly be adequate is the last. All of them remain distinct from part-of-sentence verbs such as "saw", primarily because only "saw" requires a subject in your examples. – Gary Botnovcan Aug 07 '16 at 17:10
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    I'm not ignoring anything. Of course there is a distinction; that's the point I was making. In I saw them killing the birds, "killing" is of course a verb since it has "birds" as direct object. And in I witnessed the killing of the birds, "killing" is a noun, as evidenced by the determiner "the" and the of- phrase complement. Your other example (*I saw their killing the birds) is ungrammatical since infinitival clauses cannot take genitive case pronouns as subject; they require accusative case pronouns, in this case "them" . – BillJ Aug 07 '16 at 17:23
  • "I saw their killing the birds as their biggest mistake" -- you and I do not agree on what counts as good grammar, and we're discussing a point that has little relevance to the question (or the answer) at hand. – Gary Botnovcan Aug 07 '16 at 17:47
  • Though BillJ and I have had some sharp disagreements over whether CaGEL must be taken as indisputably correct, quoting its recommendations (with attribution) is always vastly superior to giving unsupported statements. ELU never recommends answers lacking supporting evidence. I still think that the ACGEL (Quirk et al) gradience treatment of verbal ... nounal ing-forms is the superior model, but the fact that 'gerund' is ill-defined, used in different ways by different grammarians, is indisputable. An answer tacitly assuming a universally accepted definition of 'gerund' is deficient. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 07 '16 at 20:50
  • The abundance of sites like this, despite how poorly many of them are phrased, shows that the definition I use is still in the common-knowledge domain and has retained currency. My answser departs from grade-school theory only in that I claim verb-as-part-of-sentence and verb-as-part-of-speech deserve separate labels. And, something is very wrong if we need more than grade-school theory to address OP's concern. This isn't an edge case or an oddity of historic usage. This is just confusion about what the word "verb" traditionally means. – Gary Botnovcan Aug 07 '16 at 21:50