Real Grammar - Susan Conrad, Douglas Biber 2009
Verb + Gerund
Unit 34 We couldn’t stop laughing
What have you learned from your grammar textbook?
Some verbs can be followed by (1) a gerund. A few verbs can be followed by (2) either a gerund or an infinitive.
1. I enjoy playing soccer.
2. Kate likes playing/to play tennis.
What does the corpus show?
A
Although many verbs can be followed by a gerund, only a few verbs are very common with gerunds.
Verb + infinitive combinations are much more common than verb + gerund combinations (see Unit 33).
B
The most common verbs used with gerunds fall into three categories of meaning. These verbs are typical of conversation and fiction; they are rarely used in academic writing.
1Here get = to cause. See more on the meanings of get in Unit 4.
C
In conversation, go + gerund is used with some special meanings. The most common are:
D
In academic writing, verb + gerund combinations are rare. Only three verbs are commonly followed by gerunds. They are useful when describing a process or reporting research.
E
In most cases, when a verb can be followed by either a gerund or an infinitive and have roughly the same meaning, the verb + infinitive combination is more common. There is one exception to this pattern: the verb start.
In conversation, start + gerund is more common than start + infinitive:
More common: They just started learning this song on Monday.
Less common: They just started to learn this song on Monday.
In academic writing, start + infinitive occurs more than start + gerund, but neither combination is common.
Activities
1 Notice in context: Read the conversation and the two paragraphs from different types of writing, underline the verb + gerund combinations.
1. Conversation: Two students discuss their future plans.
Yelena: Once I get an academic degree I plan to become a teacher and that’s what you do. You just stay in school. You continue to do what you always did. You stop getting degrees and you start earning a salary.
Nadia: That’s one of the things I’ve considered, and then specifically I have thought about teaching English.
Yelena: It’s a good field, and if you get some good students it’s great.
Nadia: My sister has three degrees. And she just kept going to school. She never quit. She went to college for ... I can’t think of how many years she went to college.
2. Fiction writing: Leaving a warm house at the wrong time.
The first thing he realized when he got outside was that he had left his coat behind in the house. He began shivering. It was growing darker every minute, and he kept slipping into deep drifts of snow, and skidding on frozen puddles, and tripping over fallen tree-trunks, and sliding down steep banks, and scraping his shins against rocks, till he was wet and cold and bruised all over. The silence and the loneliness were dreadful.
3. Academic writing: The relationship of computers and people.
In discussing the development of computer systems, we shall examine some of the general questions that have arisen. This will involve reflecting a little on the nature of computers, the needs they fulfill, the side-effects they produce, and the psychology of human nature.
2 Practice the structure: complete each sentence with a common verb from Sections B-E. use the correct tense and form, and make sure the sentence makes sense, in some sentences, more than one answer is possible. The sentences from academic writing have been identified; the others are from conversation and fiction.
1. When we were driving back, suddenly his car started / began making a weird noise.
2. I have ... more time traveling in the east than I ever have in the west.
3. Hey, the blackout is over! They’ve ... the street lights working again.
4. Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside a huge fire that her mother had ... burning all night.
5. I haven’t seen you in such a long time. I ... hearing you guys went to China, like for your honeymoon?
6. Go ahead, ... walking. I’ll catch up.
7. Meeting the basic needs of all citizens usually ... focusing on a society’s poorest members. (acad.)
8. We’ve got to move some of this furniture to make more space. We ... about pulling the bookcase out of the baby’s room and putting the toy chest back in.
9. How does garlic grow? I really have never ... garlic growing.
10. One of his knees had been scraped. It ... bleeding.
11. Make several copies of the outline. One copy should ... for transcribing your notes. (acad.)
12. This is like the funniest picture. We couldn’t ... laughing when we saw that picture.
3 Practice conversation: work with a partner. For each one of the topics listed below, tell your partner about a personal experience, include the suggested verb + gerund combinations. For the last topic, supply your own verb + gerund combinations. Make sure you use the correct tenses and forms of the verbs.
1. Talk about a job you had or special project you did in the past.
Use begin, stop, and remember with gerunds.
2. Think about a place that you like to go. Describe it to your partner.
Use see and hear with noun phrases and gerunds.
3. Tell your partner about a childhood memory.
Pick your own verb + gerund combinations!
Example
Talk about your favorite recreational activity.
Use go and spend time with gerunds.
I like to go jogging in my neighborhood. I always go on the same streets so I can see how my neighbors’ gardens are growing. When I’m not jogging, I spend time gardening, and I sometimes trade plants with my neighbors.