Re: Gerund, participle, infinitive

Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
While discussing some points of grammar in Spanish with my son (he has
taken many Spanish -- and linguistics -- classes, while I am just
starting Spanish), I offered what I thought were parallel examples in
English:

In "He is walking" "walking" is the present participle.

In "Walking is cheaper than driving" "walking" is the gerund.

1. My son objected that English has no gerund and that in the second
example "walking" is still the participle but is being used as a
substitute for the non-existent gerund.

Comments?

2. I suggested that the infinitive can often be substituted for the
gerund. E.g., "To walk is cheaper than to drive" instead of "Walking
is cheaper than driving."

My son claims that using the infinitive instead of the
participle/gerund is archaic and that, although he might write it, he
would never say it. I countered with "To be or not to be..." and "To
err is human," but he says those are simply fixed/traditional
expressions that have no bearing on modern usage.

But "Being or not being: that is the question" sounds to me quite
different from "To be or not to be: that is the question." The latter
seems to me to point far more clearly to the future. I can imagine
saying, "To walk or to drive: that is the question"; I don't think
that "Walking or driving: that is the question" means anything at all.

I'm not sure what I think about "Erring is human" in place of "To err
is human." It just sounds weird.

Comments?

You're right. But it does bring us up against the characteristic
plasticity of the language: if we're going to use the traditional names
of parts of speech, we have to accept that in English the "part of
speech" very often inheres in a word's function rather than its form.
We're notoriously free "to verb a noun" almost any time we feel like it,
for example. I won't even start on "But me no buts"...

Some prefer the term "-ing form" to "p.p." and "gerund" for this reason,
and it's quite hard to disagree.

--
Mike.


.

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