Verb agreement for "Capturing one knight or three pawns" [closed]

In a game of chess, capturing one knight or three pawns yields/yield the same result

What should be the answer — yields or yield? The rule says if one of the items joined by "or" is singular and the other plural, the verb becomes of the subject which is after "or".

The answer according to that should be "yields" but the book says "yield".

Solution 1:

Yes, "capturing" is the subject of the clause, and it's singular. So the correct form of the verb is "yields".

Solution 2:

John Lawler writes in a comment that the subject is a constituent, not the single word capturing:

No, the subject is not capturing. That's the gerund in the complement clause capturing one knight or three pawns, which is the subject of yields, singular. Clauses and prepositional phrases are automatically singular. Language is not a matter of stringing words together like beads on a string; it's more like atoms, molecules, cells, and organs in a body -- there are intermediate structures, usually called Constituents, that do most of the work. Constituents are what syntax is all about. – John Lawler