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I am struggling with analysing the sentence 'Y happens, benefitting patients with X'.

I can see that 'Y benefits patients with X' uses the present tense simple form of the verb.

But in the first example, is 'benefitting' functioning as a gerund or an adjective?

Edwin Ashworth
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Billy
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  • BillJ gives the CGEL analysis at Is it a gerund or a verb?: << ... In I saw them killing the birds, "killing" is ... 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. ,,, >> Here, 'patients with X' is a DO (I've changed the question slightly to reflect my belief that condition and remedy etc are distinct). But there are more comprehensive answers in other threads. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 23 '23 at 10:59
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    Does this answer your question? When does a gerund 'become' a verb? Or this? should gerund + 'objective' be modified by adjective or adverb?. In the question above, the ing-form is unquestionably [very-close-to-verb-end-of-continuum] or as many would decree [verb]. Certainly not an adjective; 'gerund' is ill-defined. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 23 '23 at 11:02
  • Thank you for the reply. I am still not sure how this fits in with the example: 'Accordingly, a focus on X will lead to X, ultimately benefiting patients with X.' Here, I do not see how it functions as a verb. If I change the sentence: 'Benefiting patients with X, the focus of the study is X.' Does this still mean it is functioning as a verb? – Billy Oct 23 '23 at 11:08
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    The acceptability of modification by adverb in the original is another fair test for verbness, in addition to the presence of the direct object: [adverb] [ing-form] [DO]. // Perhaps you're involving too much semantic analysis in deciding what a verb actually is. A 'doing word' (Joe hit Bob). But 'own', 'seem' stretch this concept. There needs to be far more syntactic analysis in defining verbness. Distribution (acceptance of a typical adverb say) is an important factor. Another is morphology/inflection. // ... – Edwin Ashworth Oct 23 '23 at 11:39
  • 'Benefitting patients' in the participle clause can be compared with '... and this is really benefitting patients' to show a 'verby' usage. Perhaps would have trouble imagining ... is this present participle or ... will help. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 23 '23 at 11:40
  • The original sentence can be viewed as "Y happening is benefitting patients with X" – Barmar Oct 23 '23 at 17:30
  • Thank you so much for your help with this question. I appreciate the various responses. – Billy Oct 25 '23 at 11:14

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