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Please help. Verbs or gerunds?

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Latest post Fri, Oct 26 2007 6:10 PM by Cool Breeze. 2 replies.
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Anonymous  +  435163 Fri, 26 Oct 07 04:39 PM

Can someone please help me? I have to do a grammar analysis of an article for homework and I am having trouble working out the difference between verbs and gerunds, particulary in one sentence of the article. I want to know how the words joining and succumbing are being used?

"His compliments are also barbed: if our current monetary arrangements work so well, why risk everything by joining Mr Blair's beloved euro and succumbing to the untested and inferior monetary regime that comes with it?"

Are the words joining and succumbing verbs, as I suspect, or gerunds?
Anonymous
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Clive  +  435194 Fri, 26 Oct 07 06:07 PM

Hi,

Can someone please help me? I have to do a grammar analysis of an article for homework and I am having trouble working out the difference between verbs and gerunds, particulary in one sentence of the article. I want to know how the words joining and succumbing are being used?

"His compliments are also barbed: if our current monetary arrangements work so well, why risk everything by joining Mr Blair's beloved euro and succumbing to the untested and inferior monetary regime that comes with it?"

Are the words joining and succumbing verbs, as I suspect, or gerunds?

It's not always easy to see when something stops seeming like a gerund and starts seeming like a verb. However, these seem like gerunds to me. Here are a couple of reasons.

First, I can replace them in the structure by a noun. eg Why risk everything by this decision?

Second, there is no action happening here. The speaker is just considering 'joining/succumbing' as possible activities. eg He could just as easily say, eg 'Joining Mr. Blair's beloved euro is a risky thing to do'. 

Best wishes, Clive
Clive
Joined on Thu, Oct 28 2004
Canada
Veteran Member 29,627
El tango argentino es un pensamiento triste que se puede bailar (The tango argentino is a sad thought which can be danced) Enrique Santos Discépolo
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Cool Breeze  +  435195 Fri, 26 Oct 07 06:10 PM
By is a preposition and all prepositions take the gerund. In other words, joining and succumbing are gerunds. A gerund, on the other hand, is half a verb, half a noun. One verblike quality of a gerund is the fact that it can have an object, like a verb: I like reading books.

CB
Cool Breeze
Joined on Fri, Apr 7 2006
Senior Member 3,978
"I hope you'll all live to be 150 years old - and the last voice you hear is mine!" Frank Sinatra on stage in Oslo, Norway, 28 September 1991
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