In Gerunds^x, Accusative^x

4- As the motion of the will is not continuous there is nothing against the first man having consented to grace even in the first moment of his existence. This "having consented to grace" is not a modifier of the first man. It is a construct called as "accusative with gerund". ...

Then what about these sentences, pacoWhat do you mean by "Then what about these sentences, paco?" Do you want to say you don’t agree to what I wrote previously? I wrote just what CGEL and my another grammar book are saying. If you don't like to believe them, I don’t mind it. What I would like...

Paco, I too was taught the "one's doing" formulation in the sixties and have never stopped using it, and neither have any of my friends and family whom I consider careful speakers of English. I have also found it to be universally followed in American formal writing (anything from newspapers to...

Have we considered thoroughly enough the possibility that what is to blame for this conundrum is the poverty of terminology for talking about such structures. I mean, why should it have to be either a participle or a gerund? Just because textbooks don't use a term like "geriple" or...

Thanks, All. First, I am a native English speaker (from California, but now living in London). Second, in "We watched him cooking the dinner," "him" is clearly the intended object of "watched," and "cooking the dinner" is a participial phrase modifying "him." That is, "cooking" is not used...

Mr P In other words, #2 emphasises the 'whispering'; but in #1, the object of dislike is the whole picture: 'the-boy-whispering'. I would read the ING in #2 as a gerund, and the ING in #1 as a participle. (I'd be interested to know why a participle string shouldn't follow the object. In Latin...

...whether they just don't fuss about grammar... BrEs on the whole tend to take the Marlon Brando approach to fussing – 'What are you fussing about?' 'What have you got?' – but I'd say that this particular usage (object pronoun + ING) isn't among the more fussed-about. (Which is surprising, in...

OED The gerund still retains one feature of the verbal noun, namely, that of admitting of a preceding possessive case or possessive pronoun, as in "after John's behaving so strangely", "upon my readily granting it". In the literary language this construction is regularly retained with a pronoun,...

Hello MrP History of English Gerunds (quoted from OED) The most notable development of the verbal nouns in form of -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an...