---
title: "Gerundive Complements in English : A Constraint-Based Analysis"
description: "This paper examines how a constraint-based (HPSG-style) grammar should handle English gerund phrases that serve as verb… 15 references."
authors: ["Byung-Soo Park"]
year: 2001
venue: "Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/Y01-1027/"
doi: "http://hdl.handle.net/2065/12201"
licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/park-2001-gerundive-complements-english-constraint-based/"
---
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# Gerundive Complements in English : A Constraint-Based Analysis

**Authors:** Byung-Soo Park · **Year:** 2001 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/paclic/) ([PACLIC 2001](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/paclic/2001/)) · **Publisher:** [City University of Hong Kong](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/city-university-of-hong-kong/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/Y01-1027/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/Y01-1027.pdf) · [DOI http://hdl.handle.net/2065/12201](https://doi.org/http://hdl.handle.net/2065/12201) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W40903302)

**Citations:** 3 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
This paper examines how a constraint-based (HPSG-style) grammar should handle English gerund phrases that serve as verb complements, as in *I hate Pat's/Pat smoking cigars*. Earlier generative accounts relied on empty categories, functional heads or derivations that split words in syntax, which violates lexical integrity. Building on Malouf (2000), Park adopts a lexical category *gerund* that sits under both *noun* and *relational* (the supertype shared with verb and adjective) in a multiple-inheritance hierarchy. This lets a gerund phrase take verbal complements and adverbs internally while appearing wherever NPs appear, without any category switch inside the tree. Using construction types and type constraints, the paper covers three subtypes of gerundive complements: POSS-ing, ACC-ing and PRO-ing. It also separates gerunds consistently from VP[VFORM participle]. Finally, it weighs a simpler alternative that treats gerunds as verbs carrying [VFORM gerund]. That alternative is cheaper but leaves their NP-like distribution unexplained. The work shows that "mixed" categories can be stated precisely in a formal grammar.

## Key points
- Following Malouf (2000), *gerund* is a subtype of *noun* and of *relational*. It is not a subtype of *verb*, so gerund phrases (GP) appear wherever NPs do, but only in some VP positions.
- The genitive subject (POSS-ing) comes from a noun-possessive-construction. The accusative subject (ACC-ing) comes from a nonfinite-head-subject-construction, which is also a subtype of *clause*. The clause type requires its SUBJ to be empty, PRO or a gap.
- Verbs such as *dislike, hate, mind, remember, discuss* accept both ACC-ing and POSS-ing. Passivization (*His smoking was hated by everyone*) and pseudo-clefts show the GP is a direct-object NP.
- Malouf derives gerunds from present participles rather than base forms. This explains why non-existent forms like *must-ing*, *can-ing* or *is-ing* never occur, because finite forms cannot feed the rule.
- The VFORM-only alternative avoids adding a new part of speech. However, it makes the nominal distribution of gerunds an accident rather than a consequence. Choosing among lexical rules and handling the PRO subject are left for further study.

## Interesting ideas
- Model a two-faced word class as a type with two parents (nominal outside, verbal inside) instead of forcing one label or switching category mid-tree.
- The case of the gerund's subject (genitive vs accusative) selects a different construction, yet both phrases name the same embedded event with the same agent.
- Use syntactic diagnostics such as passivization and pseudo-clefting to check that a clausal-looking complement really behaves as an object NP.
- Deriving one form from another, rather than from the base, can block impossible forms without extra stipulations.
- Judge competing analyses by whether a pattern follows necessarily or only by accident, not just by surface coverage.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (tokens): A VerbForm=Ger token could carry both a nominal-distribution flag and a verbal-valency flag. Later stages could then query whichever face they need.
- **I2** (frames): When building frames, map both *Pat's smoking* and *Pat smoking* to an embedded event whose agent is Pat. A missing subject (PRO-ing) should resolve to the controller, e.g. the matrix subject.
- **I3** (learn): Such transformations could serve as consistency checks on silver parses. A gerund labelled obj should survive passivization as nsubj:pass, and disagreement flags a likely error.
- **I4** (tokens): In the morphology crate, generate -ing gerunds via the participle path. This way modals and finite forms never produce candidate lemmas like *must-ing*.
- **I5** (world): When designing ontology and verb-class types, prefer inheritance that makes distributional facts fall out automatically. This keeps explanations derivable rather than listed case by case.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Kyung Hee University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/kyung-hee-university/) — University, Seoul, South Korea · 6 works · 179 citations

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🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,379 works

## Cite

Cite as: Byung-Soo Park. 2001. Gerundive Complements in English : A Constraint-Based Analysis. Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{park2001gerundive,
  title = {{Gerundive Complements in English : A Constraint-Based Analysis}},
  author = {Byung-Soo Park},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation},
  year = {2001},
  doi = {http://hdl.handle.net/2065/12201},
  url = {https://doi.org/http://hdl.handle.net/2065/12201}
}
```

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## References

15 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 2 November 2026*