Hello.
I need help with an -ing form, please. I can't tell whether the following is a present participle or a gerund. This is the sentence:

"After eating his dinner, Tom turned on the T.V."

I think the whole clause is a gerund clause, but I'm not sure.
Can you tell me which one it is and why?


Thank you!

Cecy

It's a gerund, and the underlined is thus a gerundial clause. You can tell this by the fact that it can be replaced by a noun:

(1) "After eating his dinner, Tom turned on the TV."

(2) "After a nice dinner, Tom turned on the TV."

In these examples, the underlined parts function as complement to the preposition "after". In (1) the underlined part is a clause, with the verb "eating" as head. In (2), the underlined part is an NP with the noun "dinner" as head. The similarity between the verb form "eating" and the noun "dinner" is simply this: they head expressions with the same function.

PaulM

One little thing: you both refer to ""After eating his dinner," as a clause, when it's a phrase.

No I didn't. The entire constituent "After eating his dinner" is of course a preposition phrase with the prep "after" as head and the clause "eating his dinner" as complement. Only "eating his dinner" is a clause; the prep "after" is not part of it. Here are the relevant parts of my reply again from which you will see that "after" is not underlined in either of my references to clause:

It's a gerund, and the underlined is thus a gerundial clause.

(1) "After eating his dinner, Tom turned on the TV."


In (1) the underlined part is a clause, with the verb "eating" as head.


PaulM

Hello, Gervais.
I never said that "after" was part of the clause.
"After eating his dinner" is a prepositional phrase with a gerundial clause in it.

Regards,

Cecy

Thanks for your answer, Paul.
That's how I saw it... until I came across a grammar reference page on the BBC site. This is the link to the page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/course/intermediate/unit-27/tab/grammar
Let me show you what I read there that didn't make any sense to me. The perfect participle is not the problem. The problem is implying that anything that ends in -ing is a present participle.

Take note: perfect participles (having + past participle)

If you are talking about two actions that happen one after the other, you can use a perfect participle for the first one. You can use a comma between the actions if you like.

Having missed the bus, we decided to drive into town.=
We missed the bus. We decided to drive into town.

Having finished the cake we started on the cheese. =
We finished the cake. We started on the cheese.

The same meaning can also be expressed with after + present participle.

After missing the bus we decided to drive into town.=
We missed the bus. We decided to drive into town.

After finishing the cake, we started on the cheese. =
We finished the cake. We started on the cheese.

I can only see a gerund there, NOT a present participle.
And that's what left me wondering because, hey! it's the BBC.
But, apparently, they can be wrong, too.

Cecy

Hello Cecy,

"After eating his dinner, Tom turned on the TV".
"After missing the bus, we decided to drive into town".
"After finishing the cake, we started on the cheese".

The BBC website is poorly constructed and must be very confusing to learners. Nevertheless, I suspect this is all about a divided opinion on which category (part of speech) "after" belongs in. Traditional grammar, like that taught on the BBC grammar website, sees "after" as a preposition when it has a noun complement (object), but a subordinating conjunction when it introduces a clause.

But this view fails to recognise that in the very latest grammars, "after" is seen as a preposition which can take a noun or a subordinate clause as complement. And crucially, of course, prototypical preps take nouns as complement, so -ing verbs, when heading clausal complements to a prep (i.e. where nouns normally operate), are seen as having a similar nominal function and hence called gerunds.

The consequence of all this is that if, like the BBC, you take "after" as a subordinator, then an expression like "After eating his dinner" is a present participle clause. It's not a complement to anything, but simply an optional adjunct.

If, on the other hand, you take "after" to be a preposition, then "After eating his dinner" is a preposition phrase in which "eating his dinner" is a gerundial clause (with the gerund "eating" as head) functioning as complement to "after". In other words, it's a clause within a phrase, which is a common occurrence in English grammar.

Here's a link to 'EnglishClub' website which conveniently cites "after" as an example of a preposition, and states that (no exception) any verb that follows a preposition must be a gerund. They call the complement a phrase, whereas it's better to call it a clause:

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds_2.htm


Does that help?

PaulM