Question: When does dancing not dance?  

Answer:  When it is a dance.
(As in this sentence: "Your dancing is so sexy, Lothar, that I must take a dip in the icy lake if I am to remain a faithful wife."

Caveat Lecteur
This website is designed for English teacher to help them teach the parts of speech known as verbals. It is also a reflection of my own idiosyncratic ways with language. If you don't understand the oblique pun in the little question and answer above, then this site (and my humor) may not be for you, even if you are an English teacher.

Also, I do not follow many of the "rules" of a good website.  For one, I am wordy.  I make no apologies for that.  If you want something short and sweet, look elsewhere, there are a few websites that elucidate similar concepts. But I do hope you will stick with me, despite my quirks.  I enjoy writing about grammar and I believe I have something new, helpful, and interesting to say here.  Just be prepared to brew yourself some tea first.

Why Mutating Verbs? 
The truth is that I like monster movies and couldn't resist the silliness, but verbals are, in fact, verbs that have mutated, changed, from their original state of expressing the action or existence in a sentence. One definition of a verb is that it asserts something about the subject in time. Verbals have lost their power of assertion in terms of the whole sentence, but, like snails grown to hideous proportions from radiation, verbals in some ways have expanded powers. They can, for instance

• signify a substantive (finite verbs are nothing without their subjects);
• be possessed by pronouns;
• modify substantives;
• and even modify other verbs.

Part of the reason that verbals are difficult for some students to understand is that they still bear some resemblance to verbs; they retain the form and some of the power of verbs (they can take objects, for instance -- tell that to a noun! but be quiet around those prepositions); however, they are never the action of a sentence.

Because of this "mutant" nature, verbals are probably the most difficult parts of speech to explain in the classroom, but when a student  understands the peculiarities of verbals, they also grasp the essence of verbs,  nouns, and modifiers. By comprehending the qualities of verbals, students will more easily be abstract the functions of all the parts of speech. This is why verbals are a key to understanding grammatical concepts.

How To Use This Site
Within the various pages of this site, I define each verbal and work through the difficulties I have experienced in teaching the concepts to students.  I hope that English teachers who read this page will find something useful and perhaps respond with their own stories and with better explications, so that I can refine the information herein. 

This is not meant to be a comprehensive discussion, just a means to examine the benign monsters of grammar, verbals. These pages provide a short background on the main parts of speech and show how verbals can function in those capacities. I wrote the text somewhat linearly, beginning with a discussion of verbs and how verbals overlap with and differ from them. I then move on to the function of nouns and how verbals can act as substantives, and I conclude the text with a short piece on verbals as modifiers, primarily as adjectives. I have also included a page of links to some other sites that explain verbals. Given the nature of the Internet, you may want to jump around, so there is a small navigation table on each main text page to allow you to jump to any other text page in this site. To get started, click on the buttons below.
 

Enjoy yourself, and don't forget to write.