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"He was seen running down the street." Is it correct to say that "running down the street" fulfills the predicate while also being part of the subject, a complex subject?

AJK432
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1 Answers1

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  • He was seen running down the street.

is a complex sentence. It's got two verbs (run and see) used in different forms, and therefore two clauses, one main and one subordinate. In addition, it's had several things done to the main clause -- it's been passivized, and the indefinite agent subject (the 'somebody' that saw him) has been deleted.

Several more things have been done to the subordinate clause -- it's been made into a gerund complement clause, and its subject (him, as in Somebody saw him running down the street) has been raised to be the object of see which gets passivized in the main clause.

The original question asks about the gerund verb phrase running down the street.
For the record, this constituent is not the subject. Of anything.
It is not part of the subject of the main clause, nor of its predicate.
It is, however, part of the object complement clause of see.
Finally, fulfills the predicate is a meaningless phrase and has nothing to do with grammar.

John Lawler
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  • The “fulfills the predicate” line should been said differently, as I assume you are part of the study that recognizes “arguments” of the predicate, like complements. However, I do not see where a gerund comes into place. Gerund is the participle form functioning as noun, correct? – AJK432 May 02 '19 at 01:26
  • @AllexKramer: Fulfill is grammatically meaningless. Does a subject fulfill a verb? Does an object? Does the verb fulfill the subject? No way to tell what it might mean or how you could check. Predicate is a term in logic (as is argument), not grammar. As for the gerund, you're confusing participial -ing verb forms with gerund clause constructions, of which this is one. Gerund clauses do use participial -ing verb forms, but those are verbs and don't function as nouns -- rather, the clause they are the verb in functions as a noun. – John Lawler May 02 '19 at 16:08
  • That makes sense. However, do we not just consider single-standing gerunds as clauses now also? – AJK432 May 04 '19 at 18:02
  • Also, was the gerund clause not a complement in the “original” version before being made passive? – AJK432 May 04 '19 at 18:33
  • If you are certain that a single -ing form of a verb is a gerund, yes, it's the remains of a clause, a complement (noun) clause. But a single -ing form is not always a gerund; there are several other possibilities. – John Lawler May 04 '19 at 19:49
  • You said “it's been made into a gerund complement clause”. But wasn’t it already a part of it before? – AJK432 May 04 '19 at 21:50
  • That depends on how one uses the metaphor. Transformations like Passive are ways to relate sentence types, not actual things that go in in speech. The "original" (i.e, least complex, most prototypical) form of the clause is abstract; it happens that it comes out as a gerund (instead of an infinitive, for instance) because the sense verb see can take a gerund complement. But that's not a fact about the clause itself so much as its environment. – John Lawler May 04 '19 at 22:30
  • So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that these comparisons between a so-called “original” are irrelevant because they are simply something “abstract”. In other words, we have to assume that a sentence such as my passive example begins at... well... its own beginning. Simply put then, in a sentence such as “I saw him running down the street”, “him running down the street” is the gerund complement clause, like it’s abstractly molded passive form was, right? – AJK432 May 04 '19 at 22:47
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    In I saw him running down the street, yes, that is the gerund complement. The him now functions as the object of see, which is why it can passivize and become the subject. This is all using the "transformation" metaphor, understand -- it's just a way to keep track of the thousands of sentence types in English. – John Lawler May 04 '19 at 23:13