To my knowledge, when native speakers are using gerunds as a noun, they would prefer words that end with "-ment" rather than those that end with "ing." Is it just a personal preference, or a grammatical phenomenon?
Specifically, can the suffix "-ing" add some subtle meanings to a word in English?
There are two different ways to change a verb into a noun. The first way is to suffix "-ment", while the second way is to suffix "-ing" and make it a gerund. As those two ways are both grammatically correct, what are the differences between the meanings of the words yielded by these two approaches?
Best Answer
This may just be my brain having a short holiday, but having come up short on gerunds that end in "-ment" (see what I did there?) I suspect that it is a grammatical phenomewnon.
The Cambridge English dictionary has gerund as
So it seems they agree with me.
Reading the comments, I think I see the issue. Improvement is a noun with the same etymological root as "to improve". But crucially, it is a noun. It is not a gerund.
A gerund is a verb participle acting as a noun. It is not, however, actually a noun.