Is "calling" a gerund in "calling bell"? [closed]

calling-bell

It all boils down to whether "calling bell" means a static door bell or a bell that is actively calling in order to seek attention.

In the static door bell reading it's a compound noun, hyphenated, consisting of a gerund-participle verb + noun, with a purposive meaning: "bell for calling". It's pronounced with the main stress on the first element.

Similar examples include frying-pan ("pan for frying"), chewing-gum ("gum for chewing"), walking-stick ("stick for walking") and the like.

In the actively calling (i.e. ringing) reading it's a syntactic construction consisting of the noun "bell" as head modified by the gerund-participial verb "calling". The main stress here is on the second element.

Note that in both cases, "calling" is a verb.

-ing words can be gerunds or present participles, and have different meanings depending on which they are. When you have a phrase of the form "verbing noun", if "verbing" is a gerund, then this means "noun having to do with verbing". If "verbing" is a present participle, then it means "noun that is currently engaged in verbing". A gerund is talking about the nature of the noun, while a participle is talking about the noun's current activity. If you are communicating that a door is currently revolving, then "revolving" in "revolving door" is a participle. If you are saying that it is a door that is designed to revolve, regardless of whether it is currently revolving, then it is a gerund.