Gerund or Participle

Question

"Unemployed people in the Gulf of Mexico have been offered jobs cleaning up the beaches."

Would you please tell me whether "cleaning" is a participle or gerund (object of deleted preposition).

Thank you very much.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Since it is in apposition to 'jobs', I would call it a gerund (not necessarily the object of an elided preposition, however).

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you, sir. That was not something that I had thought of.

Anonymous · Answer

Some people may feel that we can also call it an object complement of

"jobs."

Dimsumexpress · Answer

My apporach toward this sentence is this:

Anonymous"Unemployed people in the Gulf of Mexico have been offered jobs cleaning up the beaches."

The green portion is a complete sentence which by itself can stand perfectly fine. The orange portion is an "adverbial clause" made up with a present participle (cleaning up the beaches) modifying "jobs". It must be noted that some will disagree with this analytical approach and argue that this ofrm of the "v " is a (noun phrase).

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you for sharing your views. Someone else told me that perhaps

we should avoid calling "cleaning up the beaches" a participle modifying

"jobs" because -- as he quite correctly pointed out -- "jobs do not

clean up beaches." I really appreciate all the nice people who took time

to answer my question. I have decided to settle on the view that

"cleaning up the beaches" is a gerund phrase serving as the

object complement of "jobs."

Many thanks again to everyone.

Gerund or Participle

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions