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English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective: Current issues
Edited by Lotte Sommerer and Evelien Keizer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 221] 2022
► pp. 135–168

From noun to verb

Modeling variation in the English gerund system

| KU Leuven

This chapter reassesses the paradigmatic relations between present-day English nominal and verbal gerunds by examining their variation potential at an abstract-schematic level as well as at token-level. Results show that functional overlap is mainly instigated by verbal gerunds taking up more typically nominal uses, thus creating the conditions for variation with the nominal gerund. However, a collexeme analysis reveals that there is actually very little lexical overlap between both gerund types, as nominal gerunds are more restricted in terms of the verbs they can derive from. Thus, while paradigmatic links between nominal and verbal gerunds are present on an abstract-semantic level, their distinct lexical profiles confirm their reorientation to other constructional families.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A constructionist approach to relations in the gerund system
    • 2.1The constructionist network
    • 2.2The verbal gerund conundrum: Taxonomic relations in the gerund system
    • 2.3Nominal and verbal gerunds: Horizontal relations in the gerund system
  • 3.Functional overlap: Hierarchical configural frequency analysis
    • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.2Results: The attraction scenario
  • 4.Lexical overlap: Distinctive collexeme analysis
    • 4.1Methodology
    • 4.2Results: The alternation scenario
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora
Published online: 21 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.221.04mae
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