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by an active gerund with passive meaning.
Your hair needs cutting.
This house wants painting.
Your suggestion is worth talking over.
Syntactical Functions of the Gerund
§ 120. The gerund can perform any syntactical function typical of a noun, although in each case it has
peculiarities of its own. It may function (a) alone, without modifiers, or (b) as the headword of a gerundial
phrase, or (c) as part of a gerundial predicative construction. Since the functions of gerundial constructions are
identical with those of single gerunds or gerundial phrases, we shall treat them together. The gerundial
constructions are usually translated by clauses.
a) I like driving.
b) I like playing the piano.
c) I like John’s (his) playing the piano.
A gerundial phrase consists of a gerund as headword and one or more words depending on it.
A gerundial construction contains some nominal element denoting the doer of the action expressed by the
gerund and the gerund itself with or without some other words depending on it. The nominal element can be a
noun in the genitive case or a possessive pronoun (if it denotes a living being), or a noun in the common case (if
it does not denote a living being).
I remember John’s telling me that story once.
I remember the weather being extremely fine that summer.
We are absolutely against grown-up children being treated as babies.
There is a growing tendency, especially in informal speech, to use the pronoun in the objective case and a
noun in the common case to denote the doer of the action expressed by the gerund with reference to living
beings too.
They were all in favour of Tommy playing the main part.
The gerund as subject
§ 121. As a rule the gerund as subject stands in front position.
John(‘s) coming tomorrow will make all the difference.
Growing roses, collecting postage stamps or old swords are hobbies.
The subject stands in postposition in sentences opening with an introductory it, which happens when the
meaning of the subject is accentuated and the predicate is a phrase such as to be (of) no use (no good, useless),
to make all the (no) difference.
If you want me to help, it’s no good beating about the bush.
It will make no difference your being quiet.
In American English the pattern There is no use in doing it is preferable to It is no use doing it. In sentences
with the introductory there the gerund is preceded by the negative pronoun no. Such sentences are usually
emphatic.
Well, there’s no avoiding him now.
There is no accounting for his strange behaviour.