I am not able to figure out why there is a gerund in this sentence:
My mother convinced me to sing, without me initially wanting to.
Could someone explain why there is a gerund?
Is it a some kind of grammatical construction?
Thank you very much in advance.
Answer
In a comment, BillJ wrote:
There isn't one, and in any case it doesn't matter. Traditional grammar analyses "wanting" in your example as a present participle. Modern grammar doesn't distinguish gerunds and present participles, calling the ing forms simply 'gerund-participles'. The most important thing is that "wanting" is a verb, which here is functioning as predicator in the non-finite clause "me initially wanting to". We know it's not a noun because it is modified by the adverb "initially", and adverbs can't (normally) modify nouns.
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