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I'm not a native English speaker, and although I know the general rules to identify whether it is a gerund or participle, sometimes I'm still confused about how to distinguish the gerund and present participle, particularly in the example as below. This is a sentence which I saw in the usage of phrase "depend on" from the Longman Dictionary. My question is that whether the "-ing" form in this sentence is a gerund, in which case it functions as a noun, or this is a present participle which refers to the pronoun i.e. "him" and modifies this pronoun.

depend on somebody/something doing something

We’re depending on him finishing the job by Friday.

(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online)

Community
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James Walker
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3 Answers3

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We're depending //on him //to finish the job.

No argument, an "infinitive clause".

COMPARE: We're depending// on him// finishing the job.

So, let's do this little transformation:

Him/his finishing the job is what we're depending on.

Acceptable? Yes. Why?

Reason: This is a gerund phrase functioning as a noun.

The CGEL crowd calls this: a gerund-participle and say that the distinction between gerunds and present participles "can't be sustained".

Here is an interesting text on the subject:

gerund-participle

Personally, I don't care what it's called. I care if it works. :)

Lambie
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I think I have been taught exactly what Aharon M. Vertmont states:
I appreciate your visiting me so early = possessive + gerund
I appreciate you visiting me so early = pronoun + past participle.

The question is: is the second option now admitted as being grammatical?
Or is it just an ever spreading usage?

KillingTime
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Philippe Bleus
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Although modern grammar doesn't recognize the difference between gerunds and present participles, if we were to distinguish them, then in your case we would have a 'gerund'. The clearest way to see this is to note that you can replace the accusative him by the genitive his, and the genitive can only work with the 'gerund'.

Discussion

On the one hand, as tchrist and Edwin Ashworth have said in the comments, modern grammar does not distinguish between gerunds and present participles. For example, CGEL has whole sections whose entire purpose is the defense of the proposition that those two are not distinct (pp. 82-83 and 1220-1222).

On the other hand, CGEL also says this (1220-1221; the asterisk, '*', means that what follows is not acceptable English):

A difference in internal form: case of the subject NP (noun phrase)

There is one respect in which 'gerund' and 'present participle' clauses differ in their internal form: with 'gerunds' the subject may take genitive case, with plain or accusative case a less formal alternant, but with 'present participles' the genitive is impossible and pronouns with a nominative-accusative contrast appear in nominative case, with accusative an alternant restricted to informal style. Compare, then:

[39]   i She resented his/him/*he being invited to open the debate.
         ii We appointed Max, he/him/*his being much the best qualified of the candidates.

This difference, however, is obviously relevant only to those constructions where the non-finite clause can contain a subject: it cannot be used to justify a distinction between 'gerund' and 'present participle' in the numerous constructions where no subject is permitted. In terms of our analysis, the contrast in the case of the subject is handled by our distinction between complement and non-complement gerund-participials: genitive case is restricted to the former, nominative to the latter. If the traditional distinction of gerund' vs 'present participle' is to be maintained, it must be based primarily on properties of the subjectless construction. But here there is no difference at all in the internal form of the constructions.

So: if the subject can be in the genitive, then what we have is a gerund. Now consider your sentence:

[1] We’re depending on his/him/*he finishing the job by Friday.

This is just like CGEL's [39i], and thus finishing is a 'gerund'.

linguisticturn
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  • would it make sense to say "He is depended on finishing the job by Friday"? – James Walker May 01 '18 at 06:00
  • @james-walker Not really. To see why, first note that in the original [1] We depend on him/his finishing the job (I'll drop by Friday), him is the subject of the nonfinite clause him finishing the job. It is that whole clause that is the complement of the preposition on, not just the pronoun him/his. Now, what you are trying to do here is form a passive. This would have to be a prepositional passive. But in that case, the complement of the preposition becomes the subject: [2] ?him/his finishing the job by Friday is depended (up)on (by us). – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 13:05
  • @james-walker I put a '?' in front because the result is of dubious acceptability. It is that way sometimes with prepositional passives, especially those where there is no choice which preposition to use with the verb (depend must use on, as opposed to in, of, ..).; we say that the preposition is specified by the verb in this case. So, when it comes to the cases when the preposition is specified by the verb, it is not possible to predict, on purely grammatical grounds, whether the prepositional passive will be permitted or not. – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 13:07
  • @james-walker This is something that, in principle, has to be recorded in a dictionary (though I don't know of a dictionary that actually does this). For the verb depend, there is a related adjective: dependent. The following is acceptable: [3] He is dependent on finishing the job*. But the meaning is now different, as now it is 'him', as opposed to 'us', who depends on him finishing the job. – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 13:07
  • @james-walker Now, if you want him to be the sole complement of on, you'll need to write [4] We are depending on him to finish the job*, where the nonfinite clause is now a to-infinitival one and subjectless. (But now the meaning is a bit ambiguous, as it is not clear who* is supposed to finish the job: him, or us. This will have to be understood from context. ) This does passivize: [5] He is depended on (by us) to finish the job by Friday. – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 13:08
  • @james-walker So why does [4] passivize while [1] doesn't? Again, there is no way to really predict this. All I can say is that the grammar of [1] is slightly different from the grammar of [4]: while they are both 'complex catenative constructions', the original is a 'genitive complex', while [3] is 'oblique complex'. And, apparently, depend on passivizes with oblique-complex constructions but not with genitive-complex ones. – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 13:08
  • First of all, I am very grateful for you answering my question in such a detail. Additionally,If I change the verb phrase "depend on" to another verb,say, the "stop", and in such case , would it make sense to say "He is stopped finishing the job"? If it isn't acceptable, can I attribute this to the reason as you explain above. However this usage of passivized structure of the "stop" example sounds quite common and nature in a dubious way. – James Walker May 01 '18 at 14:04
  • @ linguisticturn – James Walker May 01 '18 at 14:05
  • @james-walker This is at best marginally acceptable. While in active voice constructions stop can appear both with and without the preposition from, normally it is only the version with the preposition that passivizes: [1] We stopped him from finishing the job. [2] He was stopped from finishing the job. The passivized version without the preposition is of marginal acceptability: [3] ?He was stopped finishing the job. (Or at least so says CGEL on p. 1238. I would never use [3] myself.) – linguisticturn May 01 '18 at 14:06