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Conclusion
The versatile nature of the gerundial construction and its occurrence in all sentence functions already predetermines its varied using in newspaper style. In the theoretical part of the work, the verbal noun, the infinitive and the dependent clause were mentioned as equivalents corresponding to gerundial constructions. As it was anticipated, the analysis revealed that there is a wider variety of means of translation. Namely, the following translation equivalents were detected in the excerpted target texts: common nouns, finite verbs alone or finite verbs functioning as predicates in additional main clauses coordinated with translations of matrix clauses. Further, it has been unveiled that infinitives as gerundial counterparts have the capacity to occur similarly to finite verbs, i.e. either independently as direct translations, or in additional clauses, i.e. dependent or main clauses.
The gerund in the subject function presents less than 4% of the research sample and this nominal function of gerund is the second least common. The translation equivalents were predominantly nouns. With less than 3%, the gerundial function of subject complement stands for the least frequent in the examined corpus. In this category, the infinitive is the most frequently applied translation solution. In the function of premodification of a noun, the gerund accounts for more than 9%. As a nominal modifier, the gerund typically performs a semantic role of a “classifier”. In the majority of examples, the premodifying gerund became so closely associated with the head noun that it created a lexicalized nominal compound. Consequently, the most common counterparts of gerunds in this function are nouns as non-concordant attributes and actional or purposive adjectives, a translation equivalent typical of this very function. Gerunds in noun postmodification constitute the third most common type of gerundial construction (18%). The prevailing number of examples are postmodifications after the preposition “of”.
The gerund represents one of the three existing non-finite verb forms in English language. Being formally identical to the participle, some grammarians either directly subsume the gerund into the sphere of the participle, or simply cover the both under the heading “–ing forms” and speak about a gradience from concrete count nouns ending in –ing, through gerundial constructions, to the purely participial form in a finite verb phrase.
Strictly speaking, this approach may be well justified. While the gerund ends in –ing, the same is the case with the participle as well as the verbal noun. However, if we adopt a functional standpoint, i.e. if we study their functional features, or, in other words, their function within a sentence or utterance, then these three forms differ considerably (but for few peripheral phenomena).
First of all, the gerund (together with the participle and the infinitive, but not the verbal noun) has an important condensing function in English. The use of gerund enables the ModE sentence to save the use of one finite verb form, and in consequence of this the use of one dependent clause. This phenomenon may be denoted as sentence condensation, complex condensation or syntactic condensation.
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