Hello,


In this sentence:

He keeps blowing his nose.



I wonder if "blowing" in the above case is a present participle or a gerund.


Thank you for responding to my question!!

Traditional grammar calls it a gerund, the argument being that it is object of the verb "keep" and therefore must be functioning like a noun.

But in modern scholarly grammar, we no longer distinguish gerunds and present participles any it's simply called a gerund-participle. And it's not actually the object of "keep"; the clause "blowing his nose" actually a catenative complement, so traditional grammar is wrong on two counts!



PaulM

Thank you, Paul!