The paper first gives a brief overview of the language acquisition phenomenon, the kind of questions that have been asked by linguists, and then moves on to the theories, describing with detail the dynamics of all four of them.
Sometimes a word or phrase appears to be a verb when, in fact, itâs something else. Itâs important to look at the function that a word or phrase plays in a sentence before determining its part of speech. A gerund is a verb form that ends in -ing. A gerund phrase includes the gerund, plus any modifiers and complements. Gerunds and gerund phrases always function as nouns. They can act as subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, predicate nominatives, or objects of a preposition in a sentence. To determine whether a word or phrase is functioning as a gerund versus a present participle, try replacing it with the word something. If something works in the sentence, then the word or phrase is a gerund. Climbing is not as easy as it looks. (Climbing is the gerund. It acts as a subject in the sentence.)
Verbs followed by gerunds. The gerund is commonly used after quite a few different verbs. The most important of these verbs are shown below. All of these verbs can be followed by nouns instead of gerunds. Remember, gerunds always function as nouns in sentences. Some of these verbs can also be followed by a that-clause. The verbs that require additional usage explanation are displayed as links which lead to more detailed pages.