gerundilaadne

Gerundilaadne is a term used in linguistics to describe forms or constructions that behave like gerunds in the sense that they nominalize a verb and function as a noun or noun phrase within a sentence. The label is applied in theoretical discussions to cover related phenomena across languages, including verbal nouns formed from verbs, participial phrases that function as nouns, and certain verbal adjectives that convey action as a concept.

In English, the classic gerund is a verb form ending in -ing that functions as a noun, as in Reading improves knowledge. Other gerund-like constructions include participial phrases used as nouns or subjects, such as Running a marathon takes endurance, where the whole phrase acts as the subject. In languages with explicit verbal-noun morphology, nominalizations may be marked by affixes and can take determiners, modifiers, or possessors, showing a range of noun-like behaviors while still originating from a verb.

Distinctions: The term gerundilaadne is not always consistently separated from broader categories like verbal noun or nominalization across grammars. Some frameworks treat gerundilaadne as synonymous with verbal noun, while others apply it to a broader set of non-finite verb-derived nouns or noun-like expressions, including certain participial constructions used in noun-like functions.

See also: Gerund, Verbal noun, Nominalization, Non-finite clause, Participial phrase.