English -ing-clauses and their problems: The structure of grammatical categories

Abstract

This paper addresses the analysis of English -ing-clauses and discusses its theoretical significance with respect to the architecture of grammatical categories. English -ing-clauses pose two major descriptive issues: first, whether the two historically distinct clause-types of gerunds and participles can be collapsed into a single category, and second, whether -ing-clauses still relate to their phrasal origins as (historical) noun phrases and adjectival/adverbial phrases. It is argued that neither question can receive a straightforward answer, as the existing evidence is simply contradictory. This, in turn, has theoretical consequences. English -ing-clauses show that language users can operate with different grammatical generalizations at once. The representation of grammatical categories must therefore be internally complex, allowing grammatical categories to be simultaneously unified and distinct, interrelated and autonomous.

The changing functions of competing forms: Attraction and differentiation

“…First, the agent constraint has been linked to underlying syntactic differences. Duffley (1999) claims that when an -ing-clause is used, begin is effectively treated as a transitive verb, with the -ing-clause functioning as direct object (see also De Smet 2010a). Given that transitive begin usually selects an agentive subject, as in (22), this predicts that [begin + -ingclause] should take an agentive subject, too.…”

Category change in the English gerund

“…The most appropriate way to grasp these multiple cross-categorial links in the gerundive system is to adopt a more constructionist view of syntactic categories along the lines of that suggested by De Smet in his account of the relationship between verbal gerunds and participials, recognizing that "(i) Not all members of a grammatical category have to share the same features, (ii) grammatical categories can be internally heterogeneous, (iii) grammatical categories can be interconnected [and] (iv) inclusion in a category and autonomy as a category are partly independent" (2010, p. 1185). From characteristics (i) and (ii), it follows that a category can be internally heterogeneous, comprising different more and less prototypical members with different features, but at the same time, "the subcategories that create internal heterogeneity are related through (and to) the overarching category, which unifies them despite their distinctness" (De Smet, 2010Smet, , p. 1185cf. 'inheritance links ' Goldberg, 1995, p. 74-75). Applying this view to the English gerund, and including the nominal gerund, we can suggest that, while the English gerund is a heterogeneous category consisting of two (especially formally) distinguishable higher-order constructions and several lower-level constructional schemata with varying degrees of semantic overlap (cf.…”

“…Once the verbal gerund had become established, clausally grounded bare nominal gerunds were lost, leaving the verbal gerund to be the only gerundive subschema that can take unambiguously clausal deixis. With their newly acquired clause-like status, verbal gerunds then further expanded and strengthened their position in the English ing-network through so-called "horizontal links" with another construction with a similar form that is not interparadigmatically related (Van de Velde, 2014; Norde, 2014), as they started to interact with present-participial clauses (Fanego, 1996(Fanego, , 1998Kohnen, 1996Kohnen, , 2001Kohnen, , 2004Killie & Swan, 2009;De Smet, 2010;Fonteyn & van de Pol, 2015). Yet, crucially, the verbal gerund did not weaken or loosen its ties to the nominal gerund and its overarching noun phrase schema: as the formal neoanalysis of the gerund operated autonomously, verbal gerunds that fully aligned with a zero-grounded nominal analysis gradually increased in frequency as well.…”

On the relationship between clause combination, grammatical hierarchy and discourse-pragmatic coherence

“…However, the clauses in (11) are very close to what might be considered a simple sentence with a single verbal element rather than bi-clausal (and some may prefer the former analysis). Taking the bi-clausal analysis, these participle clauses are subject complements, and following De Smet's (2010) analysis of participle clauses as nominal phrasal constituents with secondary verbal properties, they are very similar to an elementary (NP (V (NP))) configuration. From Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) (Du Bois 2003), it is known that subject positions tend to be cohesive with prior discourse but their objects/complements tend to present new information.…”