Timeline for Is it correct to say that this element is both part of the predicate and is a complex subject?
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| May 4, 2019 at 23:13 | comment | added | John Lawler | In I saw him running down the street, yes, that is the gerund complement. The him now functions as the object of see, which is why it can passivize and become the subject. This is all using the "transformation" metaphor, understand -- it's just a way to keep track of the thousands of sentence types in English. | |
| May 4, 2019 at 22:47 | comment | added | AJK432 | So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that these comparisons between a so-called “original” are irrelevant because they are simply something “abstract”. In other words, we have to assume that a sentence such as my passive example begins at... well... its own beginning. Simply put then, in a sentence such as “I saw him running down the street”, “him running down the street” is the gerund complement clause, like it’s abstractly molded passive form was, right? | |
| May 4, 2019 at 22:30 | comment | added | John Lawler | That depends on how one uses the metaphor. Transformations like Passive are ways to relate sentence types, not actual things that go in in speech. The "original" (i.e, least complex, most prototypical) form of the clause is abstract; it happens that it comes out as a gerund (instead of an infinitive, for instance) because the sense verb see can take a gerund complement. But that's not a fact about the clause itself so much as its environment. | |
| May 4, 2019 at 21:50 | comment | added | AJK432 | You said “it's been made into a gerund complement clause”. But wasn’t it already a part of it before? | |
| May 4, 2019 at 19:49 | comment | added | John Lawler | If you are certain that a single -ing form of a verb is a gerund, yes, it's the remains of a clause, a complement (noun) clause. But a single -ing form is not always a gerund; there are several other possibilities. | |
| May 4, 2019 at 18:33 | comment | added | AJK432 | Also, was the gerund clause not a complement in the “original” version before being made passive? | |
| May 4, 2019 at 18:02 | comment | added | AJK432 | That makes sense. However, do we not just consider single-standing gerunds as clauses now also? | |
| May 2, 2019 at 16:08 | comment | added | John Lawler | @AllexKramer: Fulfill is grammatically meaningless. Does a subject fulfill a verb? Does an object? Does the verb fulfill the subject? No way to tell what it might mean or how you could check. Predicate is a term in logic (as is argument), not grammar. As for the gerund, you're confusing participial -ing verb forms with gerund clause constructions, of which this is one. Gerund clauses do use participial -ing verb forms, but those are verbs and don't function as nouns -- rather, the clause they are the verb in functions as a noun. | |
| May 2, 2019 at 1:26 | comment | added | AJK432 | The “fulfills the predicate” line should been said differently, as I assume you are part of the study that recognizes “arguments” of the predicate, like complements. However, I do not see where a gerund comes into place. Gerund is the participle form functioning as noun, correct? | |
| May 1, 2019 at 20:45 | history | answered | John Lawler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |