2. THE GERUND
See the following sentences:-
1. Smoking is harmful.
2. Teaching is very difficult.
3. He hates drinking.
Smoking, teaching and drinking are the gerunds in these sentences.
Let us analyze these sentences:-
In the Ist and IInd sentence, smoking and teaching are used as subjects and in the IIIrd sentence drinking is used as object. Therefore, these are acting as nouns.
The gerund acts as a noun in a sentence and an 'ing' is placed with the Ist form of verb that is, as a 'verb + ing'. For example: working playing, bathing, running etc.
In the next part you will learn uses of the gerund...
