In Noun phrases^x, Expressions^x, English grammar^x

All of your examples are gerunds if we stick to modern terminology. Forget about the terminology verbal noun . It's total garbage! It has many different definitions, depending on the author and when the grammar book was written. __ The modern definition is given at ...

Many English nouns and noun phrases can be used as adverbs. They are called "adverbial objectives". From the standpoint of word order, an adverbial objective is put as if it were an objective of a verb, but actually it works as an adverbial modifier of the verb. This sort of constructs comes from...