Participle or Gerund?

Question

Hello to Everybody,

Thinking over the idea of the participles in English, I stumbled on 'deny'. It's a common knowledge and a general rule taught at school that we use the Gerund after prepositions or some verbs like 'deny', 'avoid', etc., e.g.

He denied stealing the money.

However, some would perhaps use past reference in this case, which is also possible, e.g.

He denied having stolen the money.

In the second case we can see the perfect participle. The translation, for exmaple into Polish, would be the same.

So, can we formulate the rule that "after some verbs like deny, [...], we can use either the Gerund or Perfect Participle for past reference."?

Swan and Martinet do not say much about that, they would rather stick to the name "ING FORM", which is more comfortable in use. In my case, I would prefer to know it for sure and "call a spade a spade".

Looking forward to reading an answer from EnglishForward Grammarians!

Tom

MrT · Accepted Answer

Mea culpa. I've just found in "A Practical English Grammar" by Thomson and Martinet (p. 233, reference 264) the term "The perfect Gerund" with the exact usage of 'deny':

"The perfect gerund is fairly usual after deny:

He denied having been there."

I've never thought that there is something like the perfect gerund. For me it has always been the perfect participle.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

MrTI would prefer to know it for sure and "call a spade a spade".

Do you think there are absolute rules, labels, and principles of grammar? Au contraire, my dear MrT, there is traditional grammar and several strains of modern grammar developed by contemporary linguists. Each uses a different vocabulary. There are no absolutes, no spades. Some people insist that one grammar is paramount and superior to the others. Many textbooks teach traditional grammar, which is disparaged by "modernists."

A different approach is to avoid labeling and follow a descriptive approach.

There are catenative verbs in English, where a verb is followed by (and governs) another verb. The following verb can be the infinitive, bare infinitive, or present participle.

He denied stealing the money. (A catenative verb) The participle has no tense. The tense is taken from the main verb. This is used for a recent robbery, and is of current interest. It is the most common usage.

He denied having stolen the money. This is used for a robbery that happened long ago in the past. Maybe nobody is interested in the cold case anymore. It is rare usage.

A more interesting comparison is "receive." The participle and perfect participle have comparable stats.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=denied+receiving%2C+denied+having+received&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdenied%20receiving%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdenied%20having%20received%3B%2Cc0

And it's interesting to see language usage trends for "doing":

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=denied+doing%2Cdenied+having+done&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdenied%20doing%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdenied%20having%20done%3B%2Cc0

Anonymous · Answer

In America, we tend to politicize everything, including grammar. We don't want to be "wrong," so we label everything we do wrong as "modern." Vernacular English has always differed from formal English, and "traditional" grammar is the grammar of formal English. By "formal," I mean "adhering to forms." Thus, if I want there to be no mistake about what I am saying, it is best that I and my audience operate by the same rules. Those rules cannot be what I choose them to be, nor can they be what I and my woke friends say it is. No, the rules must be understood as mandatory for clear communication.

It may be that only legal writing still demands precision. After all, writing was once the only way one could communicate at a distance. Letters were slow and correction tedious. So everyone who wrote had to write carefully. Now, most communication is oral or short-hand, because miscommunication can be sussed out and/or corrected instantly. Under those conditions, investing in learning and applying "traditional" grammar is probably not the best use of one's time. Grammar and cursive writing are both means to an end. If better tools are available, we move on.

Because so much writing is informal these days, I don't believe Google searches are terribly useful in teaching close questions of grammar. The zeitgeist speaks colloquially. Formally, I would argue that the tense of a denial relates to the time of the alleged act, so as to avoid formal ambiguity:

I think he is stealing our money, but he denies stealing it.

I think he stole our money, but he denies having stolen it.

The temptation to use "stealing" for "having stolen" is the nature of stealing. It can be a ongoing process, but context - usually, the object stolen (or eaten or broken, etc.,) - makes the additional precision of the past perfect unnecessarily expensive to use. Still, the grammatically correct usage in formal writing would, IMHO, be the present perfect.

Participle or Gerund?

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