Use of term "gerund" (Russian)

[Robert A. Rothstein]

Nicole Monnier wrote:

>Dear SEELANGStsy,
>
>Twice in the past week, I've had two students ask about the use of the term
>"gerund" to refer to Russian verbal adverbs (deeprichastiia), and not verbal
>nouns, as is common in English. Not being a linguist (!), I thought I would
>post the second - and testier - of these queries to the list.
>
>  
>
       Your student who asked why "Slavonic linguists and pedagogues 
choose to stand apart from seemingly all other linguists and hundreds of 
years of tradition in using the term 'gerund' to refer to verbal adverbs 
rather than the verbal noun" could be referred to grammars of French, 
Spanish or Italian, where the terms _gérondif_ or _gerundio_ are used to 
refer to forms that function like Russian _deeprichastiia_.  That 
doesn't explain the usage of Russian textbooks in English, but shows 
that their authors are not quite as isolated as your correspondent 
suggests. I suspect, by the way, that most Slavic linguists these days 
prefer the terms "verbal adverb" and "verbal adjective" since most 
students don't know what gerunds and participles are anyway.

Bob Rothstein

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