The first thing we are going to do is make known that gerund is a word that derives from Latin, specifically it comes from "gerundum", which can be translated as "what must be carried out" and which, in turn, comes from "gerere". », which means «to carry out».
This term is used in the field of grammar to name an impersonal form of the verb that, in our language, ends in -ndo .
Gerunds, depending on the context, can produce a verbal periphrasis or acquire the character of an adverb . Verbal periphrasis is a predicative unit that is formed by an auxiliary verb in a personal form joined to an auxiliary verb in a non-personal form. For example: "Grandpa is eating," "I've been thinking about it."
An adverb, meanwhile, is a word with tonic and invariable elements that usually have lexical meaning and that can modify the meaning of other words. The gerund with an adverbial character refers to actions that took place during or before the action of the other verb: "Manuel entertains himself playing with his dolls" ( "entertain" and "play" take place simultaneously), "Trying hard, my daughter bought a house" (first she "made an effort" and then she "bought" ).
It can be said that a gerund obtains its personal and temporal reference from the other verb with which it appears. When the gerund is created by the gerund of haber and the participle of another verb that is conjugated, it is called a compound gerund : "Having signed the contract, we should not have any inconvenience" ( "having signed" is a compound gerund).
When using the gerund, it is necessary to take into account a series of basic rules, among which we can highlight the following:
-The action indicated by the gerund must be simultaneous or prior to that of the main verb.
-No less relevant is that, in most cases, the subject of the gerund must coincide with the subject of the main sentence.
-Under no circumstances can the gerund be used to qualify a noun.
-The function of the gerund should always be to act as a circumstantial complement . That is, it has to be understood as a circumstance of the main verb.
In the same way, we cannot ignore the existence of a book whose title is precisely "Gerund." It is a work by the writer Fernando J. Gutiérrez, which was published in 2014 and is a collection of poems that are presented with a notable singularity that makes them "break the mold" with respect to what it is. the classic norms of that literary genre. It is a work where, among other things, a lot is invested in giving relevance to the paradox.
The Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), on the other hand, recognizes in its dictionary the colloquial expression "that is a gerund" , used in Spain to encourage someone to immediately do what the previous verb expresses in the form of a gerund: "Clarifying, which is a gerund: tell me exactly what your mother has told you about me .