GER Gerunds
Definition
Participial forms (-ing) functioning as nouns.
Detection Rules
VBG token functioning as subject, object, or prepositional object. Dependency role distinguishes gerund (nominal) from progressive or participial clause (verbal).
semgrex{pos:VBG}=ger <nsubj|<dobj|<pobj {}
pybiber
Token ending in -ing/-ings with nominal dependency role (nsubj, dobj, pobj), excluding common -ing words that are not gerunds (stoplist).
cql[word=".*ings?$" & dep="nsubj|dobj|pobj|nsubjpass" & word!={words}]
Word list (55 items)
according
anything
beijing
bing
bings
boeing
bring
ceiling
ceilings
cling
clings
darling
ding
dings
during
evening
evenings
everything
fling
flings
inning
innings
irving
king
kings
morning
mornings
nothing
notwithstanding
offspring
offsprings
outstanding
ping
pings
ring
rings
sing
sings
something
spring
springs
sterling
sting
stings
string
strings
thanksgiving
thanksgivings
thing
things
wedding
wing
wings
wrongdoing
wyoming
Normalization
Per words
Examples
the killing of the dragon
his writing impressed them
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
Notes
Distinct from VBG (present participial clauses). Biber counted gerunds as nominal forms (category E), not verbal.