Gerund

In linguistics, a gerund is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, it is one that functions as a noun. The name is derived from Late Latin gerundium, meaning "which is to be carried out". In English, the gerund has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable by an adverb and being able to take a direct object. The term "-ing form" is often used in English to refer to the gerund specifically. Traditional grammar makes a distinction within -ing forms between present participles and gerunds, a distinction that is not observed in such modern grammars as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Traditional use

The Latin gerund, in a restricted set of syntactic contexts, denotes the sense of the verb in isolation after certain prepositions, and in certain uses of the genitive, dative, and ablative cases. It is very rarely combined with a dependent sentence element such as an object. To express such concepts, the construction with the adjectival gerundive is preferred. By contrast, the term gerund has been used in the grammatical description of other languages to label verbal nouns used in a wide range of syntactic contexts and with a full range of clause elements.
Thus, English grammar uses gerund to mean an -ing form used in non-finite clauses such as playing on computers. This is not a normal use for a Latin gerund. Moreover, the clause may function within a sentence as subject or object, which is impossible for a Latin gerund.

Playing on computers is fun.
I like playing on computers

The contrast with the Latin gerund is also clear when the clause consists of a single word.

Computing is fun.
I like computing

Latin never uses the gerund in this way, but instead uses the infinitive.
Traditional English grammar distinguishes non-finite clauses used as above from adverbial use, adjective-like modification of nouns, and use in finite progressive forms

Playing on computers, they whiled the day away.
The boys playing on computers are my nephews.
They are always playing on computers.

In these uses playing is traditionally labelled a participle.
Traditional grammar also distinguishes -ing forms with exclusively noun properties as in
The objection to the term gerund in English grammar is that -ing forms are frequently used in ways that do not conform to the clear-cut three-way distinction made by traditional grammar into gerunds, participles and nouns.

Latin gerund

Form

The Latin gerund is a form of the verb. It is composed of:

the infectum stem
a vowel appropriate to the verb class or conjugation of the verb
the suffix -nd-
a nominal inflectional ending

For example,

laud-	-a-	-nd-	-um, -ī, -ō	First conjugation	laudandum	'the act of praising'
mon-	-e-	-nd-	-um, -ī, -ō	Second conjugation	monendum	'the act of warning'
leg-	-e-	-nd-	-um, -ī, -ō	Third conjugation	legendum	'the act of reading'
capi-	-e-	-nd-	-um, -ī, -ō	Third conjugation	capiendum	'the act of taking'
audi-	-e-	-nd-	-um, -ī, -ō	Fourth conjugation	audiendum	'the act of hearing'

Related gerundive forms are composed in a similar way with adjectival inflexional endings.

Function

The four inflections are used for a limited range of grammatical functions

Case	Function	Example	Translation	Notes
Nominative	Subject	no example		infinitive used
Accusative	Object	no example		infinitive used
Accusative	After preposition	canes alere ad venandum	'to rear dogs for hunting'	after ad, in, ob and occasionally other prepositions
Genitive	Modifying abstract noun	pugnandi tempus	'time for fighting'	nouns include occasio, tempus, causa, gratia
Dative	Expressing purpose	auscultando operam dare	'apply effort to listening'	after verbs, e.g., studeo, operam dare and adjectives, e.g., natus, optimus
Ablative	Instrumental	pugnando cepimus	'we took by fighting'	became undistinguishable from participle use, thus providing the gerundio forms in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, which are used instead of forms derived from Latin present participles

These functions could be fulfilled by other abstract nouns derived from verbs such as vēnātiō 'hunting'. Gerunds are distinct in two ways.

Every Latin verb can regularly form a gerund
A gerund may function syntactically as the head of a verb phrase: for instance, the gerund of a transitive verb may take a direct object in the accusative case, e.g., ad discernendum vocis verbi figuras 'for discerning figures of speech', hominem investigando opera dabo 'I will devote effort to investigating the man'.

When people first wrote grammars of languages such as English, and based them on works of Latin grammar, they adopted the term gerund to label non-finite verb forms with these two properties.

Gerunds in various languages

Meanings of the term gerund as used in relation to various languages are listed below.

Latin and Romance

has the non-finite gerundium, formed with -andum, -endum and noun inflexions. It is syntactically equivalent to a noun, except in the nominative and accusative cases, which use the infinitive. In particular the ablative case forms were used adverbially. Latin grammars written in English use the form gerund. See the section above for further detail.
Several Romance languages have inherited the form, but without case inflections. They use it primarily in an adverbial function, comparably to the Latin ablative use. The same form may be used in an adjectival function and to express progressive aspect meaning. These languages do not use the term present participle, since it refers to a different form. Grammars of these languages written in English may use the form gerund.

Germanic

In the earliest stages of the West Germanic languages, the infinitive was inflected after a preposition. These dative and, more rarely, genitive case forms are sometimes called gerundium or gerund or West Germanic gerund.

Slavic

In descriptions of Slavic languages, the term gerund refers to verbal forms that are also frequently referred to as verbal adverb, adverbial participle, or deepričastie. These forms describe circumstances, actions concurrent or immediately preceding those in the predicate. Morphologically they are uninflected, and syntactically they have an adverbial function, and thus generally bear resemblance to Romance gerunds such as those found in Italian, rather than to noun-like gerunds in English or Latin.

In Bulgarian, it translates the term деепричастие. It refers to the verb noun formed by adding the suffix -йки to the verb form, like ходи – ходейки
In Macedonian, it refers to the verb noun formed by adding the suffix -јќи to the verb form, like in јаде — јадејќи.
In Russian, it translates the term деепричастие an adverbial participle formed with the suffixes -я '' Present; -в or -вши Past.
In Serbo-Croatian, it was used to refer to what are now classified as participles / verbal adverbs: present and past. Modern grammars rarely use the term.

Additionally, some linguists use the term to refer to verbal nouns, historically formed with the suffix, such as Serbo-Croatian glȅdānje or Polish chodzenie.

Other

In Arabic, it refers to the verb's action noun, known as the masdar form. This form ends in a tanwin and is generally the equivalent of the -ing ending in English.
In Hebrew, it refers either to the verb's action noun, or to the part of the infinitive following the infinitival prefix.
In Hungarian, it has no equivalent category in the classical sense, and is categorized under noun. It may practically refer to the verbal noun, usually formed by appending a suffix. For additional information, see the Hungarian article on its equivalent for infinitives. Common suffixes are -ás, -és, but verbal nouns are occasionally formed by removing the suffix from the verb.
In Irish it is formed by adding ag + the verbal noun. For example, ag ''scríobh.
In Japanese, there are three main grammatical structures with gerund-like functions: first, turning verbs into nouns is achieved, depending on the type of verb and other factors, by using either the conjunctive form or the nominalization particles no and koto. Lastly, the continuous and progressive aspect of a verb can be realized by employing the perfective form plus the auxiliary verb iru.
In Korean, it refers to the word '것' modified by the adjective form of the verb.
In Maldivian, the gerund is the root form of the verb, for example, ނެށުން, meaning "dancing".
In Persian, it refers to the verb's action noun, known as the ism-masdar form.
In Turkish, it refers to a large number of verb endings subject to vowel harmony and sometimes used in conjunction with postpositions. Called zarf-fiil, bağ-fiil, ulaç or gerundium and defined as "a verb used as an adverb in a sentence", the Turkish gerund may also constitute part of an clause.

In other languages, it may refer to almost any non-finite verb form; however, it most often refers to an action noun, by analogy with its use as applied to Latin.