The Possessive with Gerunds
What the Handbooks Say, and What They Should Say
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8728279 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas E Nunnally (corresponding author), Thomas Nunnally |
| Year | 1991 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 359-359 |
| Publication date | 1991-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Speech (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1283 • E-ISSN: 1527-2133 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/455687 |
| OpenAlex | W2322920861 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Nevertheless, unsure writers, especially if writing under formal circumstances, might feel the need to consult a usage guide. If such insecure persons happened upon what many still consider a standard guide, H. W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926; 1983), they would discover that, indeed, sentences (1) and (3) contain a supposedly serious blunder identified by Fowler as the participle.2 Fowler invented the term FUSED PARTICIPLE, he explains, for the purpose of labelling and so making recognizable and avoidable a usage considered by the inventor to be rapidly modern English style (1926, 206). Fowler rigidly and unquestioningly accepted the traditional view that an -ing verb form MUST be either a noun, called a gerund, or an adjective, called a participle. The subject of a gerund, therefore, since it had to function as the modifier of a noun, obligatorily took the possessive ending, or if a pronoun, it had to be the possessive adjective (1926, 214). As an example of this corrupting usage or fused participle Fowler gives the following sentence
Gerund · Linguistics · Noun · Possessive · Lexicography and Language Studies · linguistics and terminology studies · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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