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2. –ING NOMINALS: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT<br />

high degree of structural instability, as the coexistence of the forms in (32a) to (32d)<br />

illustrates:<br />

(32) a. E2 1615 Markham Countrey Contentments 109: the maine point<br />

belonging thereunto is the Hus-wiues cleanlinesse in the sweet<br />

and neate keeping of the Dairy house,<br />

b. E3 1689-1690 Evelyn Diary 927: The whole nation now<br />

exceedingly alarm’d by the French fleete braving our Coast<br />

even to the very Thames mouth:<br />

c. E3 1671 Tillotson Scoffing at Religion 429: to adore that great<br />

mystery of Divne Love (which the Angels, better and nobler<br />

Creatures than we are, desire to pry into) God’s sending his<br />

onely Son into the world to save sinners,<br />

d. E3 1689-90 Evelyn Diary 897: the Bishops of Scotland [...] were<br />

now coming about to the True Interest, more to save themselves<br />

in this conjuncture, which threatned the abolishing the whole<br />

Hierarchy in that Kingdome, than for Conscience: (Fanego<br />

1996: 97)<br />

In (32a) keeping is clearly a noun, showing the typical pre-head dependents of nouns,<br />

such as determiners (the) and adjectives (sweet and neate), and a notional object surfacing<br />

as an of-PP (of the daily house). By contrast, the –ing nominal in (32b), braving, shows<br />

verbal syntax, since its object is an NP (our Coast). Finally, the –ing nominals in (32c)<br />

and (32d) show a mixture of both nominal and verbal properties. On the one hand, their<br />

notional objects are NPs (his onely Son and the whole Hierarchy, respectively), as in<br />

(32b), but they take pre-head dependents typical of nouns such as Possessive Phrases<br />

(hereafter PossPs) (God’s in [32c]) and determiners (the in [32d]). In view of these<br />

characteristics, henceforth nominals of this kind are referred to as ‘mixed’ gerunds.<br />

This hybridization is a result of the process of acquisition of verbal features by<br />

–ing nominals that was described in the previous pages. As seen above, all –ing nominals<br />

go back to abstract nouns, originally formed by the addition of the suffix –ing, which later<br />

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