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Comment on Grammar Tidbit - Gerunds
Hi,
What about this sentence - Smoking causes cancer.
Is 'smoking' a gerund in this sentence?
Thanks.
Yes, "smoking" a gerund in
Yes, "smoking" a gerund in this sentence, because it's playing the role of a noun. In fact, "smoking" is the subject that performs the verb ("causes").
Who/what CAUSES cancer? Smoking does.
In the sentence, "I'm
That's correct.
That's correct.
In the following sentences
Let's go swimming
Running in place makes me tired
You got caught jumping on the bed
In the middle sentence (
- Let's go swimming: SWIMMING is a gerund.
- Running in place makes me tired: RUNNING is a gerund.
- You got caught jumping on the bed: JUMPING is a participle.
Jay enjoys swimming
In this sentence is enjoys a linking verb or action verb?
ENJOYS is an action verb, and
ENJOYS is an action verb, and SWIMMING is a gerund.
My favourite past time is
"Hence, whatever comes next
"Hence, whatever comes next to the linking verb should function as an adjective"
That's not quite right.
In the lesson on linking verbs (https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-sentence-correction/video/1151), I say "A MODIFIER that follows a linking verb must be an adjective."
So, for example, we might write: Joe is HAPPY.
Here, HAPPY is an adjective that tells us more about Joe.
Likewise, in the sentence "Sue seems UPSET," UPSET is an adjective that tells us more about Sue.
Now let's examine the following sentence: My favorite pastime is stamp collecting.
Here, STAMP functions as an adjective, BUT it modifies COLLECTING (not PASTIME)
If we ignore the adjective STAMP, we get: My favorite pastime is collecting.
At this point we can see that FAVORITE PASTIME = COLLECTING (stamp collecting to be more precise)
Does that help?