What is a gerund? A noun or a verb? 'His smoking upset me’

I've been studying the Huddleston and Pullum book for four months now. So far only one thing confuses me: the identity of gerund. Is it a noun or a verb?

1. His constant smoking upset me. smoking seems noun because of adjective constant.
2. Him/His constantly smoking upset me. smoking seems to be verb because of adverb constantly.
3. Him/His smoking cigars upset me. smoking seems to be a verb because of object cigars.

"His smoking upset me." So is this smoking gerund a noun or verb? Because there is no differentiation, is it both verb and noun? Maybe it's new word category?

Also his seems to be both sometimes a subject and at other times a possessive determiner. Is that correct?

Solution 1:

Since you mentioned Huddleston and Pullum, this answer will be based on the terminology that they use. Huddleston and Pullum use the term "gerund-participle" instead of "gerund" because they reject the traditional distinction between gerunds and present participles.

The gerund-participle is a verb form. It is not a noun. A clause headed by a gerund-participle can be used like a noun phrase (NP) in that it can function as the subject of a clause, or the complement of a verb or of a preposition.

Words ending in -ing can belong to various parts of speech: they can be

• verbs (in the gerund-participle form)

• nouns (deverbal nouns such as "building" or "thinking" in "a building" or "good thinking")

• adjectives (deverbal/departicipial adjectives such as "exciting" in "very exciting")

• prepositions (e.g. "during" in "I worked for a number of years, during which I met many different kinds of people")

Sometimes words of different categories can be used in the same kind of grammatical context. For example, in the context "It is ____", the blank space could be filled with a verb in the gerund-participle form, or it could be filled with an adjective. The fact that a gerund-participle clause can be used the same contexts as a noun phrase does not mean that a gerund "is a noun". See Araucaria's answer to "How can I prove a word is a noun?" for more detailed discussion of this point.

Of course, there are different approaches to grammar. There may be some definitions of "noun" for which it makes sense to categorize a gerund as a noun, but it's not a noun according to Huddleston and Pullum's definition.

Solution 2:

I'm a bit astonished about the long discussions in the post How can I prove a word is a noun? I admit that there a certain problems, especially with gerunds.

• Smoking cigarettes is unhealty.

In this example, containing a gerund with an object, it is indeed a bit difficult to say to which word class "smoking" belongs. Is it a noun or a verb?

Traditionally the gerund is seen as a verb form with a double nature. It can behave as a noun and as a verb.

I think it would be practical to see the gerund also as a special word class, a noun-verb thing. In this way we could avoid a lot of problems that arise about the word class noun when we come across gerunds with objects.

My question: Would it be practical to see gerunds as a word class of its own?