What It Means to Verbalize: The Changing Discourse Functions of the English Gerund. (March 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fonteyn, Lauren; De Smet, Hendrik; Heyvaert, Liesbet
• Is Part Of: Journal of English linguistics. Volume 43:Number 1(2015:Mar.)
• Page Start: 36
• Page End: 60
• Publication Date: 2015-03
• Subjects: historical linguistics -- gerund -- nominal gerund -- verbal gerund -- nominalization -- verbalization -- Early Modern English -- Late Modern English -- functional linguistics -- history of English; English language -- Periodicals; 420.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0075424214564365
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0075-4242

Abstract

The English gerund system consists of two types of gerunds: a nominal gerund ( the learning of a language ), and a verbal gerund that developed out of the nominal gerund ( learning a language ). While the formal aspects of this diachronic verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discourse-functional side of the change. In this paper, it is argued that the formal verbalization of the gerund is accompanied by an important change in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system. Based on functional characterizations of noun phrase (NP) behavior in the literature, the prototypical behavior of complex NPs is operationalized as (i) functioning as manipulable discourse participants that are important enough in the following discourse to be susceptible to anaphoric targeting and (ii) being inaccessible to anaphoric targeting of internal participants. The results of an analysis of a set of nominal gerunds, verbal gerunds and 'regular' complex NPs covering the period 1640–1914 (taken from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Early Modern and Modern British English) shows that the increasingly clause-like appearance of the verbal gerund is in fact accompanied by atypical NP behavior. Moreover, the paper makes clear that the changes in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system did not only affect the verbal gerund, but also had some implications for the nominal gerund. These findings shed new light on the (diachronic) processes of verbalization and nominalization, and on what they mean on a discourse-functional level.