Mind your language

9 September 2006

No gerundive was found to exist in English. But Dr Branford says, ‘What about reading matter? Or whipping boy?’ The form of the gerundive is in English the same as that of the participle, but then so are the forms of the participle and the gerund. The meaning of the gerundive is distinct from that of the gerund: distinguish reading room and reading matter, where the latter has a passive sense. Or distinguish whipping boy and whipping post. With whipping post or reading room, the gerund acts as a modifier, just as nouns can, in constructions such as violin case, dog whistle.

The newly discovered gerundive in chewing gum (‘chewing gum sold here’) is distinct from the gerund identical in form, (‘chewing gum is a horrible habit’). Other examples of gerundives from Dr Branford are stewing steak, cooking apples, bedding plants. Don’t forget that a passive element is present in the gerundive, so pickling onions include a gerundive (‘onions fit to be pickled’) but pickling spice (‘spice for pickling onions’) does not.

In passing, Dr Branford notes that Kingsley Amis, in The King’s English (1997), gets the gerundive completely wrong. Homer nods. She also remarks that the great Henry Fowler’s ‘notion of the grammar of participles was at best hazy’. Fowler said that English does not happen to possess a gerundive. The late Robert Burchfield, in his revision of Fowler’s Modern Usage, notes that Latin does. Only now has the English gerundive, thanks to Dr Branford, been bred in captivity.