Gerund? or Present participle?

Question

I want to ask about the gerund and present participles on those sentences below.

Mr. Wilkins would like some assistance setting up the audio equipment in the conference room.
Mark offered his full cooperation on a project that is developing a new TV show.

I learned that participle functions like an adjective and mostly used to modify nouns.
And gerund acts like a noun. It can be a subject, an object, the object of a preposition, or a subject complement.
In sentence 1, I thought 'setting up' modifies the noun 'assistance', so it is a present participle.
In sentence 2, I thought 'developing' acts like a subject complement, so it is a gerund.
Is that correct?

BillJ · Answer

[1] Mr. Wilkins would like some assistance [setting up the audio equipment
in the conference room].
[2] Mark offered his full cooperation on a project that is [developing a
new TV show].

Traditional grammar calls "setting" and "developing" here present participles. Present participles and gerunds are verbs, not adjectives and nouns -- in your examples "setting" and “developing” are thus verbs functioning as heads of the bracketed non-finite subordinate clauses.
In [1] the non-finite clause is functioning as an adjunct in clause structure. In [2] it is complement of "is", with which it combines to form the progressive aspect.
Note that the traditional distinction between present participles and gerunds is not important. In fact modern grammar makes no such distinction, simply and sensibly calling both ing forms ‘gerund-participles’.
They are verbs, and that is what is important.

Gerund? or Present participle?

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question