Gerund and Participle Question

LearningTwoWrite · Feb 21, 2013

Hello,

Gerunds
Verbals that end in -ing and function as nouns.
"We can only learn to love by loving."
(Iris Murdoch)

Participles
Verbals that function as adjectives.
"The eagles swooped and hovered, leaning on the air, and swung close together, feinting and screaming with delight."
(N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn)

I do not understand why loving is a gerund. Why is loving a noun here?

Leaning is a participle. How is that an adjective?

I got these of off about.com. Thanks for help.

blacbird · Feb 21, 2013

A fuller, and better explanation, with lots of good examples, can be found here:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/01/

caw

Chase · Feb 21, 2013

LearningTwoWrite said:
Why is loving a noun here?

It's not a noun. It functions as a noun while retaining some verbal features.

LearningTwoWrite said:
Leaning is a participle. How is that an adjective?

Again, it's not an adjective. It's function is to act as an adjective while it still has some of the properties of a verb form.

It's good advice to check out another grammar site, but keep in mind the function of these parts of speech is more important than whatever name they go by.

electroweakstar · Feb 21, 2013

The only way I ended up understanding gerunds was by learning Latin. ;-)

Raison · Feb 22, 2013

LearningTwoWrite said:
I do not understand why loving is a gerund. Why is loving a noun here?

"By loving" is a prepositional phrase. "Loving" is the object of the preposition, so it is functioning as a noun.

6gear · Feb 22, 2013

Gerund

blacbird said:
A fuller, and better explanation, with lots of good examples, can be found here:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/01/

caw

Good article: Thanks for posting.

Gerund and Participle Question

LearningTwoWrite

blacbird

Chase

It Takes All of Us to End Racism

electroweakstar

Just keep swimming...

Raison

6gear