The Gerund

§ 321. The gerund is a verbid characterized by the follow­ing features:

1. Its dual lexico-grammatical meaning of an action
partially viewed as a substance.

2. The categories of voice and order (see paradigm on
p. 186).

3. The group morpheme -ing.

4. The combinability resembling that of the verb (the
gerund is associated with adverbs, with nouns or pronouns
denoting the object of the action) and that of the noun (the
gerund is associated with prepositions, with the conjoint
possessive pronouns, nouns in the possessive case).

E. g. The district is justified in blindly ignoring the county. (Bennett).

5. The syntactical functions of subject, complement,
attribute, etc.

E. g. His returning so soon surprised his family. (Mere­dith). / remember meeting him in London. (Collins).

§322. The gerund, like the infinitive, combines verbal and noun features, yet the gerund is more of a noun than the infinitive, which is to some extent explained by the fact

I

that the gerund became part of the verb system much later than the infinitive.

The combinability of the gerund differs considerably from that of the infinitive. Thus, the gerund may be preceded by a preposition, as in She thought of going there. We insisted on staying here. The wisdom of I i v i n g is greater than the wisdom of the book. (Abrahams).

In contrast to the infinitive, the gerund is often accompa­nied by a noun in the possessive case or a possessive pronoun. Sometimes the action denoted by the gerund is not associated • with any doer, any producer of the action, as in Living is striving.

Very often the doer is not clear, as in / like singing (it is not clear whether I myself like to sing or I like other people's singing). This is much rarer with the infinitive, which mostly denotes an action whose subject is represented by some word in the sentence. Cf. / like singing and / like to sing (in the latter sentence the doer of the action denoted by to sing is represented by /).

The gerund, as H. Sweet^J says, is less of a verb than the infinitive, inasmuch as it does not join in the conjugation of the finite verb.

In addition, the infinitive possesses a peculiar modal force not observed in the gerund, as in the article to be translated (=which must be translated).

§ 323. Some grammarians are of the opinion that the diffe­rence between these rival forms — the infinitive and the gerund — is an aspective one, the gerund representing an action in its progress (accordingly it is thought to be imper-fective) and the infinitive — representing an action in its entirety (accordingly it is thought to be perfective). Besides, the gerund is believed to denote a general action, the infini­tive — a concrete one.

Many linguists (among them Curme ²) refute this point of view and supply examples showing that the differentiation is not felt in actual usage. Thus, in-the sentence It has a bad air your forgetting me so early, though a gerund is used, a concrete, individual instance is meant.

¹ Op cit , p. 116. " Op. cit., p. 492

7 Хаймович и др

It is hard to foretell how the rivalry of these forms will progress. It is quite probable that the gerund and the infi­nitive will be further differentiated. In Modern English speech the gerund is, probably, the only usual verbid after 1) some verbs such as to advise, to avoid, to delay, to deny, to enjoy, to escape, to excuse, to fancy, to finish, to give up, to go on, to imagine, to keep on, to leave off, to mind, to put off, to postpone, to quit, to set about, to stop, to suggest; 2) cer­tain verb-groups such as can't help (bear, stand, stomach, suffer); after verbs with fixed prepositions such as to accuse (of), to agree (to), to approve (of); 3) adlinks and adjec­tives — aware (of), capable (of), fond (of), -proud (of), etc.

On the other hand, some verbs can attach an infinitive, but not a gerund, as to hope, to promise, to refuse, to start out, etc.

§ 324. The gerund, which is a peculiarity of the English language, is very extensively used as the centre of complexes (nexuses) synonymous with subordinate clauses. Compare:

/ know of his h a v i n g g о п е to Kiev. I know that he has gone to Kiev.

There are probably few types of subordinate clauses which have no synonymous complexes. Compare:

That lie is ill is known. I know that he lias come.

After they had come, he hur­ried to his sister.

Your plan that we should stay here is not good.

Though he is young, he is a skilled worker.

His being ill is known.

I know of h i s having

come.

On their coming he hurried to his sister.

Your plan of our stay­ing here is not good.

Despite his being young, he is a skilled worker, etc.

It does not follow that the gerund constructions are equiv­alent to the subordinate clauses, but the given examples are intended to prove the 'versatility' of the gerund construc­tions.

§ 325. In conclusion we think it necessary to add a few words concerning the so-called 'half-gerund', as in the exam­ples Excuse my boys (them) having bored you so. The gerund used in this complex differs from a 'classical'

194 -

gerund but in having a noun in the common case as its sub­ject-word. The common case established itself early with nouns that have no possessive case. The usage has spread very rapidly in recent years. At present such complexes are common: a) with nouns that have no case opposemes: The back-benchers insisted on t h e treaty being ra­tified-. (The Worker); b) with nouns accompanied by attributes in post-position: Fancy a w о т а п of taste buying a hat like that. (Christie); c) to avoid ambiguity which might arise in oral speech if the gerund were connected with a noun in the possessive case: / imagine his son (son's) marrying so young; d) when the gerund is pre­ceded by more than one noun: She objected to children and women s т о k i n g; e) when it is desirable to stress the person component of this complex:

/ hate the idea of у о и wasting your time. (Mau­gham).

Though there is no unity of opinion about the nature of such forms, we do not think it expedient to have a special name for them. Examples like those given above merely show that the subject words of the gerund may also be nouns (pronouns) in the common case (or nouns and pronouns having no case opposites) and pronouns in the objective case.

The use of the common or the objective case form to express the agent of the action denoted by the gerund makes it pos­sible to use gerundial complexes with a much greater number of nouns and pronouns.

This usage is suggestive of the further verbalization of the gerund, of some important change in its combinability.

The English and the Russian Verb Compared

§ 326. In compliance with the system adopted we shall now work out the comparison of the basic features of the English verb with those of the Russian verb.

I. Their lexico-grammatical meanings are fundamentally
the same — both in English and in Russian the verb serves
to denote an action, a process.

II. As to their lexico-grammatical (stem-building) mor­
phemes, here as elsewhere we note a greater variety and abund­
ance of stem-building affixes in Russian, both suffixes and
prefixes. (Cf. -нича-, -ича-, -е-, -ова-, -ева-, -ствова-, etc;

195,

в-, ез-, воз-, вы-, пере-, за-, -из, -на, над-, о-, низ-, etc.). As shown above, the number of verb-building suffixes in English is limited (-ize, -tfy, -en, -ate) though the prefixes are fairly nurrierous. The most productive ways of forming verbs in Modern English are conversion and the use of lexico-grammatical word-morphemes, neither being characteristic of Russian.

III. The dissimilarity between English and Russian verbs is more pronounced when we come to compare their paradigms, their grammatical categories. Although both in English and in Russian the verb exists as a system of systems, the respective structures of these systems are different:

1) The verbid systems of the two languages are quite
different. There is no counterpart of the gerund in Russian.
The English participle system includes only 7 grammemes
represented by the words writing, having written, being writ­
ten, having been written, written, living, having lived, whereas
the Russian participle system contains hundreds of gram­
memes ^J.

2) Analytical forms are predominant in the paradigm of the
English verb. As stated (§§ 12, 19), out of 64 forms of the
verb lexeme write 59 are of analytical structure (92.2 per cent).
This is not the case in Russian where among 358 forms of
the paradigm of the verb делать (verbids included) only 38 are
analytical (11.2 per cent)². The Russian verbids have no
analytical forms if we do not count cases like Покурить бы!
(Чайку бы! is also possible in Russian).

3) The sets of morphological categories are also different
in the two languages. The English verb has the categories of
order and posteriority not found in Russian ³, while the Rus­
sian verb possesses the categories of gender and case, alien
to English (Cf. читала, читавший, читавшего, etc.).

4) Categories of the same name have essential distinctions
in the two languages.

a) Voice in Russian (represented in opposemes like строит — строится) includes the active voice and the

¹ See 3. Волоцкая and others, op. cit , p. 147—156.

²See'3. Волоцкая and others, op. cit., p. 147—156. We have not counted combinations like был сделан as analytical forms (see note 3 below).

⁸ Though opposemes like делая — сделав, or делающий — делавший, traditionally regarded as belonging to the category of tense, resemble rather English order opposemes.

reflexive-neuter voice ^l. Forms in -ся are polysemantic. They carry a number of connotations: reflexive (умывается), passive (дом строится), reciprocal (целуются), etc. Pas­sive grammemes are more standard and common in English. Not only transitive but intransitive objective verbs have passive opposites.

b) Nor are English and Russian aspects identical, though the general principle underlying the differentiation писал — написал, wrote — was writing is the same: they show the character of the action. In English the continuous aspect is much more specific than the non-continuous aspect. The continuous aspect lays stress on the continuity of the action. When no specification is intended the non-continuous aspect is employed. In Russian the perfective aspect is more specif­ic. It accentuates the entirety of the action (or some stage of the action — он спел, он запел). When no specification is wanted, the imperfective aspect is used. Consequently the imperfective aspect has a much broader meaning than the continuous aspect (Cf. Дети летом спят в саду, The children sleep in the garden in summer, the continuous aspect would be out of place) and the perfective aspect is narrower than the non-continuous which makes a bare statement of the action and when used in speech, may acquire different aspective colouring. Cf. Он встретил друга. He met his friend. He often met his friend at the club. The correlation of the aspects in the two languages can roughly be presented thus:

 

Aspects of the	Russian Verb
perfecti ve	поп - p erf e cti ve
Aspects of the	English Verb
поп — continuous	cont i n и ous

¹ Some linguists speak of the passive voice in. Russian built up analytically with the help of быть and the short forms of the participle, e. g. Дом был построен. (See «Грамматика русского языка», АН СССР, v. I, М,—L., 1953, р. 415.) Seeing that there is grammatical combi-nability between был and построен, дом and построен (cf. Изба была построена, Дома были построены) \е must regard them as combina­tions of words like Дом был красив, 1*зба была красива, Дома были красивы.

Unlike the English participle, the participle in Russian has aspect distinctions делавший — сделавший.

c) Though English and Russian tenses have much in
common, they differ in the distribution of absolute and rela­
tive meanings. (Cf. Он сказал, что живет в Москве.
Не said that he I i v e d in Moscow.) (In the subordinate clause
the Russian verb has a relative tense meaning, the English
verb an absolute one.) Когда буду в Москве, зайду. When
I а т in Moscow, I shall drop in. (In the subordinate clause
the tense meaning of the Russian verb is absolute, that of
the English verb relative.)

d) English and Russian moods, though fundamentally
alike, have a number of distinctions: thus Russian impera­
tive grammemes include number meanings not found in
English (Cf. читай — читайте), Russian subjunctive gram­
memes are uniform (Cf. читал бы, читали бы). In English
their forms are markedly varied (invite, should invite, would
invite, invited, had invited, etc.); in Russian speech one and
the same mood grammeme serves to express different shades
of non-fact. (Cf. Я настаиваю на том, чтобы он сде­
лал это сам — problematic, если б ы он тогда сделал
это сам ... —contrary to reality.) English grammemes are
differentiated: some are used to present an act as problematic
(I insist that heshoulddo it himself), others — as contra­
dicting reality (7/ he h a d d о n e it himself, it would be
different now), etc.

e) The category of person in English differs from its
three-member Russian counterpart in having two-member
opposemes (am — is, write — writes, opposing the third per­
son to the first, shall — will, opposing the first person to
the non-first), in not having person meaning in the plural
grammemes of the present tense (Cf. читаем — читаете,
читают, we (you, they) read), in the limited extent of the
category of person.

f) Number is an all pervading category in Russian, em­
bracing the finite verb and the verbids (the participle). With
the exception of impersonal verbs no verb is thinkable outside
this category, whereas in English it is but scantily represent­
ed in the finite verb, the verbids being altogether bereft
of number.

g) Dissimilarity in the nature of the categories is coupled
with considerable dissimilarity in the subclasses of verbs in
English and Russian. Thus, in Russian the division of verbs

into transitive and intransitive is most essential with regard to the category of voice. In English more relevant is the di­vision into subjective and objective verbs. Likewise the subclasses of terminative and durative verbs distinguishable in English prove less relevant for the Russian verb.

IV. As to their combinability English and Russian verbs have a number of common properties (both in English and in Russian they are associated with nouns and pronouns denoting the subjects or objects ol the actions denoted by the verb, they attach adverbs, etc.), but in English, owing to the existence of the gerund the verb may be modified by a noun in the possessive case, a possessive pronoun attached to the verb as its attribute, or it may be introduced by a pre­position, all that is absolutely impossible in Russian. Pecul­iar is the combinability of English verbids in the so-called complexes.

E. g. Miss Sybil had no desire for me to stay. (Snaith).

Tell me about this horrible business of my father wanting to set me aside for another son. (Shaw).

Connected with the difference in combinability is the difference in function.

a) In English the verb participates in different complexes
with secondary predication (nexuses) which is not typical
of Russian. (/ saw him come, I saw him coming, I am not
against Tom coming, Tom was seen to come, etc.).

b) Owing to the existence of the gerund the verb may be
used as a prepositional object, an adverbial modifier of
concession, condition, etc., that is in those functions which
are not discharged by the verbs in Russian.

THE ADLINK (THE CATEGORY OF STATE)

§ 327. In Modern English there exists a certain class of words such as asleep, alive, afloat, which is characterized by:

1. The lexico-grammatica! meaning of 'state' '. He is a s I e e p = He is in a state of <leep.

¹ The meaning of state embraces: a) psychic state (afraid, aghast), b) physical stale (asleep, awake), c) state in space (aslope, asquint), etc. See В. Н. Ж и г а д л о и др., op. cit, p. 170.

2. The productive prefix a-: swim,— aswim, shiver —
ashiver, etc.

3. Peculiar combinability: the words of this class are as-
sociated"~almost exclusively with link-verbs: to be alive, to
fall asleep, being adrift, etc.

4. The main syntactical function of a predicative comple­
ment.

As we know, (see § 47) a class of words united by such fea­tures may be regarded as a separate part of speech. B. A. Ilyish has called it 'the category of state' by analogy with a similar class of words in the Russian language. Cf. Мне было приятно, грустно, обидно, where the last three words ending in -o denote different states and are associated with link-verbs. V. V. Vinogradov and other Soviet linguists call them 'words of the category of state', though many object to their being considered a separate part of speech.

Now 'words of the category of state' is hardly a felicitous apellation: it is cumbersome and the word 'category' has usually a different application. We suggest a handier term — adlinks, on the analogy of adverbs, or adlinks of state, to reflect their chief properties.

§ 328. Those grammarians who do not recognize adlinks as a separate part of speech usually consider them as a sub­class of adjectives ' Let us compare adjectives and adlinks on the basis of the criteria we use to distinguish parts of speech.

1. The lexico-grammatical meanings of adjectives and adlinks are different. The former denote 'qualities', the latter 'states'. Lexically, qualities, or states, or actions can be denoted by words of different parts of speech. For instance the state of sleeping can be named by the verb (to) sleep, the noun sleep, the adlink asleep and the adjective sleepy. But in accordance with their lexico-grammatical meaning the verb sleeps presents the state as an action, the noun sleep as a substance, the adjective sleepy as a quality, and the adlink asleep as a state. Similarly the action of swimming is present­ed by the noun swim (to have a swim) as a substance, by the adlink aswim as a state and by the verb swim as an action. Thus we see that the meaning of 'state' common to the words asleep, awake, aswim, afire, afloat, etc. is an abstraction from

¹ See «Иностранные языки в школе», 1958, № 5, p. 114.

the individual lexical meanings of these words. It is the le-xico-grammatical meaning of the whole class of adlinks.

2. The stem-building elements of the two parts of speech
are quite different. The characteristic prefix of adlinks is a-.
Adjectives have other affixes: -ful, -less, -ive, -ous, un-, pre-,
etc.

3. Adjectives possess the category of the degrees of compar­
ison. Adlinks have no grammatical categories. Cf. sleepy —
sleepier — (the) sleepiest and asleep.

B. A. Ilyish thinks that adlinks possess the category of tense ^x. But this category (as well as the categories of mood, person, number, etc.) is expressed by the link-verb (is afraid, was afraid, were afraid, etc.), not by the adlink. As shown in § 26, the combination was afraid is not an analytical word. Cf. also fell asleep, dropped asleep, lay asleep.

4. The combinability of adjectives and adlinks differs
greatly. As we have seen (§'112), the most typical combinative
model of adjectives is its right-hand connection with nouns
(an ardent lover). Now this model is alien to adlinks. It is the
more striking since not only adjectives but almost any part
of speech, many combinations of words, clauses or combina­
tions of clauses can have right-hand connections with nouns
in Modern English. Cf. the above remark. The we-know-that-
he-knows-that-she-knows development gets a bit wearing.
(Daily Worker).

Linguists who regard adlinks as adjectives try to explain the strange opposition of these 'adjectives' to combinations like *an asleep man either by rhythm (the unusual succession of two unstressed and two stressed syllables) or by the possi­bility of mistaking the a- in asleep for the indefinite article (then it would sound as a succession of two articles in *an asleep man) ². But cases like an acute pain, an astute man, quite common in Modern English, show the fallacy of both theories.

In reality this negative combinability can be explained historically by the development of adlinks from prepositional phrases like the old English on slsepe (E. asleep), on life (E. alive), on flote (E. afloat). On a synchronic basis this peculiarity of adlinks shows that they are not adjectives, but a different part of speech.

¹ Op. cit., p. 147.

² O. Jespersen. A Modern English Grammar; v, II, p. 335.

Besides this negative combinability adlinks are character­ized by several models of positive connection. The most typi­cal of them is the left-hand connection with link-verbs (881 cases out of 1,000), which suggests the name 'adlink'.

E. g. He had been ashamed and afraid. (Abrahams). Adlinks often follow notional links (see § 195).

E. g. Then he would return and lie awake for hours. (Abrahams).

Other connections are seen in the following sentences. / woke at six the next morning, and found George awake. (Jerome). Lady Babs looked so pretty — prettier asleep even than a wake... For Barbara asleep was a symbol of that Golden age in* which she so desparately believed. (Galsworthy).

5. The syntactical functions of adjectives and adlinks do not coincide. Adjectives are mainly employed as attributes, and adlinks as predicative complements. This is why adlinks are often called predicative adjectives and adverbs (see The Oxford Dictionary] to suggest that the difference between these classes of words is purely syntactical. But adlinks form connections not only with finite link-verbs, parts of predications, but with verbid link-verbs as well, employed in various functions.

E. g. Under these conditions, he said, you would show 'none of the normally accepted signs of b e i n g alive'. (Daily Worker).

How lucky we are to be a I i v e (Asquith).

Summing up, we can say that adjectives and adlinks are different classes of words, i. e. that adlinks form a separate part of speech ¹.

THE MODAL WORDS* (MODALS)

§ 329. As a part of speech the modals are characterized by the following features:

1. Their lexico-grammatical meaning of 'modality'.

¹ See Л. О. П и п а с т. К вопросу о категории состояния в ан­глийском языке. «Иностранные языки в школе», 1951, № 5; Б С. X а й-м о в и ч. Существует ли «категория состояния? в английском языке? «Вопросы теории и методики преподавания английского языка», Днепропетровск, 1961.

2. Their negative combinability.

3. Their functions of parenthetical elements and sentence-
words.

§ 330. 'Modality' as a linguistic term denotes the relation of the contents of speech to reality as viewed by the speaker. When describing the meaning of 'modality' in the small group of modal verbs we are in fact dealing with lexical 'modality'. The 'modality' of the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods is grammatical 'modality'. Now we are dealing with the meaning of 'modality' uniting a part of speech. This is lexico-grammatical 'modality'.

Modal words indicate whether the speaker is sure that the contents of his utterance correspond to reality, or he doubts it, or he regards it as something possible, probable, desirable, etc. Accordingly, modal words can be divided into several groups.

a) Those which denote various shades of certainty:
certainly, surely, of course, no doubt, assuredly, undoubtedly,
indeed, really, etc.

b) Those which denote various degrees of probability:
maybe, perhaps, possibly, probably, etc.

c) Those which denote various shades of desirability
(undesirability):happily, luckily, fortunately, unhappily,
etc.

§ 331. The relatively negative combinability of modal words manifests itself in various ways.

a) They are almost never used as adjuncts to some head­
word.

b) They but seldom function as head-words to some ad­
juncts, mostly adverbs of degree like very, quite, most, etc.

E. g... whom most probably they were compelled to respect. (Dreiser).

c) Their isolatabihty (§ 6) is greater than that of other
words. They very often make response sentences.

E. g. But you can take a carpet to Caesar in it if 1 send one? — Assuredly. (Shaw).

§ 332. Functioning as a parenthetical element of a sentence, a modal word is usually connected with the sentence as a whole.

E.g. Perhaps I shall never pray again. (Shaw).

Apparently, they were fully prepared for the coming of the visitors from England. (Tracy).

But sometimes it may be connected with a part of the sentence only,

Ё. g. We worked that land -or maybe a hundred years. (Daily Worker).

§ 333. The usage of modals depends upon the type of sentence. They are found almost exclusively in declarative sentences, very rarely in interrogative and almost never in imperative sentences.

According to S. E. Kagan ^J there are 256 modal words in The Man of Property by J. Galsworthy. 250 of them are in declarative sentences, 6 in interrogative ones and none in imperative sentences. This fact can easily be accounted for. Interrogative and imperative sentences are used not in order to express one's knowledge of reality with various degrees of certainty or doubt. They are means of urging somebody else to say something or do something.