The Present-day English Gerund System: A Cognitive-Constructionist Account

The Present-day English Gerund System: A Cognitive-Constructionist Account
ISBN-10
311068666X
ISBN-13
9783110686661
Category
Language Arts & Disciplines
Pages
285
Language
English
Published
2020-09-21
Publisher
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Author
Charlotte Maekelberghe

Description

This study offers a first comprehensive synchronic account of the Present-day English gerundial system. Most synchronic studies of gerunds have hitherto focused on the verbal gerund, scrutinizing its categorial status or comparing it with other non-finite clausal structures. A systematic comparison with its nominal counterpart, however, is lacking. Based on a detailed empirical analysis of lexico-grammar and semantics, this study develops an innovative cognitive-constructionist model of the English gerund system which depicts the usage profiles of nominal and verbal gerunds in terms of probabilistic trends rather than by means of categorical labels. It is shown that a better understanding of the functioning of the English gerund system requires a description that operates on multiple levels, accounting for both the abstract construal gerunds can impose on an event as well as the token-level constraints on variation between the two gerund types. This multifaceted approach, it is argued, not only offers a new perspective on the configuration of ing-forms in Present-day English, it can also be of relevance to the description of other complex grammatical structures.

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