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English gerund construction is a system composed of 3 variants, including “Gerund + ø”, “Gerund + of + NP”, and “Gerund + NP”. The noun and verb attributes of the 3 variants are recursive, and in theory their frequencies vary regularly in different styles. An abstract is placed before the beginning of an academic papers, which has the basic characteristics of conciseness and generalization, and has special requirements for the use of gerunds. The purpose of this study was to empirically explore the system of gerund construction in abstracts of natural science and social science papers, and to specifically explore the inherent characteristics of noun and verb properties of the 3 variants. For this purpose, two corpora were constructed, one is about abstracts of natural science papers, and the other is about abstracts of social science papers. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed that there was no significant difference in the frequencies of the 3 variants in the abstracts of natural science and social science papers, and the two corpora can be studied as a whole. In the combined corpus, there were significant differences in the frequencies of the 3 gerund variants. The frequencies of these 3 variants and their gerund properties showed a recursive change.

In this paper we study a case of diachronic and diaphasic variation consisting in a subordination strategy for expressing immediate succession present in the cultivated narrative language of Classical Spanish. This strategy is based on verbal doubling (V-doubling), a pattern also found in some contemporary Atlantic creole languages. We analyze the elements that constitute this type of sequences and examine the similarities and differences between the constructions of Classical Spanish and those of the Creoles. We also compare the constructions of Classical Spanish with similar structures without V-doubling, present in all periods of Spanish, in order to detail the link of V-doubling with focalization of the end of the first event. The strategy analyzed was a transitory way to cover the absence of subordinators expressing immediate succession in an unambiguous way during the chronological period in which it existed.

With the exception of Moortgat (1978) and Halmøy (1982 and 2003), the French gerund of the type Paul a fait une erreur en se mariant has not been recognized in grammars or in works on -ant forms, even though it is extremely common. We propose here to use the analysis given by Halmøy in his typology of gerund constructions. After highlighting the positive and negative points of her approach, we will try to show that these gerunds, which are not “like the others”, are not (partial) equivalence or inclusion gerunds, but processual specification gerunds.

This study explores syntactic variation and sociocultural identity in subjectless nonfinite clauses within Philippine English (PhE) and Singaporean English (SgE), focusing on to-infinitive and -ing gerund constructions. Using data from the International Corpus of English for the Philippines (ICE-PHI) and Singapore (ICE-SIN), it examines the distribution of these constructions across spoken and written registers to uncover their sociocultural underpinnings. The findings reveal a shared preference for to-infinitive constructions in both varieties, reflecting their role in expressing intention and purpose. PhE’s adherence to prescriptive norms stems from colonial history and formal education, while SgE’s multilingual and pragmatic linguistic ecology fosters greater syntactic flexibility, exemplified by the innovative want + -ing construction absent in PhE. Although gerunds are less frequent overall, they consistently occur with verbs like enjoy in both varieties, signaling habitual or ongoing actions. Sociolinguistic distinctions also emerge in constructions like [Negator] + try + Nonfinite Clause, where PhE employs elaborative commentary aligned with its expressive narrative tendencies, contrasting with SgE’s concise, context-driven usage. By investigating this underexplored syntactic phenomenon, the study demonstrates how localized Englishes adapt grammatical structures to reflect sociocultural priorities, advancing the understanding of World Englishes and their sociolinguistic diversity.

In this paper we study a case of diachronic and diaphasic variation consisting in a subordination strategy for expressing immediate succession present in the cultivated narrative language of Classical Spanish. This strategy is based on verbal doubling (V-doubling), a pattern also found in some contemporary Atlantic creole languages. We analyze the elements that constitute this type of sequences and examine the similarities and differences between the constructions of Classical Spanish and those of the Creoles. We also compare the constructions of Classical Spanish with similar structures without V-doubling, present in all periods of Spanish, in order to detail the link of V-doubling with focalization of the end of the first event. The strategy analyzed was a transitory way to cover the absence of subordinators expressing immediate succession in an unambiguous way during the chronological period in which it existed.

The English gerund system consists of two types of gerunds: a nominal gerund (the learning of a language), and a verbal gerund that developed out of the nominal gerund (learning a language). While the formal aspects of this diachronic verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discourse-functional side of the change. In this paper, it is argued that the formal verbalization of the gerund is accompanied by an important change in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system. Based on functional characterizations of noun phrase (NP) behavior in the literature, the prototypical behavior of complex NPs is operationalized as (i) functioning as manipulable discourse participants that are important enough in the following discourse to be susceptible to anaphoric targeting and (ii) being inaccessible to anaphoric targeting of internal participants. The results of an analysis of a set of nominal gerunds, verbal gerunds and regular complex NPs covering the period 16401914 (taken from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Early Modern and Modern British English) shows that the increasingly clause-like appearance of the verbal gerund is in fact accompanied by atypical NP behavior. Moreover, the paper makes clear that the changes in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system did not only affect the verbal gerund, but also had some implications for the nominal gerund. These findings shed new light on the (diachronic) processes of verbalization and nominalization, and on what they mean on a discourse-functional level. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc., copyright holder.]

The auxiliary - ‘sit’ is one of a set of verbs that forms iterative-continuative periphrases in Sanskrit, but it has hardly been studied. While modern-day Sanskrit grammars acknowledge its presence, a comprehensive investigation into its usage is lacking. Given the lack of studies on the - periphrasis, this paper explores the verbal construction constituted of the root ‘sit’ plus participle or gerund from Early Vedic to Epic Sanskrit, also offering a brief comparison with ‘dwell, live’. A few passages from Vedic prose show in combination with participles and gerunds in a similar use of that with -, but these contexts have never been extensively studied in the literature.

This article proposes a novel account for the overuse of free morphemes and underuse of bound morphemes in English as a second language (L2) based on the framework of Distributed Morphology. It will be argued that an Economy Principle ‘Do everything in Narrow Syntax (DENS)’ operates in the L2 learner’s computational system. Consequently, derivation in Morphology becomes as limited as possible except when applying Vocabulary Items to syntactic objects (Vocabulary Insertion). This results in non-target-like use/acceptance of certain morphemes: Bound morphemes are often omitted in early L2 grammar, and alternative free morphemes may apparently be used instead. Two types of data, namely the overuse of be reported in previous research, and the preference of to-infinitives over -ing gerunds in early L2 grammar, will be presented in support of the proposal, and the plausibility of the operation of DENS will be discussed.

Previous literature on the typology of gerund clauses in Portuguese has overlooked a peculiar type of clauses which are always introduced by como (‘as’) and display an array of characteristics that set them apart from all other gerund clauses (and from other, somehow similar, constructions in different languages). In this paper, we provide an in-depth syntactic and semantic characterisation of these como-gerund clauses and the contexts in which they arise, highlighting their similarities and differences regarding other constructions, namely resultative and depictive secondary predicates. We put forward a proposal to deal with their syntactic configurations and the restrictions they exhibit. We also propose that como is obligatory in these clauses because it marks a type-shift operation, which gives como gerund clauses a predicative interpretation, usually found in the nominal domain.