Ing

I know I shouldn't guess at this, but I'd say it's an appositive, and therefore a gerund. It's in apposition to the direct object "nerve," which means it has to be a noun.
I think you could say the whole "participial phrase" "telling me what to do" is the appositive, hence noun; but the inclination is to reason backward and say that if the phrase is a noun phrase, then it's head must be a ge

Telling – in this usage is a present participle. Though one may argue from a different angle.

The following sentences are the same in structure. The bracket portion are adverbial / participle phrases, not noun phrases.

You have a lot of verve [telling me what to do]

John spends much of his time [doing nothing]

Bobby

Goodman You have a lot of verve [telling me what to do]
John spends much of his time [doing nothing] Hi, Goodman. I puzzled over that for quite a while trying to make it adverbial, but it didn't seem to click.

I can buy your example about John, as "doing nothing" seems to answer the question "how." Although it also seems to des

I side with Avangi - This one seems more like a noun than an adjective.
Quote from Fowler's - "The King's English"

The participle is an adjective, and should be in agreement with a noun or pronoun; the gerund is a noun, of which it should be possible to say clearly whether, and why, it is in the subjective, objective, or possessive case, as we can of other nouns.

<<<Here again, "to have a lot of nerve" is a fixed expression, and if we take the whole thing as a compound verb (impossible??!) then clearly "telling me what to do" modifies it, and is adverbial. You agreed, right!

I just don't know if that's legal. If I had to choose between saying the P. phrase modifies the verb "to have" and it's object "a lot of

Goodman<<<Here again, "to have a lot of nerve" is a fixed expression, and if we take the whole thing as a compound verb (impossible??!) then clearly "telling me what to do" modifies it, and is adverbial. You agreed, right!

I just don't know if that's legal. If I had to choose between saying the P. phrase modifies the verb "t

Hi, Goodman, I don't feel really strong on any of these approaches. The OP presents problems I've never thought about before.

For example, I have a big problem seeing how "telling me what to do" modifies the verb "to have." I thought maybe you could steer me in the right direction. I think perhaps you already have. You say a phrase may be considered adverbial if it gives information

Hi Avangi,

Just so that I am not mistaken as taking a position as an expert on the subject of “adverbial”, I am only expressing what I have learned on participle and adverbial structure. I am not a grammarian nor am I a linguist. But what I know seems to work for me. When we try to split hair with question like this, there is always a chance getting them all tangled up which seems to be q

Goodman I am not a grammarian nor am I a linguist.

I too sometimes worry about being arrested for practicing grammar without a license. But I have no qualms about splitting hairs. As Ross Perot used to say, "the devil is in the details." Sometimes a small detail makes a big difference.

I'm often mystified by which "minor inconsistencies" people c

Nothing is absolute in life. The only absolute I see is that one must be cognoscente of his own course and lives with the consequences. Spitting hair, to me, can be mind boggling and does not equate to being detailed. Sometimes it’s good to round things off to the nearest whole number.

After all between the numbers 1 and 2, there are infinite number of zeros if we chose to keep counting t