The English -ing Form

The English -ing form, also called (verbal) gerund, is often believed to display a mixture of verbal and nominal properties, thus posing problems for any grammar theory. I will argue that this is actually not the case for every construction involving the -ing form, but only for two distinct subclasses, -ing forms after genitive subjects and after determiners like no or any. In the other cases, which are the majority of all cases, the -ing form only displays verbal properties as it will be shown that tests traditionally considered to show nominal properties work for clausal phrases as well. Therefore, these tests have to be dismissed. A simple analysis will then be proposed for the -ing form with accusative and null subject, as these forms do not display a mixture of properties.