THE ING-FORM SPECIFICS IN COMPLEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH

Abstract

The results of this research shed new light on the synchronic processes of the construction of gerundive clauses. Methodology of this research is based on the contextual analysis of the utterances which contain gerunds as complements. There are three essential parameters for explaining complement usage with the ing-form: the meaning of the main verb, the meaning of the ing-complement form and the sense of the utterance in discourse. The criteria that determine the choice of either the to-infinitive or the gerund as a complement are the meanings of a sentence and a main verb, the stance of the speaker, syntactic and semantic factors. The ing-complement form occurs in same-time, backward-looking, forward-looking constructions and in the contemplation construction type. Verbs can be followed by exclusively the gerund or the infinitive, by both the gerund and the infinitive with no change in meaning or with a change in meaning. The opposition between the infinitive and the gerund is sometimes seen as the difference between a particular case and a universal sense. The relation in time between the two events is a function of the lexical content of the main verb.