The Gerund(90) DP
DP D'
the patient’s D VP
V'
V DP
refusing the medicine
But this cannot be correct as determiners take NP complements not VP ones. It seems
that the structure needs to be ‘nominalised’ at a point above the verb, to allow it to
maintain its verbal properties, but below the VP so that the structure can function as
the complement of a determiner.
Let us consider the problem in more detail. One type of ing element behaves like a
pure noun in that it cannot Case mark its DP complement. Verbs Case mark their DP
complements via the light verb that accompanies them and thus presumably this light
verb is absent in the ing structure with the nominal head, but present with the verbal
ing head. One way to capture this would be to claim that ing is a nominal head that
takes a verbal complement of the v/VP type. As such it can enter into a structure at
various points: directly above the VP or above the vP headed by a light verb:
(91) a NP b NP
N' N'
N VP N vP
ing DP V' ing DP v'
the medicine V the patient v VP
refuse e DP V'
the medicine V
refuse
A number of consequences follow from this analysis. First, in (91a) as there is no
light verb, the DP in the specifier will be Caseless and hence the preposition of will
have to be inserted to salvage the structure. The presence of the light verb in (91b)
renders this unnecessary as the DP will get Case in the normal way. More
interestingly, the subject is present in the structure in (91b) but not in (91a). This does
not mean that the subject cannot be introduced in (91a) as it is perfectly possible to
have a possessive argument introduced into the NP/DP structure under normal