Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Junkomama]

Hello, teachers.

I'd like to know in what cases we can use a gerund in place of a noun .

For example,

1.Murder is a vicious crime.
2.Killing a person is a vicious crime.

3.Criminal cases such as murder, robbery are reported in the newspaper every day.
4.Criminal cases such as killing a person, robbing someone of money are reported in the newspaper every day.

5.People deplore the loss of morality.
6.People deplore losing morality.

1&2 seem OK to me, but 4 and 6 sounds strange.
Please tell me which sentences are unacceptable.

Thank you in advance,
Junkomama

[MrPedantic]

Hello J.

There are three main uses of the gerund:

1. In set phrases, e.g.

a) "I can't stop eating crisps."
b) "There's no point in asking him. He doesn't know."

2. After certain phrasal verbs, e.g.

a) "I keep putting off going to see my great-aunt."
b) "I'm looking forward to having a rest this weekend."

3. As a substitute for an ordinary noun, e.g.

a) "Eating people is wrong."
b) "Walking ten miles every day will keep you fit."

When you use a gerund instead of an ordinary noun, it puts more emphasis on the process of the action, rather than the action as a completed whole.


So in your examples,

2.Killing a person is a vicious crime. ] This is ok: you want the emphasis to be on the process of "killing", to make the sentence more vivid. "Murder" is less vivid.

4. Crimes such as killing a person or robbing someone of their money are reported in the newspaper every day. ] This is possible: it makes the crimes more vivid. But it would probably be more unusual than "crimes such as murder and theft", because the intention of the speaker in such a sentence is to concentrate on the crime as a completed action.

6.People deplore losing morality. ] Here, the gerund doesn't really work: people deplore something that has been lost � i.e. the action must already be completed, for the people to deplore it.

Does that help?

MrP

[Junkomama]

Hello, MrP-san!

Thank you so much for your particular explanation!!
That is a great help for me!

As for sentence 6, if I change it into "People deplore our having lost morality." , is this acceptable?

Junkomama

[MrPedantic]

Hello J.

This might be acceptable, in the right context:

1. People deplore our having lost all morality.

But it still focuses a little on the process of losing morality. So you would be more likely to see or hear:

2. People deplore our loss of all morality.

Here, there is no sense of a process; only of a completed event.

MrP

[Junkomama]

Hello, Mrpedantic.

I understand.
Thank you very much for the further explanation!

Wiyh regards,
Junkomama

[Nancy119]

Mr. P,

That was an excellent reply regarding the usage of gerunds. However, I see you added the word "their" to the sentence written by the questioner as follows: Crimes such as killing a person or robbing someone of THEIR money.....

THEIR is plural and SOMEONE is singular. Of course, English does not have a word that would mean "his or hers" so we must either rewrite the sentence or use "....robbing someone of HIS or HER money...."

I teach my students to try to rewrite the sentence, converting the singular word to a plural whenever possible to avoid the conflict, e.g., "Crimes such as killing people or robbing them of their money..."

Personally, when I am speaking informally I frequently use the singular/plural pattern, but in writing I am a little more particular about my grammar.

Thanks for reading.

Nancy 119

[MrPedantic]

Hello Nancy

I'd agree that it's useful for a student to be aware of the dispute over whether "their" may be used in relation to a singular substantive or pronoun; but I wouldn't myself insist on a paraphrase, in a formal context.

The OED seems quite relaxed about the usage. We can find it in the works of (among others) Shakespeare, Sidney, Swift, Fielding, Goldsmith, Austen, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Wilde; it also occurs in the King James Version of the Bible. I'm not sure we can find a better authority for the use of English than its best exponents.

MrP