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"Understanding something" or "understanding of something"? Is there a general rule? Or does it depend on the context? If it is context dependent, what about this sentence:

Population growth is a sum of survival and recruitment, and knowledge of these two vital rates is crucial for understanding population dynamics.

Variant with "of":

Population growth is a sum of survival and recruitment, and knowledge of these two vital rates is crucial for understanding of population dynamics.

tchrist
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Tomas
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    Ca we write answers in the answer box, unless we want to close this and move to another site. – DJClayworth Jan 01 '23 at 19:50
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    The general rule is that understanding can be either a noun, in which case it can't take an object like a verb, so it hasta take a preposition of to indicate what's understood. Or it can be a verb, in which case it's allowed to take a direct object with no of needed. You can tell the difference by looking for a determiner -- an understanding, the understanding, some understanding, no understanding -- all nouns, taking of. Or an auxiliary verb if it's a verb is understanding, was understanding, am understanding -- all verbs, no of required for their objects. – John Lawler Jan 02 '23 at 23:30
  • @JohnLawler — But we can also come to an understanding — without of... – Tinfoil Hat Jan 03 '23 at 00:46
  • Indeed. But the of is required if you name the object of understanding. We can come to an understanding of something, but we can't *come to an understanding something. – John Lawler Jan 03 '23 at 09:35

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I thought this was an interesting question, so spent some time digging. It is worth browsing the ngram usages here. The goal is not so much to look at the frequency but at the actual usages. For example:

An understanding of the translation of The New Testament

Which is plainly very different than understanding the translation of the New Testament.

The Child's Understanding of Emotion

Which is also plainly quite different from the child understanding emotion.

However, a bit of a confounding factor here is that these two examples are actually titles of books, and consequently the grammar is a bit compromised. And I think that is a key observation here. I think the problem is that your second sentence is not correct. I think it should be:

... is crucial for an understanding of population dynamics.

The key point here is that "understanding" in this context is a noun not a verb, and so the genitive is adjectival in nature.

So "understanding xyz" is the process or comprehending it, whereas "an understanding of xyz" is the result of that comprehension.

To put it another way: the information about survival and recruitment is crucial to understanding. Understanding what? Well "an understanding of population dynamics."

So too, with the titles above. The first book contains the result of someone understanding the translation of the New Testament, it is not the process of doing so, but the result of doing so. And also the second contains a description of the result of a child's comprehension of emotion rather than the actual process of a child acquiring that understanding.

Fraser Orr
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