Gerund and participle are verb forms, both ending with the suffix ‘ing’. However, there is a world of difference between gerund and participle. The two are quite perplexing. You can easily mistake a gerund for a participle and vice versa if you are unaware of the actual difference.
Principal Difference between Gerund and Participle
Gerund serves or acts as a noun. Participle serves or acts as an adjective. Thus, gerund is treated like a noun, often in the beginning of a sentence while participle is treated as a modifier. The easiest way to spot the difference between gerund and participle is to check if the phrase or word is making any modification to the noun or subject in the sentence. Since gerund acts or serves as the noun, it will almost always have no other subject or noun presence. In some cases, the noun is present and in such sentences the gerund would be separated by some form of punctuation.
Identifying the Difference between Gerund and Participle
If a word that appears to be a gerund or a participle, then ask yourself a simple question. Does the word or phrase make any changes to the subject, casts an influence or modifies the qualities of the subject. Let us consider this example, ‘Beginning to drive calls for practice’. You would notice that there is no punctuation, no subject and the word ‘beginning’ doesn’t modify anything else in the sentence. It is thus not an adjective. ‘Beginning’ here is a gerund.
Participle will be used with punctuation if there is a noun or subject. But more importantly, it would modify the subject. Participle will not be the subject. ‘My son has signed up for a beginning driving class’. Here, the term ‘beginning’ is actually defining or helping our understanding of the nature of the driving class. This is thus not a gerund. A gerund would not modify the sentence, subject or anything. It will just be, like a noun.
Participle will often work as adjectives so it is easier to spot them. If you can rule out the term being an adjective, then you can be almost sure that it is not a participle but a gerund. Take the following example: ‘I watched an amusing movie’. The participle is clearly casting an impression of the movie, describing it or modifying it. It is a participle. It cannot be a noun. Hence, if you can rule out that the term being considered cannot or is not a noun then you can call it a participle. Else, it could be a gerund.
In many cases, you would find that the gerund or participle, or the word that appears to be either, will have an adverbial form. If there is an adverb, then it is not a gerund. It has to be a participle. ‘Silently watching’, ‘calmly signaling’ or ‘patiently hearing’ are examples where the latter terms are participles and not gerunds.
Technical/Literary Similarity & Difference between Gerund and Participle
• A gerund can take a possessive personal determinative. It is not necessary for it to have a subject. It would have a meaning anyway. This doesn’t apply to participle.
• A gerund doesn’t have any influence on numbers and doesn’t get influenced by numbers. ‘Reading a book’ and ‘Reading books’ are both grammatically correct. ‘Reading’ doesn’t undergo any changes because of the number of books. This is one area where a participle also has the same characteristic.
• Just as a noun is the object or subject in a sentence and a verb is the predicate, a gerund is the subject or acts as the complement of the predicate and a participle acts as the adjective of the predicate, a modifier or complement.
Gerund and participle are perhaps among the most confusing elements of English grammar. It is very easy to confuse a verb as a gerund or participle. One can confuse a pure adverb as either or both. Gerunds and participles are obviously quite confusing in their own forms but hopefully with the key differences highlighted it would be easier to spot the difference and identify the specific terms as what they are.
The secret to understanding and immediately identifying the difference between gerund and participle is practice. The more you come across the tricky sentence formations and placement of gerunds and participles, the easier it would be for you to tell the difference. Over time you would realize that some words can only be used as participles and some words will only be suitable as gerunds. These words will be only suited for their intended meanings and cannot have interchangeable or implied meanings. When you grasp such an understanding of words and how they are used as gerunds and participles, you would have no problems identifying gerundial nonfinite clause and participial modifier or participial phase.
