Saturday 25 April 2015

Verbal Noun


The present participle form of the verb used as a noun is called as a Verbal Noun. It is also called a ‘gerund’.

Example:
·         Smoking is not permitted here.

In this sentence though smoking is a verb, it acts like a noun.

·         I don’t like eating a lot at night.

Although the verbal noun is used as a noun, it also behaves like a verb. Let us analyse the second sentence.

                          
SUBJECT
VERB PHRASE
OBJECT


I
don’t like
eating
a lot
late at night


VERB
OBJECT
ADVERBIAL

Because a verbal noun is partly a noun and partly a verb, it can raise questions when preceded by a noun or pronoun. For example, which of the following sentences is correct?

1.       She hates my doing that.
2.       She hates me doing that.

Traditionalists say that (1) is correct and (2) is wrong. In fact 90 percent of the time people follow the pattern of (2), and use of a possessive before a verbal noun as in (1) is largely confined to fiction and very formal writing.



This post is courtesy of Oxford A-Z of grammar and punctuation by John Seely.


 This post is a part of the APRIL A-Z Challenge

1 comment:

  1. A very interesting grammar lesson. I'm going for 1.

    ReplyDelete

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